290 FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN. 



The roads of this town are, without exception, 

 the worst for a town I ever saw ; nothing but the 

 bed of a mountain torrent could be worse. The 

 town bore traces of damage done by that volcanic 

 action from which it is a too frequent sufferer. 

 The principal residents are, I believe, Armenian ; 

 the principal industry the manufacture of carpets. 

 Shemakha is, I am told, an extremely old town, 

 and was, in days gone by, the capital of a ' gu- 

 bernia,' though before the Russian rule, in the 

 early Persian days, the great town was Aksu, the 

 post-station at the foot of the hills, and not 

 Shemakha. Now Aksu has declined to a very 

 insignificant position ; and even should the con- 

 templated railway from Tiflis to Baku ever become 

 a reality, the volcanic spasms from \vhich it so 

 frequently suffers will probably prevent Shemakha 

 ever attaining to any real importance. 



After leaving Shemakha the main post-road 

 runs on to Baku, the principal port on this side 

 the Caspian. As. however, my object was to get 

 into Persia, or, at least, so near to Persia as to run 

 a chance of finding tigers, I left the main road at 

 Shemakha, and bore away to the south-east for 

 Lenkoran. The road between Shemakha and 

 Lenkoran being extremely little used, I was 

 destined to see, before I reached the Caspian, the 

 lowest depths of the discomforts of Russian post- 

 tra veiling. Hitherto there had been at least three 



