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Some way up the outer or north-western shore of the peninsula the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps effected a landing at Gaba Tepe, later called Anzac from the initials of the force. Farther down another was made in front of the village of Krithia, and the remaining four attempts were on beaches stretching round the point of the peninsula from Tekke to Morto Bay.
Therefore, my Harry, Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days. In the autumn of 1878 General Lomakin had waged an unsuccessful campaign against the Tekke Turkomans, and finally fell back with heavy losses on Krasnovodsk, his base of operations on the Caspian Sea.
At 6.20 p.m. started back intending to see all snug at Gaba Tepe, but, picking up some Turkish guns as targets in Krithia and on the slopes of Achi Baba, we hove to off Cape Tekke and opened fire. We soon silenced these guns, though others, unseen, kept popping. At 6.50 we ceased fire. At 7, Admiral Guépratte came on board and tells us splendid news about Kum Kale.
Colonel Stewart, reporting in 1884 on the northern frontier of Afghanistan, and alluding to Penjdeh, said that it was inhabited by Turcomans, and he thus described the position: 'The state of affairs seems to have been that the Turcomans acknowledged that they were squatting on Afghan land, and were liable to pay taxes, and each year they paid something as an acknowledgment of Afghan rights; but so long as this was done, the Afghans looked upon them as a protection against the Tekke further north, and left them very much to themselves.
Some years afterwards, eager to pursue their march towards the east, the campaigns of 1860 and 1864 had given them the Khanats of Kokhand and Bokhara. Two years later, Samarkand passed under their dominion after the battles of Irdjar and Zera-Buleh. There remained to be conquered the southern portion of Turkestan, and chiefly the oasis of Akhal Tekke, which is contiguous to Persia.
Let us suppose that this "structureless" morsel of protoplasm is, for all its "structurelessness," composed of an infinite number of living molecules, each one of them with hopes and fears of its own, and all dwelling together like Tekke Turcomans, of whom we read that they live for plunder only, and that each man of them is entirely independent, acknowledging no constituted authority, but that some among them exercise a tacit and undefined influence over the others.
Guépratte agrees we would do well to hold on for another 24 hours. At a quarter past seven he took his leave and we let drop our anchor where we were, off Cape Tekke. So now we stand on Turkish terra firma. The price has been paid for the first step and that is the step that counts.
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.
In 1879 he went through Russia to the shores of the Caspian Sea, travelled through the north of Persia and the adjacent territory of Khorassan, to the land of the Tekke Turcomans, and to Merv, thus penetrating the mysteries of Central Asia as no European traveller had ever done so perfectly before.
You were twenty and I fourteen.... Garry, yonder, was not.... And the rugs, you recollect? one or two in a room, Shiraz, Ispahan nothing as obvious as Sehna and Saraband nothing but Moresque and pure Persian and one agedly perfect gem of Asia Minor, and one Tekke, so old and flawless that only the pigeon-blood fire remained under the violet bloom.... Do you remember?"
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