Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-11-24
CENTRAL ASIAN SCENES.
Fruits and Vegetables Growing and
Dangers the Traveller Meets.


Dangers the Traveller Meets.
The following is from a letter writ
ten ON the occasion of his first visit to
Meshed by The London Daily News
special correspondent, late at Merry:
ut would be difficult to select line of
country better adapted for the march
OF numerous army than that from
kuchan to Meshed, terminating, too.
at city eminently adapted as a base
Tor further operations and a great GEN.
trail depot, with water supplies of the
most cepious nature reaching away in
the most desirable directions. Within
days march of Meshed the corn-fields
begin to give place to vast expanses of
melon and cucumber cultivation, of
which enormous quantities are con.
sumed during the hot weather. Here and
there the tendrils of the plants are
trained over slight frame-works, so that
the great broad leaves form arbors to
protect the watehmen from the sun.
Nothing could pc prettier than the ap-
pearance of these fresh green bowers,
with their great broad staring yellow
flowers, after the dusty plain and
scorched stubble-felds. AT intervals.
too, are orchards. Peaches, plums,
apricots, and grapes, all of delicious
quality, are brought to market in great
quantities. The dark purple plums are
very remarkable, some being as large
as good-sized peaches. The ground is
everywhere inundated with rno's of
water, and irrigation trenches cross and
recross each other in complex ~ re-.
This surface water is, 1 should Il. k.
mostly derived from the Keshef Rod.
the river which formerly watered Toos.
the ancient capital. Besides the sur
face water, there is also large subter-
ranean amount being conveyed in un-
derground channels to more distant
fields situated at lower level.
"These subterranean water-courses.
(ta1ots) are, especially in the case of
the more ancient one, source of con-
tinual and terrible danger to the trav-
elers. When they are being formed
shafts are sunk at intervals of thirty
to forty yards and the sand and gravel
brought to the surface by means of a
bucket, and rude wooden windlass.
The material brought up is thrown in
an annular heap like the den of an
aunt lion. These heaps mark the line
OF the kGpots often for miles across the
plain, just as molehills do the track of
the animal. During rainy weather
these circular heaps, with their CEN
tral shafts, act like so many tundisheS.
and gradually the earth is washed into
the channel below and swept away by
the current. The mound thus gone.
there is no mark whatever as TO the
whereabouts of the shaft, which yearly
grows wider and wider. 1 have seen
them from ten to fifteen feet across,
and going down sheen to a depth of
sixty or seventy feet, yawning on the
edge or even in the midst, of much
frequented thoroughfares. Sometimes
they were naked and undisguised in the
arid plain, sometimes their mouths
were completely hidden by under
growth and luxuriant growth of a
species of creeping berberis, which af-
feet such localities. Over and over
again but for the instinct of my horse
l should have been percipitated into
them. 1t is frightful to see these pits,
often halfway across freouented
track, where thousands of men and
animals, travelling, too, at night, and
some of the nights none of the clear
est, are continually passing. On horse
back one has the advantage of double
lookout kept by himself and by the
animal, but 1 fancy that many score
of foot-sore, half-blind old hadjis must
annually find eternal rest from their
pilgrimage at the bottom of these
dreadful pits. 1 have over and over
again seen the skeletons and hanging
ligaments of camel wedged ten feet
down in one of these apertures. They
had doubtless fallen in some dark
night, and were perforce left there to
perish"