Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/275

 sian towns and villages in the plain, leaving in their wake a trail of slaughter, rapine, and plunder as they galloped away with their booty, turning, however, like the fleeing Parthians of old, to discharge their missiles as they rode. ^ Here and there, dotting the plain, one sees among the grain-fields high towers of refuge to which the peasants fled, sickle and mattock in hand, when the dread word was brought — ' The Turkomans are coming!' If any luckless wight failed then to reach a place of safe retreat, his lot was cruel slavery if not immediate death. The latter penalty was sometimes inflicted in a bar- barous manner. The captive's arms were bound, and after a brass plate had been heated white hot a skilful stroke of a sword smote off the victim's head ; the heated plate was clapped on the decapitated trunk to check the flow of blood, and the arms were loosened so that the body might be allowed to go through the contortions of death like a chicken. Inci- dents of this savagery occurred as recently as two generations ago ; 2 but fortunately no recurrence has been possible since Russia put her stern curb on the hordes of Turan, making Transcaspia and Turkistan a part of her Asiatic domain. To- day one meets numerous Turkoman caravans moving peaceably through Khurasan.

A stretch of twenty-two miles across a broad plain, with dis- tant mountains to the north and south, forms the stage from Lasgird to Semnan, which was made without change of horses and at a fair pace, considering the choking dust and scorching mid-day sun. Perhaps the horses were kept better up to their work through the magic virtues of a talisman which our driver carried, wrapped up in a cloth and bound to his right arm by a leather strap, to avert the Evil Eye.

We made a brief halt at Surkhah, a town situated in the

1 Classic allusions to the Parthian media Amoris, 155 ; Plutarch, Crassus^

mode of fighting, which was no doubt 24 ; Justin, Hist. 41. 2. partly Turanian, are to be found in 2 i have this on the authority of the

Horace, Odes, 1. 19. 11 ; 2. 13. 17 ; Reverend L. F. Esselstyn, of Teheran. Vergil, GeorgicSy 3. 31; Ovid, Be- I.

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