Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/76

 distant from Dushak. By the bright moonlight we could see the modern Russian town on the west bank of the Murghab, whilst there appeared to be, with the exception of a dismantled fort, but little remains of the ancient Merv, which, in the words of Mr. Curzon, 'successively a satrapy of Darius, a colony of Alexander, a province of the Parthians, the site of a Christian bishopric, the seat of power of a Seljuk dynasty, and the residence and last resting-place of Alp Arslan and Sultan Sanjur; a prey to the awful scourge of the Mongol, and an altar for the human hecatombs of Jenghiz Khan a frontier outpost of Persia; a bone of armed contention between Bokhara and Khiva; a Turcoman encampment, and a Russian town, has surely exhausted very revolution of Fortune's wheel.'

When morning broke we found ourselves passing through the howling wilderness between Merv and Tcharjui, on the Oxus. Imagine the Atlantic Ocean during a great storm, when its waves are rolling mountains high,and threatening to engulph the ships riding over their crests, being suddenly transformed from salt water