LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT OF CENTRAL ASIA 



749 



lightened and scientifically careful atten- 

 tion to the most recent advances of pre- 

 ventive medicine upon the progress of 

 nations than the mortality statistics of 

 the Japanese armies in the recent Russo- 

 Japanese war as compared with the cor- 

 responding statistics for the British army 

 during the Boer war immediately preced- 

 ing, or for the American army during 

 the Spanish war at a somewhat earlier 

 date? 



The consideration of these elements of 



national progress has been neglected by 

 historians, but they are nevertheless of 

 deep-reaching importance and must at- 

 tract immediate attention in this age of 

 advanced civilization. The world has 

 entered the historical age when national 

 greatness and national decay will be 

 based on physical rather than moral con- 

 ditions, and it is vitally incumbent upon 

 nations to use every possible effort and 

 every possible means to check physical 

 deterioration. 



LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT OF CENTRAL 



ASIA 



By Ellsworth Huntington, of Yale University 



IT seems a strange anomaly that the 

 most remarkable ruins of ancient 

 civilization are often closely asso- 

 ciated with deserts. In North America 

 the great Aztec and Zuni ruins lie in the 

 arid regions of the Southwest and of 

 Mexico ; in South America the wonderful 

 remnants of the great Inca cities are lo- 

 cated in the dry regions of Bolivia, Peru, 

 and northern Argentina. In Africa, 

 likewise, the Rhodesian ruins, the most 

 remarkable in the southern part of the 

 continent, lie near the Kalahari Desert, 

 while in the north the remains of some of 

 the most famous ancient empires border 

 the Sahara from Morocco to Egypt. 

 Asia, too, is no exception, for Arabia, 

 Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, northwest- 

 ern India, and western China are all dis- 

 tinguished for their ruins and their 

 deserts. 



One of the most interesting examples 

 of the combination of the ruins of a 

 mighty past with conditions of great 

 aridity today is found in the Russian 

 province of Transcaspia, east of the Cas- 

 pian Sea. Thither in 1903 it was the 

 author's privilege to go as a member of 

 an expedition sent out by the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington for archeo- 

 logical and geographical research under 



the leadership of Mr Raphael Pumpelly. 

 During the course of two seasons' work 

 we not only studied the ruins, but gained 

 a fairly intimate acquaintance with the 

 Turkoman inhabitants of the country — its 

 rulers before the Russian conquest, less 

 than thirty years ago. In our study of 

 both the past and the present nothing was 

 more impressive than the inexorable in- 

 fluence which the desert has exercised 

 upon living creatures of every sort. 



We entered Transcaspia from oily 

 Baku, crossing the Caspian Sea to Kras- 

 novodsk, and thence going by rail to 

 Askhabad, the capital of the province, 

 and to Merv, the most famous of the an- 

 cient cities. From the high, narrow win- 

 dows of the deliberate train the traveler 

 who elects to sit on the edge of the car 

 seat, and sacrifice comfort to scientific 

 curiosity, may see all of the few simple 

 features which make up the physiog- 

 raphy of Transcaspia. After the train 

 has left the opalescent waters of the Bay 

 of Krasnovodsk and has run through the 

 desert for some hours, it comes at length 

 to the Yuzboi, the broad abandoned chan- 

 nel of an ancient river which once flowed 

 from the Sea of Aral or the marsh of 

 Sarikamish to the Caspian Sea in the 

 days when the climate of the country was 



