sea, the sand being raised in loose hillocks
and swept from the troughs between, flying in such clouds before every
wind that an incessant battle with nature is necessary to keep the road
from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are
planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the
wilderness, the _saxaoul_, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but
whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the
depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track
and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only
the tops are now visible.

Yet despite all these efforts the sands creep insidiously on, and in
certain localities workmen have to be kept employed, shovelling it back
as it comes, and fighting without cessation against the forces of the
desert and the winds. In the building of the road, and in this battling
with the sands, Turkomans have been largely employed, having given up
brigandage for honest labor, in which they have proved the most
efficient of the various workmen engaged upon the road.

Aside from the peculiar difficulties above outlined, the Transcaspian
Railway was remarkably favored by nature. For nearly the whole distance
the country is as flat as a billiard-table, and the road so straight
that at times it runs for twenty or thirty miles without the shadow of a
curve. In the entire distance there is not a tunnel, and only some small
cuttings have been made through hills of sand. Of bridges, other than
mere culverts, there are but three in the whole length of the road, the
only large one being that over the Amu-Daria. This is a hastily built,
rickety affair of timber, put up only as a make-shift, and at the mercy
of the stream if a serious rise should take place.

The whole road, indeed, was hastily made, with a single track, the rails
simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a
mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was
afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the
shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling the saints in
their graves.

Over such a road no great speed can be attained. Thirty miles an hour is
the maximum, and from ten to twenty miles the average speed, while the
stops at stations are exasperatingly long to travellers from the
impatient West. To the Asiatics they are of no concern, time being with
them n