176 THE TBANSCASPIAN RAILWAY IN 1903. 



with the Hne on either side runs a small quick-set 

 fence, or rather the top of one, for the roots are far 

 down in the sand, binding it and keeping it from 

 burying the line. Had it not been for the curious 

 properties of this shrub — saxsaul — it would have been 

 wellnigh impossible to have built and held the line ; 

 even as it was it must have been heart-breaking work. 



Suddenly the sand gives way to a cultivated oasis, 

 and ere long we pull up at Chardjui on the banks of 

 the Amu Daria (ancient Oxus). I remember reading 

 recently that it had been rechristened Amu Daria 

 after the famous river on whose banks it stands ; but 

 Chardjui is still writ in large letters over the centre 

 of the building. Here the engineer has been recently 

 at work, for the old wooden viaduct, on its 3330 wooden 

 piles, has been replaced by a fine steel girder bridge a 

 verst and a half in length, which we crossed in four 

 minutes — a great improvement on the twenty minutes 

 required for the passage of the older construction. 

 Having with much difficulty and labour driven the 

 huge wooden stakes into the bed of the river, they 

 would give a good deal now to remove them again, 

 but some few have up to the present time resisted 

 every effort to displace them, and stand a source of 

 constant irritation to the helmsman responsible for the 

 safe passage of the craft of the Oxus flotilla. 



Once beyond reach of the life-giving water, sand 

 again. Not an even yellow expanse, but great ugly 

 corrugated bluffs and hummocks, like the churning 

 pits and mountains of an angry sea, the small isolated 

 stone buildings forming the stations looking terribly 

 lonely in the vast reaches of the desert ; but before 

 very long we run into an oasis once more, thanks 

 to the proximity of the Zerafshan, and by midday I 



