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EASTWARD BOUND. S
drink is brought in in huge barrels laden on creaking carts.
To have to live in a wretched place like that, baking as it
was in the hot sun, would be sheer transportation.
General Kuropatkin, Minister of War, the same who is
now fighting in the Far East, the eyes of both the white and
the yellow races fastened upon him, had kindly telegraphed
to Krasnovodsk, ordering the railway authorities there to
place at my disposal a special railway carriage right through
to Andijan, the terminus of the Hne. It was a delightful
way of travelling. The conductor provided me with cold
water for douches—most refreshing with the thermometer
at io6°.5 Fahr. in the shade. My salon was furnished with
couches, chairs, and a writing-table. My carriage was the
last on the train, so that it might be readily uncoupled
should I wish to stop anywhere. I used to sit under the
sheltering roof of the back platform and study the scenery,
and watch the metals converging to a pin’s-point in the
far distance.
On we sped eastward bound. The hot air flickered on the
tops of the burning hot dunes, and when I put my head
outside it was like thrusting it into a baker’s oven. Never
a glimpse of an oasis, never a whiff of flowers, nor the crisp
murmuring of a brook. It was only at the stations that I
got glimpses of plant-life, all burnt up by the sun.
With a hollow rumble the train, slowing down, rolled
across the long pile-bridge of the Amu-daria, though the
wooden bridge has since been replaced by one of iron.
How I longed to fling myself into the fresh, though turbid,
waters of the big river. High is their ancestry, for they
descend from the " roof of the world," and are the
offspring of the blue blood of glaciers, which carry down
with them into those stifling deserts a little of the coolness
of their ancestral home.
How I longed to see the sun sinking below the horizon !
and with what a sigh of reUef did I wish god-speed to the
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