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Updated: May 13, 2025
But the Uzbegs have a method of undermining the bastion, by turning the course of some convenient stream right under the very base; this gradually softens the lower stratum of mud, and diminishing its tenacity, the whole fabric comes tumbling down from its own weight. They also have frequently recourse to mining, but for either method to succeed the defenders cannot be on the alert.
The valley was full of orchards divided by low walls, and perhaps to a well-disciplined company of steady old soldiers with plenty of officers, a retreat, even in the face of several hundred Uzbegs, might have been effected without loss, by forming the whole body into two lines of skirmishers, and retiring alternately; but the serjeant knew too well the temper of his gallant little mountaineers, who are more famous for bravery than judgment, to trust the safety of his party to the success of a manoeuvre, the chief point in which was to know when to retreat.
Travelling long days, and resting short nights in the crevices of the mountains, after eighteen days' toil, they at length reached a part of Tartary, distant only two days' march from the fort belonging to the robber Uzbegs who had so cruelly injured them.
He was much gratified with the trifle, it being of Peshawurree muslin, a kind much sought after and prized by the Uzbegs. He immediately took off his own turban, which was indeed rather the worse for wear, and binding the new one round his head, declared with a self-satisfied look, that "it would be exceedingly becoming."
The fort appeared too strong for an open attack, and when, at night, the leaders of the detached parties assembled to discuss their future plans and to report what they had seen during the day, it was determined to lie in ambush another day for the chance of the main body of the Uzbegs quitting their fort on some foray, so that they would have a better chance, should it become necessary to attack it.
The hills near the gorge were so strongly impregnated with iron as sensibly to affect the needle of the theodolite. Throughout this country, and especially amongst the Uzbegs, there is a fortified wall in the form of a square surrounding each village, with small bastions or towers at the angles.
Bokhara, bounded on the north by Russian Turkestan, was once the most famous state of Central Asia. Genghis Khan took it from the Arabs in the Thirteenth Century, and it was taken by the Uzbegs, fanatical Sunni Mahommedans of Turkish extraction, in 1505.
I was about to give utterance to my disappointment, when I perceived the Uzbegs preparing their torches and arranging the line of march, in which it seemed that no one was anxious to take precedence. I now began to look about me, in the hope that there was something more to be seen, and was delighted to observe one adventurous hero with a torch disappear behind some masses of rock.
As the modern Iran now suffers from the perpetual incursions of Uzbegs and Turcomans, so the north-eastern provinces of the ancient Persia were exposed to the raids of the Asiatic Scythians and the Massagetse, who were confined by no such barrier as the Caucasus, having merely to cross a river, probably often fordable during the summer, in order to be in Persia.
After the Russian capture of Tashkend in 1865, the Amir Muzeffared-din proclaimed a holy war against the Russians, who invaded his province and captured Samarkand in 1868. By a treaty of 1873, no foreigner may be admitted into Bokhara without a Russian passport. The population is estimated at 2,000,000. The Amir Syed Abdul Ahad succeeded in 1885. The Uzbegs are still the dominant race.
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