+---------------+-------------------------+---------------+ | | Crimes against | Percentage of | | District. +------------+------------+ Crime to | | | the Person.| Property. | Population. | +---------------+------------+------------+---------------+ | Mangishlāk | 273 | 239 | 23 | | Krasnovodsk | 147 | 315 | 14 | | Askabad | 213 | 206 | 27 | | Tajand | 104 | 416 | 41 | | Merv | 537 | 913 | 22 | +---------------+------------+------------+---------------+ | Total | 1271 | 2089 | 25 | +---------------+------------+------------+---------------+ [663] Murderers are sometimes sent to serve their term of imprisonment at Chikisliar, a dismal place on the south-eastern Caspian shore, made to enhance the penalty and also to lessen the opportunity for vendetta, to which the Turkomans are greatly given. [664] They numbered, in 1895, 161,618 souls. It is curious to compare these figures with former calculations. Burnes, in 1832, estimated the number of Tekkes as 200,000; Vambéry, in 1863, as 180,000; and Petrusevitch, writing in 1878 on the eve of the Russian conquest, at 240,000. But these figures are mere guesswork. They are based on an average of five persons to each kibitka, or tent, while experience shows that four is nearer the mark (chap. iii. Marvin’s _Merv_). [665] The families of the operatives of the Kizil Arvat Railway workshops, especially the children, are pallid, anæmic, and a prey to skin diseases. [666] The percentages in 1895 were--in Mangishlāk, 11 per cent.; Krasnovodsk, 11 per cent.; Askabad, 11 per cent.; Tajand, 30 per cent.; and Merv, 85 per cent. It is a remarkable fact that the hospitals and dispensaries maintained so generously by Russia at the administrative centres have conquered the prejudice entertained at first for European treatment. The applicants for medical and surgical relief in 1890 were only 6000. In 1895 the number had risen to 34,950. [667] This would be an object-lesson for the “Conscientious objector,” were it not that fanaticism is impervious to teaching or argument. [668] For the system of irrigation before the Russian conquest, the reader is referred to chap. xviii. of O’Donovan’s _Story of Merv_, and p. 81 of Marvin’s _Merv_. [669] Mīrāb, lord of water, an old Persian title. [670] _Sū_ is a Turkish word for water. It is met with in the nomenclature of many streams near Constantinople. [671] A Persian word meaning, primarily, government; secondarily, an estate or property. [672] Marvin’s _Merv_, p. 263. The date is there given as 1787; as a matter of fact, the invasion of Murād, alias Ma´sūm, commonly styled “Begi Jān,” took place three years earlier. [673] Maktab, an Arabic word meaning school.