some conical hills of the same name. A t this place we
took water for the last time, and found it so salt as
to curdle our Swiss milk, though earlier in the season
it is said to be slightly bitter, but good. Here we
struck the main route between Krasnovodsk and
Mangyshlak; and as this was one of the wells at which
Murad had once been robbed of a camel, he suggested
that someone should watch against the Tekke Turkomans
whilst the others slept.*
We did not rest long, however, for at one o’clock in
the morning we started again, and continued all day on
the 21 st, till sunset, over a steppe country with the
accustomed coarse vegetation. On the previous day
I had seen the cast skin of a hedgehog, and now I found
on the steppe several shells of tortoises. The latter
were interesting, because we were attempting to carry
two of the like (Homopus Horsfieldii, Gray) in a comatose
state to the Zoological Gardens of London.
They were given to me in Tashkend by M.
Oshanin, who expected them to sustain the journey
those from Khiva, their longing was very much like human nature,
whether B.C. or A .D .
So, again, this journey made me familiar with more incidents and
necessaries of travel of which I knew before only by reading, as
“ the camel’s furniture ” upon which Rachel sat (Gen. xxxi. 34)—great
pack-saddles which, in our case, the animals wore as we did our
clothes, without their being taken off. The action of one of Joseph’ s
brethren, who opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn
(Gen. xlii. 27), was precisely what we had to do nightly; and after seeing
the coarse stuff eaten by the camels, and the inferior herbage given to
Central Asian cattle, I understood better than before the prosperity
implied in Isa. xxx. 24, when the oxen and young asses were to eat
clean provender which had been winnowed with the shovel and with the
fan. No doubt many of these things are simple enough to Western
readers already, and they do not perhaps need much illustration, but
I can never now read these passages without my thoughts going back
to my journey.
* Reminding one of “ those that are delivered from the noise of
archers in the places of drawing water” (Judges v. 11).
without food, founding his opinion concerning the extraordinary
vitality of the animal upon what M. Bogdanoff
had previously done when he sent a tortoise in a
box by slow transport at the end of May from Petro-
Alexandrovsk to Petersburg. The box went to Kazan
by mistake; and did not reach Petersburg till the
middle of November, but the animal was alive and
well, having eaten nothing apparently for 7 months.
In the present case, two were placed in a box with a
little hay, and the box put on the seat of the tarantass.
We constantly heard them scratching, as if desirous
of making their winter bed, and before we had advanced
far on our journey they appeared to have gone
to sleep. Crossing the desert I trembled for their
slumbers, for the shaking they were getting on the
camel was enough, one would think, to wake the dead.
How long they lived I do not exactly know, since it was
not till we looked at them as we approached Odessa
that they were found to have departed this life— victims,
alas! of the spirit of enterprise, and I had no spirit of an
alcoholic character wherein to preserve their remains.*
A t nine o’clock in the morning we arrived at Suili,
with 11 deep wells of bad, bitter water, and near
* An officer at Samarkand had gravely assured me that it would be
absolutely necessary to mix' “ a. little red wine” with the desert water
as a corrective for health’s sake ; but I did nothing of the kind. I have
often met with the idea that, when travelling abroad, it is advisable to
put wine in drinking-water as a precaution. My experience, however,
which may go for what it is worth, is quite in the opposite direction. I
have been an abstainer from alcoholic drinks for about a quarter of a
century. In the summers of eight years I must have travelled from
sixty to seventy thousand miles, generally rapidly, round the world,
through Central Asia, and to all the capitals of Europe except Oporto
and Madrid. Ordinarily I have used no filter, nor taken any special
precautions (Bokhara excepted), and, I am thankful to say, have never
suffered in consequence. Judging, therefore, from my own case, my
opinion is that, when travelling, persons in ordinary "health need not
fear to drink the water in common use.