Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/499

 eVent of an invasion by foreign arms. At the entrance of another ravine, overtopped by towering mountains, we found a caravan halted. As we drove up we noticed a flutter of excite- ment pass over the otherwise stolid faces of the company. One of the camel-drivers had been taken suddenly ill, and breathed his last just as we reached the spot. Slowly and mournfully his comrades lifted the lifeless form to the back of his own patient camel, which turned its dull eye for an instant to dis- cover the cause of the unwonted weight; and the caravan moved silently on. Truly we were passing through the valley of the shadow of death.

Swiftly we sped forward, but it was well on in the afternoon before we reined up at the Bdj Gir, or 'Custom House,' marking the limit of the Persian border, and separated only by a couple of miles from the oifice of the Czar's collector of imposts on the fiontier of Russian Turkistan. Since dawn we had been push- ing steadily on, with hardly a break, for twelve hours ; and there still remained a journey of five hours before we could reach our destination at Askhabad.

Sunset was gilding the mountain tops of Iran as I watched them fading from view while we entered upon the plains that were once ancient Turan. In fancy my mind swept back over the whole area we had traversed during our long journey, and I still could see in imagination the arena of the warring strife between the historic lands. Behind us lay the country that had been the proud scene of the triumphs of Rustam, the hero of Persia's first glory. Before us stretched the level expanse where Sohrab, the son he knew not of, had marshaled the hosts o^ Turan against the father he had never seen. Each champion stood as a type of the blood-feud that raged for ages between the two countries, until, a generation ago, there came a hand of irjon to stop it forever. The clash of arms of those foemen of olid is heard no more — hushed into silence as still as the starlit night which was creeping on — the scene has shifted, and over all now floats the shadow of the wings of the Russian Eagle.

�� �