CHAP. XXxIII.] SAMARKAND TO THE CASPIAN 501
memories of ancient Iran. It was a tantalising pleasure, perhaps, seeing how little chance there seems for me to follow up my early historical studies in this field, yet I feel grateful for it. Then past the ruins of Gök-tepe, an historical site of more recent memories, the railway carried me to Krasnowodsk. From there I crossed the Caspian to Baku, and finally, after long and tiring days in the train (via, Petrovsk, Rostoff, Podwoloczyska, Cracow, Berlin) I arrived in London on July 2, 1901.
There I had the satisfaction of depositing the antiquities unearthed from the desert sands in the British Museum as a safe temporary resting-place. Neither they nor my eight hundred odd photographic negatives on glass had suffered by the long journey. It was for me finis longce chartceque viœque, but also the commencement of a period of toil, the more trying because the physical conditions under which it had to be done were so different from those I had gone through.
Owing to the great extent of the collections I had succeeded in bringing back, the task of arranging and cataloguing proved a very exacting one. As the period of six weeks' deputation in England originally sanctioned by the Government of India for this purpose proved wholly insufficient, the Secretary of State for India was pleased to extend it by another period of six weeks. I had every reason to feel grateful for this concession ; but it was only at the cost of great exertions and through the devoted help of my friend, Mr. F. H. Andrews, that I succeeded in accomplishing the temporary arrangement of my collection and the preparation of a " Preliminary Report " during the allotted period.
When this urgent task was concluded by the close of September, I felt glad that my impending return to India for ordinary duty as Inspector of Schools in the Punjab promised at least a change
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