[555] This is now a Russian cantonment.
[556] Quoted by Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 221.
[557] Hugo Stumm, Russia in Central Asia, p. 104.
[558] The best account is one compiled by the Russian staff,—The Khivan Campaign, St. Petersburg, 1873.
[559] Schuyler, who visited the capital just before the annexation, mentions that 500 prisoners taken in one of these emeutes had their throats cut in the bazaar, which literally streamed with blood (Turkestan, ii. 16).
[560] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 314.
[561] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 298.
[562] The desert wells are termed urpa when shallow, and kuduk or kuyu when they are deep and afford a constant supply. The only sign of their existence is the tracks converging on them from every quarter. They are mere holes, without kerb or fencing, and the sides are roughly shored up by the branches of desert shrubs (ibid. p. 299).
[563] “In the Turkoman Desert is a species of antelope almost as numerous as the wild ass. It is smaller than a sheep, which it resembles in body, neck, and head, and has the delicate limbs, horns, and hair of the antelope; the horn, however, is not opaque but white, and like a cow’s horn. The nostrils are directly in front, and are closed by a muscle acting vertically. The nose is greatly arched, and provided with an integument which can be inflated at pleasure. The head is extremely ugly. The animal ... is called by the natives kaigh” (Abbott, Narrative of a Journey to Khiva, 1856).
[564] Moser, p. 309. The Kārakūm is the portion of the Turkoman Desert lying between Khiva and the Akkal and Merv oases.