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 GOKLAN COUNTBY. 37
cultivate in the open plains, or far from their villages
in any direction; consequently their land is more
exhausted, and the return is less, although everywhere it
is abundant. "
But what paradise is perfect? This
splendid country is afflicted by the heavy calamities of
disease and constant insecurity. The quantity of rain
that falls in the season, and which stagnates in the deep
forests, turning them often into impassable morasses,
becomes putrid from the quantity of decayed vegetable
matter it receives, and in the heats of summer and autumn
exhales a most pestilential vapor. The wandering tribes
fly from the influence of this, beyond the Gorgon or the
Atrek, where they prefer living on the verge of the
burning sand, and carrying from the distant river the
water required for each day's consumption, to the least
exposure to these noxious effluvia. But the inhabitants
of the village have no such resource ; those, indeed, who
can afford it, retire from the intense heats of summer to
their 'yaylas' in the mountains ; but the great majority
continue exposed to all these inconveniences, and suffer
severely from sickness."
Burnes describes the region between Bujnurd and Akhal
as consisting of " mountains, with alternate hill
and dale — a wild and romantic country. There were a
few stunted pine-trees on the hills, but they are oftener
bare of anything but grass." In the Goklan country
“no scene could be more enchanting than that on
which we had now entered; the hills were wooded to the
summit, and the hue of the different trees was so varied
and bright as hardly to appear natural. A rivulet flowed
through
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