Pe ee ET A 
1885. ] Geography and Travels. 1203 
so soon as they touch a salt deposit which crops up ten to fifteen 
miles from the range. 
Kustik, in a valley about fourteen miles long and three-fourths 
of a mile wide, is a Jamshidi town; but twenty miles to the east 
of it commences the Hazara country, a vast plain stretching to- 
ward the north, and eroded into a chaos of steep hillocks and 
hollows by the Murghab drainage. Kala-nau, the chief town of the 
Hazaras, is a prosperous one. The soil of the Hazara country is 
excellent—only the manual labor is needed. The Hazaras have 
enormous flocks of sheep and cattle. 
As far back as the earliest periods of Arabic history, Badghis 
has been connected with Herat. It comprises the land watered 
by the Murghab and its tributaries. Its principal valley is 
Penjdeh. The Afghan forts of Bala Murghab and Meruchak are 
the only modern buildings north of the debouch of the river from 
the gorge in the Tirband-i-Turkistan, for the Jamshidi and Saryk 
. Turkoman population live entirely in kibiskas or felt tents. 
About twenty-eight years ago the Saryks, driven from Merv 
by the Tekkes, received the sanction of the Jamshidi chief, and 
located themselves at Penjdeh. These Saryks were once, togeth- 
er with Tekke, Salar and other Turkomans, the scourge of north- 
era Persia, but since Russia has closed the slave marts, they seek 
for a stable government, and are giving their attention to agri- 
culture. The Saryks own nearly 200,000 sheep. 
North of the Badghis, a tract of country between the Mur- 
ghab and the Heri-rud is called Chol, which is simply Turkoman 
for a desert that is not a sand desert. The light soil bears short 
grass almost everywhere until the dry season, and where there is 
less grass there are usually more bushes, the latter marking a 
more sandy soil. : 
The salt lakes of Yar-oilan are situated in depressions, the west- 
ern one about 950 feet below the surrounding country, and 1430 
feet above sea-level, while the eastern one is about 800. feet above 
sea-level. The beds of these lakes are a mass of hard salt, cover- 
ed with a very little water. The western lake is the source from 
which the Tekkes get their salt, while the Saryks tse the eastern 
lak 
e. 
In the discussion which followed the reading of Sir Peter 
Lumsden’s paper, Sir Hy. Rawlinson gave his reasons for the 
identification of Meruchak with the upper Merv or Merv-el-Rud, 
said to have been founded in the fifth century by Kesra Anushir- 
wan. The larger Merv, now in Russian possession, Balkh and 
Herat are the three oldest cities of Aryan civilization. The Paro- 
pamisus of the Greeks extended no further westward than Herat, 
the westward continuation being called Sariphe. 
ds 
/ 
At Penjdeh, in a sandstone cliff 200 feet above the river, are 
some artificial caves, evidently once inhabited. The largest has a 
central passage 150 feet long, nine wide, and nine high to the top 
