THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE RAILWAY. 167 



regarded with unconcealed disfavour a scheme which 

 could not fail to enhance the importance of the Trans- 

 caspian territories at the expense of their own, consti- 

 tuting the chief obstacles to a further advance ; but in 

 the spring of 1885 occurred the Pendjeh incident on 

 the Afghan frontier, which determined once for all the 

 future of the Transcaspian railway, and from this time 

 the policy of railway extension in this part of the world 

 "emerged as a menace to England and a warning to 

 Asia." 



And so it happened that while the British were con- 

 structing the railways of Hurnai and the Bolan in 

 Baluchistan, the Russians were steadily pushing their 

 long steel arm into the heart of Asia. 



Work began on June 30, 1885, the rolling camp 

 which carried the staff, workmen, and material moving 

 forward at the rate of four miles a-day as the line 

 was laid. Beyond Kizil Arvat 22,000 Tekke labourers 

 levelled the soil, with a result that Merve, which had 

 succumbed to the intrigues of Alikhanoff and the bravado 

 of Komaroff early in 1884, was reached in a period of 

 fourteen months. In August 1886 work was begun on 

 the section between Merve and Chardjui on the Oxus, 

 and in spite of the terrible difficulties experienced from 

 driving sand, the whole distance of 141 miles was com- 

 pleted in little more than four months, and the railway 

 brought into working order throughout the 664 miles 

 from the Caspian to the Oxus. 



The river here is at the present time spanned by a 

 fine steel girder bridge ; but such an undertaking was 

 considered out of the question in 1887, and a huge and 

 cumbrous wooden viaduct was carried across the water 

 on piles driven into the river-bed. The engineer who 

 was responsible for this extraordinary structure was a 

 Pole, Bielinski by name — and when it comes to be con- 



