THE FAMOUS VERMIN PIT. 189 



came forward and volunteered to go in person to Bok- 

 hara, he met with a ready support. The last authentic 

 news of the condition of the missing officers was sup- 

 plied by a letter from Captain Conolly to his brother, in 

 which he stated that "for four months they had no 

 change of raiment, their dungeon was in a most filthy 

 and unwholesome state, and teemed with vermin to a 

 deo-ree that rendered life a burden. Stoddart was 

 reduced to a skeleton, and his body was covered with 

 putrid sores." ^ It appears that the first rumours of 

 their death were incorrect, though they were eventually 

 taken from their cell and beheaded in the market-place 

 some time later, and prior to the arrival of their would- 

 be rescuer. " For the quietude of soul," wrote the rever- 

 end doctor, " of the friends of those murdered officers. 

 Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly, I have to observe 

 that they were both of them cruelly slaughtered at Bok- 

 hara, after enduring agonies from confinement in prison of 

 the most awful character — masses of their flesh having 

 been gnawn off their bones by vermin, in 1843." 



I have said that the evidence points to a dungeon, 

 no longer existent, but which formerly stood within 

 the walls of the citadel itself, as the scene of their 

 confinement. Let me call to witness the Russian 

 KhanikofP once more : " From hence to the right of 

 the entrance [i.e., of the Ab-Khaneh in the ark] a 

 corridor leads into another prison, more dreadful than 

 the first, called the Kana-Khanah, a name which it has 

 received from the swarms of ticks which infest the place, 

 and are reared there on purpose to plague the wretched 

 prisoners. I have been told that in the absence of the 

 latter some pounds of raw meat are thrown into the 

 pit to keep the ticks alive ! " This, then, was the 

 notorious vermin pit, and from Conolly's information 



1 Bokhara. Wolff. 



