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Crossing a fertile region where poplars like distaffs rise gracefully erect, skirting fields bristling with vines, running by gardens where fruit trees abound, our train stops at the new town. As is inevitable since the Russian conquest, there are two towns side by side at Tachkend as at Samarkand, as at Bokhara, as at Merv.
A railway was gradually constructed from the vicinity of Kras-novodsk, on the Caspian, towards Samarcand. Merv, formerly a city of importance, but of late a mere village in the desert, was also occupied.
For an hour the train is running through the oasis. We shall soon be in the open desert. The soil is formed of alluvial beds extending up to the environs of Merv. I must get accustomed to this monotony of the journey which will last up to the frontier of Turkestan. Oasis and desert, desert and oasis. As we approach the Pamir the scenery will change a little.
Popof was on duty on the section between Mikhailov and Kizil Arvat when the line opened a section which was begun in the December of 1880 and finished in ten months, in November, 1881. Five years later the locomotive entered Merv, on the 14th July, 1886, and eighteen months later it was welcomed at Samarkand.
The monotony of the journey would only be broken on the vast oases of Merv, Bokhara and Samarkand. But let us busy ourselves with the passengers, as we can do all the more easily from our being able to walk from one end to the other of the train. With a little imagination we can make ourselves believe we are in a sort of traveling village, and I am just going to take a run down main street.
On the opposite bank is the administrative town, which contains a considerable number of civil servants, wearing the usual Russian cap. In reality the most interesting place to see is a sort of annexe, a Tekke village, in the middle of Merv, whose inhabitants have retained the villainous characteristics of this decaying race, the muscular bodies, large ears, thick lips, black beard.
There was, however, some reason for Russia's violation of her repeated promises respecting Merv. In practical politics the theory of compensation has long gained an assured footing; and, seeing that Britain had occupied Egypt partly as the mandatory of Europe, and now refused to evacuate that land, the Russian Government had a good excuse for retaliation.
He was a man with a heart replete with wisdom and a head full of eloquence, and a tongue nourished with ancient tradition; he traced his origin to Sam, son of Nariman, and he knew well the affairs regarding the fights of Rustam." A more correct translation would be: "There was a certain old man by name of Azad Serw living in Merv with Ahmad son of Sahl.
Merv and Herat, Khokand and Kandahar, have been thought and, it seems, thought with some reason to date from the Macedonian age and in their first period to have borne the name Alexandria. But no Aurel Stein has as yet uncovered their ruins, and speculation about them is mere speculation. See p. 145 below.
I seize the telegram, which has been waiting for me for some days. Is it a reply to my wire sent from Merv, relative to the mandarin Yen Lou? I open it. I read it. And it falls from my hand. This is what it said: "Claudius Bombarnac, "Correspondent, "Twentieth Century. "Khotan, Chinese Turkestan.
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