last great chieftain, Nūr Verdi Khān, who enjoyed universal respect, due alike to her own force of character and the memory of her husband’s exploits. Her persuasion was seconded by a military demonstration which took place on December 1883, under Colonel Masloff; and, on the 31st January 1884, 124 delegates from the various settlements of the Merv oasis, headed by the four tribal chiefs, met at Askabad, which had been recently created the headquarters of the Transcaspian military district. Here they solemnly swore fidelity to the Tsar in the presence of the governor-general, Komaroff. A recrudescence of the old lawless spirit followed, which was prompted by an Afghan adventurer, but it was stifled on the 3rd of March by military force. In the following May, Prince Dondukoff-Korsakoff, governor-general of the Caucasus, paid a formal visit to the latest and not the least valuable trophy of Russian diplomacy, and was able to report to his imperial master that the inhabitants of the oasis had willingly acknowledged his sway. Soon afterwards the Sārik tribe, numbering 65,000, who inhabited the Yolatan oasis thirty-six miles south of Merv, tendered their submission, and that of the tribes between Giaour and Sarakhs followed. The tract over which Russia had gained mastery was a parallelogram lying between the Oxus and the Harī Rūd, which washes the walls of Herāt, and in Turkomania is known as the Tajand. The western boundary marched with that of Persia, and at its northern extremity was defined by Old Sarakhs, a Turkoman village perched on an elevation which commanded a once thickly peopled country extending northwards to Merv. Old Sarakhs was easily accessible by wheeled traffic from Puli Khatan, a village on the left bank of the Harī Rūd, thirty-three miles from the Zū-l-Fikār Pass, through which the Tekke hordes had often poured into Khorāsān. To the east of this defile lay the Paropamisus range, a double spur of the Kūh-i-Bābā Mountains, which consists of low rolling hills covered with asafœtida and thistles.[633] The northern flank of the Paropamisus gives rise to the Murghāb, which fertilises Merv, and its confluent the river Kushk. The country between these streams and the Harī Rūd was known as the Bādghīs,[634] and is described by Lessar as presenting the appearance of a stormy sea suddenly reduced to solidity. In 1884 it had been ruined by Tekke incursions. A few thousand Jamshīdīs still clung to the rich valley of the Kushk, where they had been planted by Nādir Shāh in the eighteenth century as a bulwark against Turkoman aggression, and are described as a peaceable nomad race famed for their breed of horses.[635] On the north-west of this forlorn tract stood Bālā Murghāb, an Afghan fortress commanding the road to Maymena; and thirty-five miles farther north the village of Panjdih towered above an oasis with an area of 170 square miles, peopled by the Sārik Turkomans. Afghanistan lay to the south of the debatable land.