. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. as it may be before , it runs through such a fever-haunted district that Rus-sian carpenters, who can earn two roubles a day on it, throw upthe job and go back to earn fifty kopecks at home. The line is * This line has since been prolonged a few miles to Chahel Dokhteran, on the veryfrontier, and a branch is building through Penjdeh to Maruchak, where the MurghabRiver crosses the frontier. THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 241 simply a deliberate military measure again
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. as it may be before , it runs through such a fever-haunted district that Rus-sian carpenters, who can earn two roubles a day on it, throw upthe job and go back to earn fifty kopecks at home. The line is * This line has since been prolonged a few miles to Chahel Dokhteran, on the veryfrontier, and a branch is building through Penjdeh to Maruchak, where the MurghabRiver crosses the frontier. THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY 241 simply a deliberate military measure against Great Britain. Itserves at present only the purpose of facilitating the invasion ofIndia, or rather of enabling Russia to squeeze England by pre-tending to prepare the first steps of an invasion of India, when-ever such a pretence may facilitate her diplomacy in simple truth, it places Herat at her mercy. The Merv-Kushkline, I may add, is now completed, and two regular trains a weekrun over it, at the rate of something less than ten miles anhour, reaching the Afghan frontier terminus in eighteen A Glass of Tea While the Train Stops. The country on both sides of it is a desert, with tufts of hardyscrub. Wild pig abound, and pheasants, of which this countryis the original home. The fever I have spoken of attacks aman suddenly, the spleen swells, he turns as yellow as in jaun-dice, becomes unconscious on the second day, and then recoversor dies. Those working on the railway say that recovery de-pends upon whether there is a train immediately after the attackto take you to the hospital at Merv. If you have just missedthe bi-weekly train, you die. But the epidemic will doubtless 242 ALL THE RUSSIAS diminish in frequency and in virulence as there is less necessityto dig up the ground. In the East—even at Hong-Kong, forinstance—stirring of the soil almost always produces , the pioneers of trade in this part of the world, aretrying to open up t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecttolstoy, bookyear1902
