The Osceola times., 1881-12-10
CENTRAL ASIAN SCENES.
Fruits and Vegetables Growing, and
Dangers the Traveller Meets.
tloufor Daily Newsl

Dangers the Traveller Meets.
lloudo1 Daily Newsl
The following is from letter written
on the occasion OF bis first visit Ia
Meshed by our special corrcspnpdent
latey at Merry: at would be difficult to
elect line of country better adapted
for the marcn OF numerous army than
that from Kuchan Meshed, terminating
too, at city eminently adapted as base
for further operations and a great CEN
tral depot, with water supplies ofa most
copious nature reaching away in the
most desirable directions. Within a
days march of Meshed the cornGelds be
gin to give place TO vast expauses o.
melon and cucumber cultivation, of
which enormous quantities are con-
sumed during the hot weather. Here
and there the tendris of the wants are
trained over slight frame works so that
the great, broad leaves form arbors to
protect The watchmen from the sun
Nothing could be prettier than ihe APP
pearance OF these fresh green bowers,
with their great broad staring yellow
flowers, after the dusty plain and
sc0rched stubble fields. At intervals,
too, are orchards. Peaches, plums, aprl.
cots, and grapes, all of delicious quality.
are brought to market in great quanti-
ties. The dark purple plums are very
remarkable, some belng as large as good
sized peaches. The ground is every.
where inundated with pools Of water,
and irrigation trenches cross and recross
each other in a complex maze. This
surface water is, should think, mostly
derived f.om the Keshef Rood, the river
which formerly watercd Toos, the an
cient capital. Besides this surface water,
there is also large subterr1nean amount
being conveyed in underground chan,
nels to more distant fields, situated at a
liver level.
These subteTrSnean water course es
(kdaOts) are, especially in the case of the
more ancient one, source Of continual
and terrible Danger 10 the travellers.
When they are being formed shafts are
sunk at intervals of thirty 10 forty yards
and the sand and gravel brought to the
surface by means Of bucket and rude
wooden windlass. The material brought
up is thrown in an annular heap like
the den of an ant lion. These heaps
mark the line Of the kdR0ts often for
miles across the plain, just as mole bills
do the track of the animal. Iuring
rainy weather these circular heaps, with
their central shafts, act like so many
tundishes, and gradually the earth il
washed off into the channel below and
swept away by the current. The mound
thus gone, there is no mark whatever
rs to the whereabouts of the shaft, hicb
YEARLY grows wider and wider. / have
seen them from ten to fifteen feet across
and going down sheer to depth of SIX
" or seventy feet, yawning on the edge,
OF even in the midst of much frequent.
ed thoroughfares Sometimes they " re
naked and undisgused in the arid pl $40,
sometimes their mouth was completely
hidden by undergrOwth, and luxuiiaui
growth OF a species of creeping berbeii,
which affects such localities. Over and
over again, but for the instinct of nv
horse should have been preclpitated
into them. II is frightlul to see these
pits, often half way across a frequenlcd
track, where Thousands of men and AMI
mails, travelling too at night, and some OF
the nights none of the clearest, are con.
finally passing. On horseback one has
the advantage of the double lookout
kept by himself and by the animal, but
fancy that many score of poor foot
sore, half blind old hadjis must annually
find external rest from their earthly
pilgrimage at the bottom of these dread
ful pits. have over and over agau
seen the skeletons and hanging ligaments
of a camel wedged ten feet down in one
OF these apertures. They had doubtless
stumbled in some dark night and were
periorce left there to perish.n