The New York Herald Newspaper, November 19, 1873, Page 4

NEW YORK HERALD, WEDNESDA KHIVA—NO. 2. Our Correspondent’s March to thé Oxus. The Perils of Travel on the Das- erts of Central Asia, THE RUSSIAN EXPEDITION. Kniva, August 23, 1373, During the next seven day® we heard nothing further from Kauimann. I began to grow exceed- Ingty uneasy at last and to think that he had prob- ably reached and crossed the Oxus, and would march to Khiva without waiting for the rest of the detachment to come up. Judging from the way in which i was treated by Colonel Weimarn, it was pretty sure that if he caught me in an attempt to escape my position would be a very disagree- able one. Nevertheless, I determined to attempt it. I had watched the camp routine very closely, and decided that at break of day, just when the pickets were called in, when the officers of night duty had retired to rest and tne other ofivers were not yet stirring, would be fe moment the most favorabie ‘for fitting. I observed that the Kirgheez and Bokharlans came and went during the day at pleasure, wita ttieir horses and camels, and I concluded that my people could also slip quietly out of the camp without being noticed, I therefore de- cided to send them on ahead the evening before, and ride out ofthe camp next morning only ac- companied by Ak-Mamateff, As to the soldiers, who would be up, they, having seen me about the camp for the last s1x days on equal terms with the Officers, could not be supposed to know anything ot my real position and would not think of stop- Ping me. In this way I hopea to get at least 20 miles the start before my absence would be observed, and then let Colonel Weimarn catch me if he could. In order to carry out this plan quietly and expe- ditiousiy Thad to take AK-Mamateff into my confl- dence; but he, as was usually the case when I de- Sired to start anywhere, always found at least 10 good and sufficient reasons that made starting im- Possible and out of the question. He at last, to my utter chagrin and disappoint- ment, flatly refused to move another atep, except with the troops. Threats, my un- failing resource in the desert upon emergencies of the kind, were out of the question here, for the simple reason that any attempt to exert my authority would attract the attention of everybody incamp. Besides, 1 had to acknowledge to myself that the objections of my people were, to a certain extent, well founded. As they very well observed, had not told them, when they engaged to go with me, that any such service would be required of the and, even if we succeeded in escaping the Russian lines, we would provably fall into the hands of the Turcomans. They had families, they said, and had they known that any such service ‘Would be required of them they would never have come with me. Besides the objections of my peo- Ple to risking their heads, I tound, upon looking at my horses, that the poor beasts were in a miser- able plight. There wasa large store of barley in the fort, but Colonel Weimarn refused to give me a grain, although 1 would have paid any price demanded; and had it not been for the kindness of Colonel Ivanhoff, who pro- enred me a little, the poor animals would have starved to death, As it was, two of them looked as though they would never reach tre Oxus, 80 that there would only remain three—it Will be remembered that I was obliged to leave one in the deseri—to carry mysecif, my three men and my baggage, aad there were no horses to he bought | here. One weeX’s standing in the hot sun, with nearly nothing to eat, had reduced them to their present pittable plight, and when the brave little beasts that had carried me so far and so patiently came whinnying around me, esking for some: to eat and biting re (vrushwood), in which there was not the slightest nourishment, I could have seen Colonel Weimara in a considerably otter place than Khala-ata in a @ perfectly cheerful frame of mind. PERPLEXITIES OF CONVEYANCE. Upon the whole my position was a good deal worse than when I arrived at KNala-ata. Then my horses, although tired, were still in a very fair condition and would have reached the Amoo with- out dimiculty; now it was very doubtiul indeed. To stop at Knala-ata, however, alter having come so far, and remain there tor an indefinite length of time was too absurd an ending to my wanderings to be entertained as long as the slightest nope of escape remained. 1 theretore determined to make the attempt regardiess of consequences. I went to my people and told them that if they refused to go with me I would discharge them immediately and they might get back to their homes as best they could, but u they wouid go with me I would give them each 100 rubles, This proposition Staggered them, and after a good deal of murmur- ing they at last eonsented to start the same even- ing. Iu the meantime, however, Colonel Weimarn, as well as mysel!, had been growing uneasy at re- ceiving no news from Kaufmann and for exactly the same reason—he feared Khiva would be taken without him—and he at last conciuced to march, in hopes of meeting a courier with orders to move forward. Curiously enough, he took this resolution the very day I had planned toescape. This made escape comparatively easy, the more especially as Colonel Weimarn would thus know nothing of my Might for at least 24 hours, when pursuit would be out of the question. At one o'clock, on the morning of the 24th of | May, we were allin our saddles, and the column under march already began to file out on the broad, sandy read, leading nearly aue west, in the direc- tion of Adam Koorulgan and the Amoo Derya. Lhad taken leave ol nobody, and there was no one in camp who fora moment even dreamed of my undertaking such a project. I dropped silently in the rear of the Cossacks, who had the head of the column, followed by my people, aud when we had gained the summit of the low sand hill, a mile from the camp, over which the road led, Las si- lently dropped out again, turned my horses’ heads to the north, and plenged into the durkness, My intention was to get outof sight of the column before daylight by going directly away Jromit north, then turn west and travel parallel to | the road for several miles, then south again to | Teach the road near Adam Koorulgan, far enough in advance of the column to water and rest my horses before it should come up, Guued by the horth star, we proceeded slowly and cautiously forward through the darkness over | the low rolling sand hills, sometimes stum bling over broken and uneven ground, again feeling only the soft, yielding sand beneath our horses’ ject as | they trampled through the sparse gavs-avol ana | wild wormwood, or stopping to reconnoitre as we | thought we beheld some object moving in the | Y, NOVEMBER 19, 1873.—TRIPLE SHEET, MAP OF RUSSIAN ASIA. Route of the Herald Correspondent from St. Petersburg to Ehiva, Following the Rus- sian Expeditionary Force Under General Kaufmann. Kars Koon / ” HINDOO! KOOSH. MTS. — : a f ite | | | FIGK & RUSSELL.N,Y; the sense of ireedom and absence of restraint | weave themselves into a kind of existence full of | an untold charm that endures long after you have quitted the enchanted solitudes. FAREWELL TO MY RUSSIAN. We continued to move torward-as fast as security would permit, until a gray light bi appear in the east, when we increased our pace | into a gentle gallop. as a red flare of light | gradually mounted up the eastern sky I looked | around tosee tf I was well out of the clutches of | Colonel Weimarn, Far away to the southwest, | which waa still in obscurity, I could make out a | dark object moving forward, which I took to be | the rear guard, and which was soon lost on the horizon. Concinding we were far enough away, I | turned my horaes’ heads to the west and took up my line of march towards the Amoo Derya. The country was rolling and uneven, with very littie vegetation—the saks-avol not more than a foot high and the wormwood very scarce. ‘There was, however, a good deal of the fine, wiry, brownish grass that is to be found almost everywhere in the desert, and which forms the principal support of the flocks and heras of the Kirgheez. We continued at as rapid a pace as our horses could bear due west until nine o'clock in the morn- ing, when we stopped to take tea, having brought alittle water for that purpose with us. Here it became very evident that une of my horses would not gomore than one day, even with the very light load Thad given him to carry. We had no sooner stopped than the poor beast threw himself on the earth, already too tired to seek a scanty repast of the brown desert grass, aa did the others. I had darkness before us, and my imagination, in spite of myself,made me catch glimpses of horsewen flitting through the obscurity. It was a wild and even foolhardy adventure, asJ acknowledged to | myself with perfect frankness, and one which might | end tragically; but the sense of freedom and ex. ultation of finding myself once more in the maddie, after my monotonous and weary sojourn at Khala-ata, out im the open desert, with the stars above and the fresh air of morning blowing in my face, was 80 great that the danger attendant on tt appeared only 43 a matter of secondary consideration. With all its fatigues and dangers. there 1s, after all, something overpoweringly witching and attractive in the desert, that only those who have ex- Perienced it can understana, and which makes those who have once become inured to its hard- ships loath to quit it. The long, hot marches over the yielding sand, the dreamy, weary noon ree pose, the fresh, cool air of evening, when yon throw yourself on the sand and watch the stars come out and the round red moon slowly rise over the ghostly, shadowy desert, changing everything with its spectral light and transporting you into @nother world; the sublime, mysterious stlence, still a little barley leit, of which I gave him, and of | which he ate ravenously, alterwards cropping the | grass within his reach without attempting to rise. I had foreseen this, however, and had left nearly the last remnant of my baggage at Khala-ata, with | a note tothe commanding ofticer excusing myself | Jor my unceremonious leavetaking, and request- | ing him to take care of it; and now every- | thing I hadcould be carried by the four | remaining horses, When it is remembered that there were four of wus, and that each of my three followers had something in the way of luggage, without speaking of a tin kettlo, 40 pounds of dried, black bread Ak-Mamateir | had bought from the soldiers, and which was aes. tined to serve as sole nourishment for ourselves as well a3 horses, 100 rounds of cartridges for my guns and revolvers and a little barley, it will be readily understood that my personal effects were | beyond, more sand hills, among which, as we soon of the slightest possible nature, . Alter an hour’s rest we continued our march, the feeble horse getting op better than | expected. About noon I judged we had made 25 miles; that we had passed Wolonel Weimarn, who had probably made his haif-way halt at a well of bad water, which [ had learned existed somewhere between Khala-ata and Adam Kooruigan, and that 1 might with safety turn my horses’ heads once more to the south, This I accordingly did. About two o'clock we ascended a low hill, the highest and last of & number we had been crossing, ana which was covered with a growth of saks- avol, five or six feet high, from which we beheld a low, level plain, two or three miles wide, covered with a whitish saline deposit; learned, were the wells of Adam Kooruigan. We had been approaching the road for some time, and had seen in the distance three or four strings of camels returning along it in the direction of Khala- ata, and bere we had come up three or four jegeets, or Kirgheez guides, on their w: orders to pick up all the camels strayed, lost or left on the march by Kautmann, and drive them back. They pointed us out Adam Koorulgan, but what were my chagrin and disappointment upon surveying the place with my field glass to find it occupied by Russian troops! The jegeets informed me they were Cossacks, who had arrived that morning from Khala-ata, and, as] mentally added to myself, the same Cossacks I had joined and quitted so suddenly in the darkness. This was a circumstance which, in Dick Swiveller’s chotce phraseology, might be called a “stunner,” and for the moment, indeed, I felt compietely dumbfounded. For a jew moments { was incapable of thinking, and, to add to my discomilture, my people, who were only too glad tobein the right, kept regarding me with a sly look of triumph, which was exceedingly exasperating. Their only thought was that now, being completely checkmated, I would be obliged to return to Khala-ata or go and surrender myself to Colonel Weimarn, in either case they would be spared the trouble and danger of the present enterprise, The impossibility of pushing on to the Oxus without water was evidentenough. With horses such as I had when I left Perovaky I might have done it, though with aiMeulty; with horses in their present exhausted condition it was not to be thought of for a moment, I did not even know the distance that still remained to be traversed; for, a3 will be readily supposed, Colonel Weimarn had not given me the slightest information re- garding the position of Knala-ata or of the sap. posed distance tothe Amoo, That it was not less than 75 miles, however, I thought very probable, and as T cast my eyes over the gleaming sands, in the direction of the far-lamed river, how I longed Jor one good Turcoman horse—one of those noble beasts that makes the distance from Astrabad to Khiva (500 miles) in tour days, with only a little straw toeat. Wi'l one such horse I would have undertaken to reach Kaufmann alone, leaving my people behind to follow with the detachment. But there was no such horse near, unless, indeed, in the hands of their savage owners, who might now Ve prowling Within @ wlie of me, aud I must seek, other means of reaching the end of my journey. I turned over every possible expedient im my mind for obtaining water without sceing the slightest chance of success. At last, however, I remembered overhearing a scrap of conversation while at Khala-ata, in which mention was made of another Well somewhere between Adain Koorulgan and the Amoo, although no such well was known to Vam- bery. WATER OR DEATH. T had not the slightest tdea of the position of this well, but I turned to Ak-Mamatef and told him to ask if there was not another well further on. Tomy great joy, I soon learned that there was another well some 20 miles further on, called “Alti Koodook” or the “Six Wells; that it was not on the road to the Amoo, but some four miles to the north, and that Kaufmann had left some troops there. This was news indeed, and determined to push forward to Altt Koodook without stopping at Adam Koorulgan. As to the troops, it was pretty sure that they were not ander the com- mand of Colonel Weimarn, and very probably that the officer in command knew nothing of my detention by him, In any case it would be an un- heard-of piece of ill luck to fall into the hands of another su@ man as Colonel Weimarn, and I determined “to take the risk, feeling that the officer, whoever he might be, would receive an American with open arms, I there- fore gave orders to mount and push straight on without regaining the road, and keeping to the north of Adam Koornlgan, As was to be expected, another contest with my people ensued, They would not go; the horses had already made at least 40 miles by tne roundabout road we had taken, and they would never be able to go 20 miles further under this hot sun without rest and water. It was impossible ; we would all be left in the sanus with no horses and obliged to find our way for- ward on foot. Here, however, Ihad no fear of attracting the attention of Colonel Weimarn, and I sternly ordered them to mount and proceed with- out even stopplug to discuss the question with them. They had got 300 rubles out of me among them the day before, because I was in their power; now it was iny turn, andin five minutes we were moving forward. DISCIPLINE. I would here remark that although I was always ina state of ohronic opposition to my followers, continually goading them forward against their wishes, there is nothing an Oriental hates so mach as being burried, aud no man whom he detest wit. io his innermost heart of hearts as the man who ‘won't be still, who will be moving; they, neverthe- less, entertained for me, as I could easily perceive, avery strong liking as well a8 respect. There were some reasons for this. Ipaid them well and never refused them money for anything that could be vougnt to oat, shared everything I bad ip the way of delicacies with them, learned to drink bo! tea as they made it for themselves, in order to save them the trouble of heating water twice, and was every way good-natured except on the one question of marching—of getting forward. On that I was inexorable; and although they possibly regarded me as one of those inexplicable phe- nomena often met with in nature, or, perhaps— Worse still—as one possessed of an itinerant de- mon, they probably said, “Allah is great,’? and liked me none the less. Leaving Adam Koorulgan to the leit, our way soon became difficult and tollsome. The a grew deeper and deeper, and at last commenced taking the form of huge drift:, twenty and thirty feet nigh, piled up in all sorts of fantastic shapes, exactly like snow driits, and con- tinually changing their form and moving about un- der the action of the wind. The fine red sand kept drifting over us in little clouds, and the drifts were 80 steep and so high that the working o! our way around, over and through them was most diMicnlt and tollsome. The horses sunk nearly to their bellies in it, so that we were obliged to dismount, andeven then they only struggled through by a succession of plunges, while we ourselves sunk to the knees. This continued for nearly two miles, and I thought how easily a slight storm of wind might sena these huge drifts rolling over us and bury us twenty feet, without seaving a trace of our existence. The name of the place, Adam Kvorul- gan, “fatal to men,” is well chosen. A DESPERATE SITUATION, , Tremarked that even here, impossible as it may seem, there was more or leas vegetation. Here and there could be seen a shrub of saks-avol, in a more or less Nourishing state. Sometimes tt was almost buried, showing only a few leaves on the surface of the sand, Again its short, scrubby stem and immense network of long, fibrous roots, @X+ tending many yards, were completely bared and exposed to the sun, without much affecting its condition apparently, so hardy is the plant. It would seem there is no spot on the earth's suriace 80 arid but something will find life there. Fortu- nately, this did not last long, or the horses would have been completely exhausted, After an hour's tollsome march we issued from these sand driits and commenced ascending what appeared to be alow mountain, but which proved to be the ascent to an extensive plateau, far less sandy than the country we bad just passed through, and from which we had @ very good view of Adam Koorulgan. We continued our course, and after some time Le, to see the marks of the habitations of the Kirghee: which, a8 the plateau began to break up into the usual rolling sand hills, could be seen in every di- rection. This, although we were now several miles from Adam Koorulgan, 14 the only spot for miles around where water could be obtained, They wero last year’s habitations, uowever, aa the cumors of war bad qoared them tar enough away | | [ this year. We pushed forward until dark without 4 Tying to regain the road, in hopes of reaching Alét Koodook ; but we were obliged at last vo give up all hopes of reaching it that day. The feeble horses, although we had stopped to feed them several times, could go no farther, 60 we decided at last to camp. The poor beasts haa to go with. out water to-night, for it would have been impossible toearry enough water with us, even if we had fofescon the impossibility of getting water at Adam Koorulgan, We gave them a feed of our hard, biack, dried bread, hobbled them and let ‘hem loose on the desert to pick up what they could, I could never cease admiring my own little saddle horse. He bad been now 2% days in the desert, he had carried me the whole distance from Fort Perovsky, sometimes as much a6 60 miles a day. More than half of the time ho had nothing to eat except what he could pick up in the desert, and yet he had scarcely lost a pound of flesh, He would go the whole day, from sunrise to sunset, in the casy litule trot of the Kirghees horsea, and in the evening would break into a gallop as lightly as though he were fresh from the pastures ofthe Sir Derya. He was a pure-blooded Kirgheez, & light sorrel, nearly the color of the sand, head, ears, eyes and limbs exactly like an Arab, but the neck and body shorter and heavier. It waa never necessary to tether him, as he never wandered away. He swum the Amoo, and proved to be equally at home in the gardens of Khiva as in the desert, never hesitating, when necessary, to take a ditch or canal, He even carried me over the Pulvan-ata, the largest canal in the khanate, on a plank six inches wide. He was at last stolon from me hy some of the liberated Persian slaves. Now the poor beast was’ crazy for water, a8 were the others, and refused to touch the: black bread T offered him. As’ 40 ourselves, we fared no better than our horses. We were too thirsty to eat of the black bread, even if our teeth had been capable of making an impression on tt without its first having been soaked in water. After the long day's ride my thirst was intolerable, and my weariness, the uncertainty of our situation, the difficulty of finding the well we were in search of, the possibility of missing tt altogether, the con- dition of my horses, two more of which began to show signs of extreme fatigue, that told me plainly enough they would not go more than another day; the possibility of being obliged to drag on wearily to the Oxus on foot, dying of thirst, only to fall into the hands of the Turcomans, perhaps, at last; the darkness that settled down over us like a pall, making the stillness of the desert more fear-inspir- ing, and the occasional cry of a bird or an insect nearer and more startling—all combined to make this the gloomiest night of my whole life. WATER. The next morning we were in the saddle at day- light, and after a two hours’ ride over a continual succession of sand ridges, running north and south, which seemed to grow steeper and more sandy as we advanced, our eyes were at last caught by the glistening of two bayonets in the sun- shine, apparently on the very horizon’s edge, and in a@ quarter of an hour we made out the forms of two pickets, posted op @ sand hill, watching our approach. Urging forward our jaded horses, we gained the little em- inence from which the pickets were keeping their dreary lookout, and beheld the camp of Alti Koo- dook spread out before us, the sandiest, dreariest spot I kave ever seen, not excepting Adam Koorul- gan itself. There, there was some vegetation, how- ever scanty and rare; here there was none, abso- lutely none; not even a biade of the brown desert grass, nor a twig of the hardy saks-avol—nothing but the pure clean sand, scooped out in hotlows, and heaped up in low mounds and ridges by the wind. First a broad shallow basin, in which were three or four wells, and in which was piled @ quantity of forage and baggage that Kaufman had been obliged to leave betund tor want of means of trans- port; thena low ridge, with two brass pieces (six- pounders) peering over it, and beyond another little hollow, in which were pitched the tents of the two companies of soldiers left here by Kauf- mann. Further on, as far as the eye could reach, more sand heaped and piled up, rolling of iu every direction in low mounds and ridges, with here and there in the distance, on a higher spot, a picket keeping his dreary watch In the hot sunshine. Not aleafnora sign of vegetation anywheré. It was here that Kauimann passed the most critical pertod of the whele campaign—a week during which everybody despaired of success, As aiterwards related to me by Kaufmann him- self, they had started from Adam Koorulgan on the 17th of May, with three days’ supply of water, suf- ficient, as they supposed, t6 reach the Oxus, although the exact distance was unknown. ‘The advance guard made the morning halt as usual, about eight o'clock, having marched about 15 miles. According to the order of march usually followed, the rear guard should have ar- rived at ten, when the whole army would halt until three or four in the alternoon when the heat should be somewhat abated, before making the afternoon march, Instead of this, however, the rear guard oply arrived at ten o’clock at night, owing to the extreme weakness of the camels, en- feebled by their long march trom Gizzak Many of them had been leit oa the way, and their loads had been transferred to the others, which were thus overburdened, Upon examination it was found that nearly the entire supply of water had been exhausted, and thus the- Whole aspect of aifairs had been changed in @ single day, The utter impossibility of proceed ing without more water through an unknown desert—a distance which might indeed be only 30 Iniles, but which might also be 100, for anything they knew to the contrary—was only too evident. A singie retrograde movement might be the signal for the rising of the whole Central Asian population, aud the impossibility of staying where they were and sending back for more water was too apparent to be discussed for @ moment. They could not ad- vance—they could not stay where they were—and they dare not retreat. Their position in a single duy had become not only dangerous, but desperate, DESPAIR IN THE COMMANDER'S COUNSELS, General Kaufmann passed tnrough one of those moments of despair which every genera! who has ever commanded an army has experienced at least once In his life. Hope there was none, and Gen- eral Kaufmann was on the very verge of a similar disaster to that which, unknown to him, had over- taken General Markosoi only a few days before in the Turcoman desert, on the other side of the Amoo Derya, He was saved by one of those trivial cir- cumstances which often intervene in the most un- looked-for manner in the affairs of men and change the whole current of events. Among the 50 or 60 guides in General Kaufmann’s employ there was one who had been picked up by the Grand Duke Nicholas in the Kysii-Koom. He was in rags and tatters, ana had presented himself to the Grand Duke, otferiug to serve without pay, in order to revenge himself on the Khivans, or what was the same thing for him, Turcomans, who had cap. tured and murdered a part of his family and car- ried off the rest to Le sold into slavery. He was employed to serve with the other guides and no further attention was paid to him. This man now came forward, and, although the other guides de- clared there was no water this side of the Amoo, said be would dnd water in the immediate neign- borhood. General Kaufmann gave his pocket flask ana sald, “Bring me that full oi water and [ will give you 190 rubles.” They provided hun with a good horse and Ye was off like the wind, This was at day- light of the morning of the 16th, and by @ little after sunrise he had returned with the Mask fuilot water, foul and nauseous, but water, nevertheless, that would support life, He deciared he had soand three wells four miles north of the caravan route leading to the Amoo, that were unknown to cara vans and never visited by them, aud that the Water, such a8 it was, could be found in suiicient quantities to supply the army. Kaufmann immedt- ately gave the order to march, and, two hours afterwards, the advance guard had arrived ana encamped on the spot, which has since been called Alti Koodook, or “Six Wells.’ They found water, ag described by the guide, in three wells at a depth varying from 60 to 100 feet, but very bad and in insyMotent quantities. in the last well they found the body of a dog, which had probably been thrown there by the Turcomans, But, bad as the water was, tt had to be portioned out to the moa.