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It seems to be a Turkoman town built by the Chinese, or perhaps a Chinese town built by Turkomans. Monuments and inhabitants betray their double origin. The mosques look like pagodas, the pagodas look like mosques. And I was not astonished when the Caternas, who would not miss this opportunity of setting foot in China, were rather disappointed.
The Afghan problem is complicated by these local differences and rivalries; the north cohering with the Turkomans, Herat and the west having many affinities and interests in common with Persia, Candahar being influenced by Baluchistan, while the hill tribes of the north-east bristle with local peculiarities and aboriginal savagery.
The Turkomans say that the superior size and strength of their horses over others are due to the rich grass of their pasturelands, I may conclude this short account of the royal stud by mentioning that, as Persia is essentially a country of horses and horsemen, every foreign Minister on first arrival and presentation to the Shah receives the gift of a horse from his Majesty's stables.
I must content myself with having seen all that with the major's eyes. The train starts at two o'clock in the morning, after having been joined by a few passengers who Popof tells me are Turkomans. I will have a look at them when daylight comes. For ten minutes I remained on the car platform and watched the heights of the Persian frontier on the extreme limit of the horizon.
For my part, in spite of the observations of the Caternas, I was fully in tone with the local color due to the marvels of Samarkand, when I was roughly shaken back into modern reality. In the streets yes in the streets near the railway station, in the very center of Tamerlane's capital, I passed two bicyclists. "Ah!" exclaimed Caterna. "Messrs. Wheeler!" And they were Turkomans!
Central Asia was conquered by Russia forty-five years ago, Transcaspia thirty years ago. Transcaspia is inhabited by Turkomans, a powerful and warlike people, who in former times used to make raids into northern Persia, carrying off men and women, whom they sold as slaves in the markets of Bukhara and Samarcand. General Skobeleff put a check to their domination when he invaded the country in 1880.
There is a noisy crowd on the quay of people who are going off, and people who have come to see them off, recruited from the cosmopolitan population of Baku. I notice that the travelers are mostly Turkomans, with about a score of Europeans of different nationalities, a few Persians, and two representatives of the Celestial Empire. Evidently their destination is China. . The Astara is loaded up.
We have two hours to wait at Kizil Arvat. Although the day is closing in, I could not employ my time better than in visiting this little town, which contains more than two thousand inhabitants, Russians, Persians and Turkomans. There is not much to see, however, either within it or around it; there are no trees not even a palm tree only pasturages and fields of cereals, watered by a narrow stream.
This group embraces the most widely scattered folk the Ottoman Turks of Constantinople and Anatolia, the Turkomans of Persia and Central Asia, the Tartars of South Russia and Transcaucasia, the Magyars of Hungary, the Finns of Finland and the Baltic provinces, the aboriginal tribes of Siberia, and even the distant Mongols and Manchus.
West of Bokhara and south of Khiva stretched the great desert of Kara-Kum, touching the Caspian Sea on the west, the Amu-Daria River on the east, the home of the wandering Turkomans, the born foes of the settled races, but from whom all thought of disputing the Russian rule had for the time been driven by Skobeleff's death-dealing blade.
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