Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/68

54 Karatagan, sheltered in an angle formed by steep, rocky cliffs. This village, which contains about a hundred and fifty Persian families, was formerly, owing to its prosperity, much exposed to raids from the dreaded Turcomans across the boundary, who not only plundered the produce, but carried off many of the inhabitants as prisoners to the slave markets of Merv and Bokhara. Since, however, the Russian conquest of Transcaspia, these lawless 'man-eaters,' the moss-troopers of the Persian hills, have been forcibly restrained from their predatory excursions, but the innumerable towers of refuge dotted over the plains, at a distance from each other of only a few hundred yards, are silent witnesses to the dangers with which agricultural operations were, within the last five years, carried on in these Persian valleys. In those days the Persian husbandman guided his plough and sowed his corn with a musket slung on his back, and at the first alarm he would abandon his work and creep into the nearest small tower, where he would remain in security until the horde of Turcoman horsemen had swept by, harrassing