LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT OF CENTRAL ASIA 



755 



When conversation at length gave place 

 to idle reverie we went to sleep in the 

 open air, regretting the pleasant weari- 

 ness which made it impossible to remain 

 awake in order to watch the surpassing 

 beauty of the flawless sky and feel the 

 caress of the gentle breeze of the desert. 



The purpose of our ride into the desert 

 was the examination of numerous great 

 mounds from 30 to 80 feet high and from 

 100 to 600 feet in diameter, which are 

 located outside the oasis of Merv. Here 

 in ancient days, when the water supply 

 was greater than it now is, the chief men 

 of the land appear to have lived, raised 

 above the heat of the plain and protected 

 by moats and walls, while around them 

 dwelt the humble peasants whose mud 

 houses have now crumbled into scarcely 

 perceptible heaps covered with countless 

 potsherds. Elsewhere whole villages 

 seem to have been built upon mounds, as 

 they are today in eastern Persia in places 

 of especial danger. 



The Turkomans were puzzled when 

 they saw a stranger riding from ruin to 

 ruin, writing, photographing, measuring. 

 "Have you heard what the stranger is 

 doing?" they said to one another, accord- 

 ing to the report of the guide. "You 

 know he comes from the west, so he says, 

 from across a lake bigger than the desert. 

 Now these old mounds were built long 

 ago by the Giants whom our ancestors, 

 blessed of Allah, drove far away into the 

 western mountains. There some of the 

 infidels still live. The Americans are in- 

 fidels. It must be that the Giants are 

 their ancestors, and this man has come 

 here to see where his ancestors lived." 



Another matter which puzzled the 

 Turkomans was the fact that I wrote a 

 great deal on horseback. The guide told 

 of their speculations. "It must be," he 

 reported them as saying, "that this is a 

 very religious man. He knows the 

 Koran, or his holy book, whatever it may- 

 be, by heart, and as he rides along he 

 writes it down for pleasure." 



The means of supporting life in Trans- 

 caspia are much more abundant in the 

 oases than elsewhere, but even there they 

 are very precarious. During April and 



May, 1903, the camp of the Pumpelly ex- 

 pedition was pitched at Anau, a small 

 oasis near Askhabad, the Transcaspian 

 capital. There, with the aid of about 

 120 Turkomans, we excavated two 

 mounds, the remains of a village of ex- 

 treme antiquity, founded in the days 

 when the camel, sheep, and pig were still 

 undomesticated and were hunted by the 

 villagers who later tamed them, appar- 

 ently in the very village into the ruins of 

 which we dug. 



A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS 



One day in April a spirit of unrest ap- 

 peared among our Turkoman workmen, 

 for a whisper went abroad that this was 

 to be a year of grasshoppers. The rumor 

 was only too true, for before many days 

 the green grass and the fields of tender 

 wheat nearest the mountains were full of 

 round, dark spots no bigger than a dollar, 

 and composed of almost microscopic liv- 

 ing creatures. 



Day by day the spots grew larger, like 

 the spreading of a plague, at first a foot 

 in diameter, then three feet, and soon ten. 

 Little by little, too, the tiny swarming 

 creatures became visible as individuals — 

 genuine grasshoppers, minute, but ap- 

 pallingly voracious. Here and there a 

 Turkoman could be seen with a spade 

 attempting to cover the plague-spots with 

 earth, but in general the grasshoppers 

 were left unmolested. 



The faces of the Turkomans grew 

 graver day by day as the creatures in- 

 creased in size, and the men stuck to 

 their work of digging more faithfully 

 than before, seeming to feel that they 

 must earn as much as possible to support 

 their families in the hard days to come. 

 There was no complaint, no cursing; 

 they seemed to look upon the myriad- 

 mouthed horde of grasshoppers as an 

 affliction sent by Allah, and not to be op- 

 posed by ordinary human means. 



At length there came a day when the 

 grasshoppers, now nearly half an inch in 

 length, began to move more widely, and 

 broad patches of sere brown Stubble could 

 be seen where they had devastated parts 

 of the wheat fields. About the same 



