[683] Moore’s Veiled Prophet of Khorasan.
[684] A description of the difficulties encountered has already been given.
[685] Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 18; Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 8th June 1840.
[686] “Mémoire sur l’ancien cours de l’Oxus,” par M. Jaubert, Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Dec. 1833.
[687] Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 300.
[688] The Zarafshān, called by the ancients Polytimætus, takes its rise in a tremendous glacier of the Kharlatau Mountains, 270 miles due east of Samarkand. Its upper reaches are little but a succession of cataracts, and it is too rapid and shallow for navigation. The average width is 210 feet. More than 100 canals are supplied by this source of Bokhārā’s prosperity, some of which are 140 feet broad. The capital is watered by one of them, called the Shari Rūd, which is 35 feet wide, and supplies innumerable smaller distributories (Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 39; Meyendorff’s Bokhara (Paris, 1820), p. 148).
[689] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 120.
[690] Khanikoff, p. 188.
[691] Throughout Central Asia the unit of surface measure is the tanap, which is equivalent to 44,100 square feet. This pest is termed reh in India, and is fought in a very half-hearted way by the ryots.
[692] Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 9. This author, who wrote in 1845, gives as the average price of good land a sum equivalent to £20 of our currency (p. 154). Forty years later the Russians paid £16 per acre for land required for their railway (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 311).