THE AFGHAN BORDERLAND 



791 



ital of Transcaspia, and went by rail to 

 Dushak, a little station a hundred miles 

 to the eastward, whither our caravaix had ■> 

 preceded me. There the Transcaspian' . 

 railroad bends to the northeast to reach ; 

 Merv, while our route led to the south- 

 southeast, along the broad sloping plain 

 of gravel at the northern base of the 

 mountains which form the boundary be- 

 tween Asiatic Russia and the extreme 

 northeastern part of Persia. The first 

 day's march was short. The following 

 morning a splendid red sunrise ushered 

 in Thanksgiving Day, clear and bracing, 

 as November days are apt to be in the 

 •dry Russian province of Transcaspia. 

 All day the caravan moved slowly east- 

 ward — four men, five horses, and three 

 baggage camels — strange, grunting 

 beasts, whose long, pliant necks and awk- 

 ward legs were oddly suggestive of huge 

 picked chickens, especially when seen 

 from in front. 



During the four months of hard trav- 

 eling in eastern Persia to which this 

 day's march was the prelude, the caravan 

 developed splendid efficiency, but as yet 

 it was not well shaken together. We 

 had spent an uneasy night, which began 

 with a search in the dark for a camping 

 place and for water, firewood, eggs, and 

 milk, and which ended with a nightmare 

 of a dragon licking his chops and writh- 

 ing his coils about us. We awoke to 

 find that one of the common incidents of 

 ■camp life had occurred — the camels had 

 gotten loose, and in their attempts to eat 

 the leaves of the cultivated poplar tree 

 above our tent were kicking the tent 

 ropes with their crooked legs and setting 

 their rubbery, compressible feet upon the 

 pegs. 



All day we saw no sign of man except 

 the ruined mounds of the civilization of 

 the past, and no sign of animals except 

 herds of sharp-horned, slender gazelles 

 "browsing on the brown remnants of the 

 sweet, meager growth of short grass 

 which flourishes for a month or two after 

 the rains of early spring. Once a herd 

 of about twenty of the graceful fawn- 

 colored creatures followed us for an 

 hour out of curiosity, sometimes coming 



within a hundred yards of the path, so 

 that we could see every movement as 

 they gamboled and played under the in- 

 fluence of the crisp fall air, and some- 

 times chasing one another in great cir- 

 cles or dashing off for half a mile, so 

 that nothing could be seen of them ex- 

 cept white tails bobbing up and down as 

 the graceful creatures leaped over bush 

 and stone. For them a run of twelve or 

 fifteen miles to a drinking place was a 

 matter of no consequence, and therefore 

 they could live in the dry plain from 

 which slow-footed man is excluded for 

 lack of water. 



Toward sunset signs of the presence 

 of underground water appeared, and 

 soon we came upon sheep and camels 

 grazing amid the tamarisks of a broad, 

 shallow valley wherein no stream was to 

 be seen, but only a few slightly brackish 

 wells and a disorderly group of round 

 Turkoman tents, some of them made of 

 gray felt and others of reeds plastered 

 with mud. Not far away, upon a gravel 

 slope, a cluster of low, neat buildings, 

 with whitewashed walls of mud and 

 stone and roofs of tile, presented a 

 marked contrast to the slovenly Turko- 

 man structures. 



Sturdy Cossack sentinels, in long 

 woolen cloaks and huge sheepskin caps, 

 were pacing to and fro, and stopped us 

 sharply as we approached. An Ameri- 

 can, even though accompanied by a uni- 

 formed Afghan and Turkoman who 

 were enlisted in the Russian frontier 

 army, must show very good reason for 

 approaching a military post in the vicin- 

 ity of turbulent Afghanistan. Only the 

 closest scrutiny of my papers, signed by 

 the military governor of Transcaspia, 

 convinced the sergeant who was tempo- 

 rarily in charge that I was not a spy 

 whose arrest would bring him much 

 credit. Once convinced, however, he 

 was a true Russian in his hospitality. 

 He had not much to offer, for the quar- 

 ters and provisions of his absent superior 

 were not at his disposal. The best that 

 he could do was to allow me to share 

 with himself and a corporal a cold, stone- 

 floored sleeping-room. 



