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 Asia extended 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.
The CHAIRMAN (Sir Rutherford Alcock)
said, in modern times no country had profited so much by
geography as Russia, and no country had been better
served
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