. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across f the railway journey in Turkestan. We were invited to seats in the carriage where the officers were rid-ing. They did everything to make our journey agreeable, and we wereindebted to them for a great deal of information about Central Asia. SCARCITY OF WATER. 4G5 Some of them had been to the British frontier, and one had visited Cabul,Herat, and Candaliar. The route of the railway was partly across the desert, and partlyalong the valleys of
. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across f the railway journey in Turkestan. We were invited to seats in the carriage where the officers were rid-ing. They did everything to make our journey agreeable, and we wereindebted to them for a great deal of information about Central Asia. SCARCITY OF WATER. 4G5 Some of them had been to the British frontier, and one had visited Cabul,Herat, and Candaliar. The route of the railway was partly across the desert, and partlyalong the valleys of tw^o or three small rivers of no special importance ex-cept for their usefulness in supplying water for the line. For a consider-able distance the line lies near the Etrek, a river that was of great use toGeneral Skobeleff in his advance upon Geok Tepe. At times it is simplya dry channel, but water can generally be found by digging a few feet inthe sand that forms, in the rainy season, the bed of the stream. The country is a plain, with here and there a few hills not worthy tobe called mountains. Sometimes the plain is flat for a long distance, and. VILLAGE OF TURCOMAN TENTS. again it is undulating like the rolling prairies of our Western States. Veg-etation is scanty at best, and a large part of the country is absolutely des-ert. The great need of Central Asia is water. If a million springs couldbe opened, all giving a copious flow like some of the great springs in ourRocky Mountains, the next ten or twenty years would see a great changein the aspect of Turkestan. One of the officers told me that the country was of the same generalcharacter all the way to the frontier of Afghanistan. The railway canbe extended without trouble, said he, as far as we wish to carry not an obstacle at all formidable to railway engineers. I asked, with some hesitation, where they wished to carry their rail-way line. I knew the subject was not disconnected with politics, but the 30 466 TH
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