a plain, a treeless and
waterless expanse, stretching for hundreds of miles in a dead level,
over which the winds drove at will the shifting sands, constantly
threatening to bury any work which man ventured to lay upon the desert's
broad breast. West of Bokhara and south of Khiva stretched the great
desert of Kara-Kum, touching the Caspian Sea on the west, the Amu-Daria
River on the east, the home of the wandering Turkomans, the born foes of
the settled races, but from whom all thought of disputing the Russian
rule had for the time been driven by Skobeleff's death-dealing blade.

The total length of the road thus ordered to be built--extending from
the shores of the Caspian Sea, the outpost of European Russia, to the
far-away city of Samarcand, the ancient capital of Timur the Tartar, and
the very stronghold of Asiatic barbarism--was little short of a thousand
miles, of which several hundred were bleak and barren desert. Two
immense steppes, waterless, and scorching hot in summer, lay on the
route, while it traversed the oases of Kizil-Arvat, Merv, Charjui, and
Bokhara. In the northern section of the last lay the famous city of
Samarcand, the eastern terminus of the road. The western terminus was at
Usun-ada, on the Caspian, and opposite the petroleum region of Baku,
perhaps the richest oil-yielding district in the world.

General Annenkoff had special difficulties to overcome in the building
of this road, of a kind never met with by railroad engineers before.
Chief among these were the lack of water and the instability of the
roadway, the wind at times manifesting an awkward disposition to blow
out the foundation from under the ties, at other times to bury the whole
road under acres of flying sand.

These difficulties were got rid of in various ways. Fresh water, made by
boiling the salt water of the Caspian and condensing the steam, was
carried in vats or tuns over the road to the working parties. At a later
date water was conveyed in pipes from the mountains to fill cisterns at
the stations, whence it was carried in canals or underground conduits
along the line, every well and spring on the route being utilized.

To overcome the shifting of the sand, near the Caspian it was
thoroughly soaked with salt water, and at other places was covered with
a layer of clay. But there are long distances where no such means could
be employed, at least two hundred miles of utter wilderness, where the
surface resembles a billowy