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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



more propitious than now, and ancient 

 empires flourished in what is now the 

 desert. 



Soon the train begins to run parallel 

 to the mountains of northern Persia, 

 which raise their barren brown flanks 

 through the quivering air 20 or 30 miles 

 away to the south. Between their 

 base and the railway lies a sloping plain 

 of gravelly soil washed down from the 

 mountains by spring floods and fertile 

 only where a rare brook is led abroad in 

 canals to water the earth, or where tun- 

 nels, marked by long lines of wells with 

 heaps of debris at their mouths, have 

 been dug for miles into the gravel to rob 

 it of its scanty store of water. 



THE OASES OF THE DESERT 



On the other side of the railway a 

 great plain of desert sand stretches far 

 away toward the north in the direction of 

 the bleak plateau of Ust-urt and the 

 famed city of "lone Khiva in the waste." 

 Between the desert and the mountains 

 lie the oases of Transcaspia, dusty green 

 beads, large and small, strung on a two- 

 stranded string of shining steel rails. 

 Pleasant, cool, fruitful places they seem 

 to the sun-blackened nomad of the desert, 

 although to the luxurious traveler on the 

 railroad thedusty streets and adobe houses 

 present little that is lovely. Occasionally 

 the house of a Russian official, low, white- 

 washed, and red-tiled, presents a hint of 

 picturesqueness as it stands embowered 

 in fruit trees laden with mulberries, apri- 

 cots, plums, peaches, quinces, and pome- 

 granates; but the ground below the trees 

 is dry and grassless, and the breath of the 

 desert blights every spot where standing 

 or running water is not found. 



On the outskirts of almost every oasis 

 stand the symbols of two types of civiliza- 

 tion whose day is past. On the one side 

 a cluster of round felt tents, a flock of 

 fat-tailed brown and white sheep, some 

 kneeling, grunting camels, and a group 

 of Turkoman nomads in long-striped 

 quilted gowns of native red silk and huge 

 caps of sheepskin represent the recent 

 days when the Turkomans cheerfully 

 plundered their neighbors, the mild Per- 



sians, or any one else whom sad mis- 

 chance betrayed into their hands. On the 

 other side huge earthen mounds or lines 

 of fallen walls of sun-dried brick indi- 

 cate that centuries ago the barren wastes 

 which now lie desolate were the home of 

 a prosperous and numerous race of tillers 

 of the soil. 



During our stay in Transcaspia we 

 visited the mountains to the south of the 

 railroad, made excursions into the desert 

 to the north, and lived for months among 

 the oases and deserts between the other 

 two regions. Nowhere during all our 

 stay did we feel that we had left the 

 desert behind. On our way to the 

 mountains at the end of May the growth 

 of short, sweet grass which covers the 

 country in early spring had already died 

 and shriveled. The gently sloping plain 

 of gravel at the base of the foot-hills was 

 brown and barren except for dry weeds 

 and little bushes. 



Among the mountains themselves the 

 bottoms of the deep canyons were either 

 green with grass among which blue irises 

 were blooming, or else were filled with a 

 jungle of low trees and fragrant rose 

 bushes. Nevertheless a glance upward 

 disclosed bare walls of rock and talus so 

 dry that not a speck of green could be de- 

 tected. At the heads of the canyons 

 green upland valleys and plateaus ap- 

 peared, tenanted by pastoral Kurds who 

 leave their stone houses in summer and 

 dwell in tents. 



The immediate scenery at these high 

 altitudes of 6,000 or 8,000 feet did not 

 suggest the desert, but from the snow- 

 flecked peaks 9,000 or 10,000 feet above 

 the sea a yellow band on the horizon 

 and a dusty haze in the distant air could 

 be seen proclaiming the great waste of 

 sand a day's journey to the north, and we 

 knew that in a month or two even the 

 mountains would be parched and brown. 



THE KURDS AND THE TURKOMANS 



The Kurds, who inhabit the highlands 

 south of Transcaspia are in themselves a 

 forcible reminder of the desert. Three 

 centuries ago in the days of Abbas Shah, 

 the last great king of Persia, the Tartars, 



