five o'clock in the afternoon
Since we left Kothan we have covered a hundred and fifty kilometres in four hours . It is not a high rate of speed , but we can not expect on this part of the Transasiatic the same rate of traveling we experienced on the Transcaspian . Either the Chinese engines are not so fast , or , thanks to their natural indolence , the engine drivers imagine that from thirty to forty miles an hour is the maximum that can be obtained on the railways of the Celestial Empire . At five o'clock in the afternoon we were at another station , Nia , where General Pevtsoff established a meterological observatory . Here we stopped only twenty minutes . I had time to lay in a few provisions at the bar . For whom they were intended you can imagine .