Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/471

Rh Some of them had been to the British frontier, and one had visited Cabul, Herat, and Candahar.

"The route of the railway was partly across the desert, and partly along the valleys of two or three small rivers of no special importance except for their usefulness in supplying water for the line. For a considerable distance the line lies near the Etrek, a river that was of great use to General Skobeleff in his advance upon Geok Tepé. At times it is simply a dry channel, but water can generally be found by digging a few feet in the sand that forms, in the rainy season, the bed of the stream.

"The country is a plain, with here and there a few hills not worthy to be called mountains. Sometimes the plain is flat for a long distance, and

again it is undulating like the rolling prairies of our Western States. Vegetation is scanty at best, and a large part of the country is absolutely desert. The great need of Central Asia is water. If a million springs could be opened, all giving a copious flow like some of the great springs in our Rocky Mountains, the next ten or twenty years would see a great change in the aspect of Turkestan.

"One of the officers told me that the country was of the same general character all the way to the frontier of Afghanistan. 'The railway can be extended without trouble,' said he, 'as far as we wish to carry it. There's not an obstacle at all formidable to railway engineers.'

"I asked, with some hesitation, where they wished to carry their railway line. I knew the subject was not disconnected with politics, but the 30