Travels Into Bokhara: Containing the Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus From the Sea to Lahore, With Presents From the King of Great Britain and an ... of the Supreme Government of India. V. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834. Excerpt: ... CHAP. XIII. CONTINUATION OF THE JOURNEY IN THE TOORKMUN DESERT. On the morning of the 29th of August we moved River cf at dawn, with buoyant spirits, and followed the MerTe. course of the Moorghab, or river of Merve, for twelve miles before we could cross it' We found it about eighty yards wide and five feet deep, running within steep clayey banks, at the rate of five miles an hour. We crossed by an indifferent ford, over a clay bottom with many holes. There was no village; but the place is called Uleesha. This river rises on the moun-tains of Huzara, and was long believed to fall into the Oxus or the Caspian. Both opinions are erroneous, since it forms a lake, or loses itself in one, about fifty miles N.W. of Merve. This river was formerly dammed above Merve, which turned the principal part of its waters to that neighbour-hood, and raised that city to the state of richness and opulence which it once enjoyed. The dam was thrown down about forty-five years ago, by Shah Moorad, a king of Bokhara, and the river only now irrigates the country in its immediate vicinity, where it is covered with the tenements, or " obas," of the Toorkmuns; for there are no fixed villages. These people cultivate by irrigation, and every thing grows in rich luxuriance. / The Juwaree (holcus sorghum) has a stalk thicker than a walking-stick, and in the uncultivated parts there is the richest fodder for cattle and the finest thorny shrubs for the camel, an animal which is here found in vast herds. Above Merve the country is called Maroochak, and said to be unhealthy: there is a proverb, at least, which runs thus,--" Before God gets " intelligence, the water of Maroochak has " killed the man." This river is the Epardus of Arrian, a word which, I observe in one author, is said to me...