172 THE TRANSGASPIAN RAILWAY IN 1903. 



many things. You remember that far away across the 

 desert to the north lies Khiva, A man once made a 

 reputation by riding there : no one would do so now — 

 save perhaps for folly. For Khiva, like Bokhara, has 

 had its day, and the revolving wheel of fortune has 

 consigned its khan to the unambitious position of a 

 nonentity. When the world forces come to be summed 

 up in Asia, Khiva need no longer be taken into account 

 even as a pawn upon the board. Still it was not 

 always thus, as the records of Russian expeditions 

 could tell. Three centuries ago the Yaik Cossacks, 

 pirate scourges of the Caspian Sea, set forth for the 

 rich province called Khowarizm or Khiva, to sack its 

 capital Organtsh.^ But they reckoned without their 

 host. Cut off from water by the exasperated Khivans, 

 they fell fighting desperately against overwhelming 

 odds, quenching their thirst while life remained with 

 the blood of the slain. A second expedition met with 

 no better fortune, but the culminating disaster was 

 left for yet a third under the leadership of the ataman 

 Schemai. Lost in the pathless steppe, stranded finally 

 on the inhospitable shores of the Aral Sea, their pro- 

 visions exhausted, they found themselves in a sorry 

 plight. It is on record that " at first the unhappy 

 ones killed each other, in order to have human flesh 

 to eat ; but at last, when brought to the very verge of 

 perishing, they summoned the Khivans and voluntarily 

 surrendered themselves as slaves." 



The early years of the eighteenth century saw a 

 whole Bussian army cut up and its leaders massacred 



1 Organtsh, the town we speak of as Khiva, described by one M'Gregor, 

 Secretary to the Board of Trade in the 'Forties, as "a town of mud huts, 

 with three stone mosques and a mud palace." Dr Wolflf describes how 

 when he was travelling in Bokhara he heard the cry from the watch- 

 towers of that country, " "Watch ! watch ! for the people of Organtsh may 

 come, kill your cattle, and destroy the child in the mother's womb ! " 



