Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/98

  compartment furnished with divans, tables, and chairs, and having a lavatory and servants' compartment attached. A couple of hours' run brought us to the station of Geok Tepe, close to which is the celebrated Turcoman fortress where, in 1881, the Akhal Tekkes, to the number of forty thousand men, women, and children, made their last heroic stand for freedom, and were hopelessly defeated and cruelly massacred by General Skobeleff. The fortress is simply a gigantic square earthwork four miles in circumference, surrounded by a deep, broad moat, and defended by high, massive mud walls and towers. The two breaches made by the Russian artillery, through which the infantry charged, are still visible, and no great effort of imagination is required to depict the bloody scene which was enacted in the interior of this now deserted Turcoman fort. We reached Uzun-Ada at seven on Sunday morning, the 20th, and as our steamer did not leave till the following day, we accepted a kind offer made to us by M. Samozensky, a lieutenant in the railway battalion, holding the post of district inspector at Uzun-Ada, who kindly placed his