"Console yourself," said Major Noltitz. "Your satisfaction could not be
complete, for old Merv has been rebuilt four times. If you had seen the
fourth town, Bairam Ali of the Persian period, you would not have seen
the third, which was Mongol, still less the Musalman village of the
second epoch, which was called Sultan Sandjar Kala, and still less the
town of the first epoch. That was called by some Iskander Kala, in
honor of Alexander the Macedonian, and by others Ghiaour Kala,
attributing its foundation to Zoroaster, the founder of the Magian
religion, a thousand years before Christ. So I should advise you to put
your regrets in the waste-paper basket."

And that is what I did, as I could do no better with them.

Our train is running northeast. The stations are twenty or thirty
versts apart. The names are not shouted, as we make no stop, and I have
to discover them on my time-table. Such are Keltchi, Ravina--why this
Italian name in this Turkoman province?--Peski, Repetek, etc. We cross
the desert, the real desert without a thread of water, where artesian
wells have to be sunk to supply the reservoirs along the line.

The major tells me that the engineers experienced immense difficulty in
fixing the sandhills on this part of the railway. If the palisades had
not been sloped obliquely, like the barbs of a feather, the line would
have been covered by the sand to such an extent as to stop the running
of the trains. As soon as this region of sandhills had been passed we
were again on the level plain on which the rails had been laid so
easily.

Gradually my companions go to sleep, and our carriage is transformed
into a sleeping car.