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Thus, adding a day for the crossing of the Caspian, the army corps from Baku would reach Herat in 35 days. From Sarakhs to Merv the road is said to be good and fairly supplied with water.
A division may be conveyed, complete, in 36 trains. Thus, in six days a division would be assembled at Sarakhs ready to move on the advanced guard. An army corps, with all its equipments and departments, would be conveyed in 165 trains in 17 days. It would then be 200 miles another 17 days' march from Herat.
Having the official statement of a military engineer with reference to the Oxus-Hindu-Kush line, as a barrier or base or curtain, we may pass to the principal approach to Herat from the northwest. II. Or it could move outside Persian territory, from Chikishliar by the Bendessen Pass to Asterabad, and would then have to pass through Persian territory to Sarakhs, or across the desert to Merv;
The two most important persons in Meshed are the acting Governor-General of Khorassan, and Mardan Khan, Ex-Governor of Sarakhs and Hereditary Chief of the powerful tribe of Timurees. Of course, the Governor sends his salaams, and invites me to come round to the government konak and favor him with an exhibition.
Soon after it was reported that the Russians had established themselves at Sarakhs on the direct road to Herat and just over the Persian boundary of Afghanistan. These later movements again aroused the distrust of England, and a joint commission of Russian and English officials was appointed early in the year 1885.
Four of these miles separate the town from the northern and twelve from the southern hills, while at one quarter of the greater distance runs the Her-i-Rud or Herat River, which, rising near the Kuh-i-Baba, pursues a westerly course till, passing the city, it sweeps, first gradually, then decidedly, to the north, eventually to lose its identity in the environs of Sarakhs.
The railway now being made from Tiflis to Alexandropol and Kars will probably send out a line down the fertile valley of the Aras to Julfa, ready for extension across the Persian frontier to Tabriz, and a branch may be pushed forward from Doshakh, or Keribent, on the Trans-Caspian railway, to Sarakhs, where Russia, Persia, and Afghanistan meet, to facilitate trade with Herat as well as Meshed.
The Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, Mr. Cust, with his wife, passed over this route in 1883, and testifies to the ease and comfort of the transit and to the great number of vessels engaged in the oil trade, which are available for military purposes, both on the Black and Caspian seas. The successive detachments would arrive, then, easily in two days at Sarakhs.
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