The furnaces are fed, by the aid of a pulverizing apparatus, with the residue produced from the distillation of the naphtha, which Baku and Derbent produce in such inexhaustible quantities.

At certain stations on the line there are vast reservoirs of this combustible mineral, from which the tenders are filled, and it is burned in specially adapted fireboxes.

In a similar way naphtha is used on the steamboats on the Volga and the other affluents of the Caspian.
I repeat, the country is not particularly varied.

The ground is nearly flat in the sandy districts, and quite flat in the alluvial plains, where the brackish water stagnates in pools.

Nothing could be better for a line of railway.