CHAPTER X.


At a quarter-past twelve our train passed the station of Kari Bata,
which resembles one of the stations on the line from Naples to
Sorrento, with its Italian roofs. I noticed a vast Asiatico-Russian
camp, the flags waving in the fresh breeze. We have entered the Mervian
oasis, eighty miles long and eight wide, and containing about six
hundred thousand hectares--there is nothing like being precise at the
finish. Right and left are cultivated fields, clumps of fine trees, an
uninterrupted succession of villages, huts among the thickets, fruit
gardens between the houses, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle among
the pastures. All this rich country is watered by the Mourgab--the
White Water--or its tributaries, and pheasants swarm like crows on the
plains of Normandy. At one o'clock in the afternoon the train stopped
at Merv Station, over five hundred miles from Uzun Ada.

The town has been often destroyed and rebuilt. The wars of Turkestan
have not spared it. Formerly, it seems, it was a haunt of robbers and
bandits, and it is a pity that the renowned Ki-Tsang did not live in
those days. Perhaps he would have become a Genghis Khan?

Major Noltitz told me of a Turkoman saying to the following effect: "If
you meet a Mervian and a viper, begin by killing the Mervian and leave
the viper till afterwards."