Excerpt from Russia's Railway Advance Into Central Asia: Notes of a Journey From St. Petersburg to Samarkand The present volume is the outcome of a journey from St. Petersburg to Samarkand in the spring of 1888, on the occasion of the opening of railway communication with the ancient city of Tamerlane, and of a series of letters published in the Times in the autumn of the same year, giving the first English description of the Central Asian Railway. I have been encouraged to return to the subject in the form of a separate publication by the advice of many readers of my letters, and by the use made of them by other authors. Not more than eight of the following fifteen chapters appeared in the Times, and these have been so completely rewritten, altered and amplified, that they contain a large amount of fresh, and, I hope, interesting information. The remaining seven chapters are entirely new, and bring the account of the Transcaspian province down to the present time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.