Rawlinson Page 190

Proceedings of the 
Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain)
Norton Shaw, Francis Galton, Clements Robert Markham, William Spottiswoode, Henry Walter Bates, John Scott Keltie
Published by, 1879

The Road to Merv. By Major-General Sir H. C. RAWLINSON, K.O.B.

(Read at the Evening Meeting, January 27th, 1879.)

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make excellent irregular cavalry. The district of Deregez, when he was there, was governed by a Kurd, and a very fine specimen of a man. His district was surrounded on three sides by the Turcomans, but he had managed to keep it in good order, and by care and pluck kept the Turcomans out of it. It was one of the richest and most flourishing districts in the whole of Persia. The Russians represented their frontier as coming down to the Atreck, but that would give them the northern mountains with the passes through them, and would render their advance by the Atock perfectly secure even from the Persians or any power in alliance with them. Knowing the importance of this, they had produced maps in which the features of the country were quite distorted, and in which the Atreck looked a natural and innocent frontier. The Atreck frontier would include Deregez, which was entirely Persian, as well as a great many other Persian villages. The great moral to be drawn from the consideration of the physical and political features of this region was that which Sir Henry Rawlinson had so clearly brought out, that if Persia were friendly, the Russians would have no difficulty whatever in advancing by any of the roads which they chose; if Persia were indifferent, they might have difficulties ; but if Persia were inimical, they would find it quite impossible to advance, on account of the mountainous nature of the country, which afforded excellent means of -attack, and enabled very small bodies to harass the long convoys that would be requisite. A great deal of the country near the Atreck was very fertile, and produced large crops of grain. Deregez especially was very rich.

Mr. R. MICHELL did not think the level of the Caspian could ever have been affected by any addition from the Oxus. He rather thought that the changes were due to slow upheaval of the land, and that the same cause had altered the courses of the rivers. All the mountain systems in Asiaextended east and west, bearing out his theory that there was in course of formation a backbone to the Turcoman region. Such an upheaval would have the effect of dividing the waters, and causing the Oxus in the course of time to turn to the north, while the Tejen and the Murghab turned to the south. Many facts strengthened that view. For instance, in the ruins at Mestorian, lately visited by the Russians, there were water conduits or aqueducts along the tops of the walls, showing that at one time the water flowed above the level of the soil upon which the city stood. It was difficult to imagine that any works which the Russians might undertake would ever restore the country to its former state of fertility. Nor is it likely that they will ever undertake any such a task, for in their own country, before they had a proper macadamized highway, the Russians rushed into railways; and if they neglected roads in their own country they would not be likely to construct them in the deserts of Asia. Sir Henry Rawlinson had not touched at any great length on the subject of Merv, and yet it was owing exclusively to him that our attention and interest had been attracted to that place. He thought the English knew more about Merv than the Russians did. No Russian had ever been there except the Sergeant Effrencof in 1789 and a captive of that nation who had been languishing there for years, but who had not been heard of recently. This man seems to have addressed letters to the English Government in preference to his own. He thought the interest in Merv was temporary and transitory, for when the Russians once occupied it they would probably go forward in a more southerly direction. He was of opinion that it was a pity we should debar ourselves the right of free discussion of the geography and ethnography of the interesting country of the Turcomans, which could hardly be considered as part of Turan proper, being perfectly independent of Uzbekistan, simply because the Russian explorations were in the form of military and political encroachment.