Merv, the Queen of the
World;
and the Scourge of the Man-stealing Turcomans. With an
Exposition of the Khorassan Question:
By Charles Thomas Marvin, Published by W.H. Allen, 1881
CHAPTER II. TUKKMENIA.
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THE TRANSCASPIAN STEPPE. 31
into mistakes. Turkmenia, then, is that country lying
south of the Oxus, or Turkestan, stretching from Balkhto
the shores of the Caspian, and filling up the space
between that sea and the Aral. On the south it is bounded
by hills, the continuation of Hindu Kush, and the
Paropamisus of the ancients. A line drawn from Balkhto
Astra bad on the Caspian — which two places are
nearly in the same parallel of latitude — will
separate the country of the Turkmen
from that of the Afghans and Persians. On the
southeastern shore of the Caspian, where Turkmenia
adjoins Persia, the country is mountainous and watered by
the rivers of Gorgon and Atrek, which fall into that sea.
In all other places it is a flat and sandy desert,
scantily supplied with water. The streams that flow from
the mountains are speedily absorbed by the sand, and
never force their passage to the Oxus. The greatest of
these is the Murgab, or Merv River, and the Tejen, which
passes Sarakhs. This country is destitute of towns and
villages, for the Turkmen
are an erratic tribe, and wander from one well to another
with their herds and flocks, taking their conical
Khargahs, or huts, along with them, in search of water
and pasture. "
The desert of the Turkmen
is a vast ocean of sand, flat in some places, and rising
in others to mounds, such as are seen on the sea-shore.
It increases in volume towards the Caspian, and in that
vicinity the sand-hills attain a height of sixty and
eighty feet. They appeared to rise from a hard caked
surface of clay, which was observable in several places.
There was little difficulty in crossing these sand-hills,
and the wells, though few in number, offer their supply
of
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