right and left, and then came a patch of unoccupied
land, needing water only to make it fruitful, as was
apparent from the portions of it enclosed and irrigated,
giving a lively picture of garden and desert side by
side, with only a wall dividing. In my note-book I
have marked the road to Khiva as traversing gardens,
desert, and steppe, for we saw some of each, though
we were supposed to be passing through a rich
country.
The Khivan oasis is in some respects unlike any
other country I have visited. A well-written article
on Khiva, in the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica,” describes
the khanate as a fertile oasis, 200 miles long
and from 25 to 30 miles wide, stretching along the left
bank of the Lower Oxus, between Pitniak and the Sea
o f Aral, with an area of from 5,000 to 6,000 square
miles, or about three-fourths the size of Wales. So
far as mere area is concerned these figures are approximately
correct, but the reader will have an
exaggerated idea of the oasis if he supposes it to
consist throughout of gardens and fields. I have
before me my Russian map of largest scale, wherein
the cultivated soil is coloured green, the sands orange,
and the uncultivated land is not coloured at all. On
this map the famous gardens o f Khiva shrink to very
small proportions. T h e y are, in fact, the lands bordering
on the aryks and canals ; and where the water
from these does not reach, there is sandy desert, or
barren or unoccupied land.*
* I can fitly describe the arable surface of the khanate in connection
with its aryks and canals. At Pitniak there is a small patch of green
about 8 miles long and J mile wide. Ten miles further down
the Amu there leaves the river the great Palvan-Ata-aryk, running
almost due west, a course of about 50 miles past Hazarasp and Bagat to
Khiva. It throws out canals and smaller branches all along this stem,