BY DAVID KER.
I have heard many complaints made of the impossibility of sleeping in a railway car, and have wondered much how those who made them would have fared if compelled to spend, not one night, but twelve or fourteen in succession, in crossing the roadless plains and hills of Central Asia in a Russian cart, whose whole progress is a series of jolts that might dislocate the spine of a megatherium, flinging one at every turn against the corner of a box, or the broad shoulders of the Tartar driver. The correct way of preparing for a journey in this primitive region is to half fill your cart with hay, lay your baggage upon it as a kind of pavement, and cover the whole with a straw mattress, upon which you recline, walled in with rolled-up wrappers to keep you from being absolutely battered to bits against the sides of the vehicle. You then provide yourself with a hatchet and a coil of rope, as an antidote to the inevitable coming off of a wheel two or three times a day during the whole journey, and thus fore-armed, you are, as the Russians significantly say, "ready to chance it."
After a night of such travel as this, with all its attendant bumps, bruises, and overturns, among the hills on the frontier of Bokhara, my English comrade and I find ourselves nearing the once famous city of Samarcand, and getting forward much more easily now that the plain is fairly reached at last. But what we gain in comfort we lose in picturesqueness. For several miles our course lies through the wet, miry level of the rice fields, and we leave them only to emerge upon a wide waste of bare gravel, amid which the once formidable current of the "gold-giving Zer-Affshan" has shrunk to a single narrow channel, the only fine feature of the landscape being the dark purple ridge beyond, upon which, in June, 1868, was fought the battle that decided the fate of Bokhara.
But commonplace as it looks, every foot of this region is historic ground. Here stood the centre of a mighty empire, drawing to itself all the pomp and splendor of the East, in days when marsh frogs were croaking upon the site of St. Petersburg, and Indians lighting their camp fires upon that of New York. The very earth seems still shaking with the march of ancient conquerors, and one would hardly wonder to see Alexander's Macedonians coming with measured tramp over the boundless level, or low-browed Attila, with the light of a grim gladness in his deep-set eyes, waving on five hundred thousand horsemen with the sweep of his enchanted sabre. But mingled with these memories comes the thought of one who surpassed them both—a little, swarthy, keen-eyed, limping man, known to history as Timour the Tartar, who crushed into one great whole all the jarring kingdoms of Asia, only that they might melt into chaos again the moment that mighty grasp was relaxed by death.
"We must get out here, David Stepanovitch!"
The shrill call sweeps away my visions, and I look up to find myself in front of a tiny hut—a mere speck in that wilderness of gravel—beside which three or four wild-looking figures are grouped around a huge arba (native cart), conspicuous by its immense breadth of beam, and its gigantic wheels, seven good feet in diameter.
Mourad hastily explains that to attempt fording the river in our little post-cart will be certain destruction to our baggage, and that we must shift to the arba, which, light, strong, and, thanks to its great breadth, almost impossible to overturn, seems made for this roadless region, as the camel is for the desert.
The transfer is soon effected, but it takes some time to secure our packages against the tremendous shaking which awaits them, and our careful henchman goes over his work three times before he can persuade himself to let go. But the reckless Bokhariotes, who care little if we and all our belongings go to the bottom, provided they get their money, cut him short by leaping onto the front of the huge tray, and heading right down upon the river.
We make five or six lesser crossings before coming to the real one, the Zer-Affshan, like Central Asian rivers generally, being given to wasting its strength in minor channels; but even these run with a force and swiftness that show us what we have to expect. At length, after a comparatively long interval of bare gravel, the two Bokhariotes suddenly plant themselves back to back, with their feet against the sides of the cart. The huge vehicle halts for a moment, as if to gather strength for its final leap, and then rushes into the stream.