Before sunset we started again, and marched without stopping in the vicinity of the river. Its deep banks are almost everywhere overgrown with willows, gigantic grass, and rushes. Although the way between Khiva and Bokhara had been described to me as a frequented one, we had as yet, with the exception of the frontier-watchers and the nomads who were roaming about, not met a single traveller. What, then, was our astonishment when, about midnight, we saw five horsemen approaching at full speed! These were Khivan merchants, who had come hither from Bokhara, by Karaköl, in four days. They communicated to us the pleasing intelligence that the routes were quite safe, and told us, at the same time, that we should meet, the day after the next, their karavan, which they had left behind them. We had heard on starting from Khiva that the Tekke Turkomans, profiting by the absence from Bokhara of the Emir and his army, were infesting the approaches to the latter city, and our Kervanbashi felt secretly anxious on that account; but what we now heard set his mind at ease. We were in hopes of reaching the end of our journey in six or eight days, of which we should have to pass only two without arriving at water, that is to say, in the desert between the Oxus and Karaköl. The next morning we encamped at Tünüklü, the ruins of an ancient fortress on a little hill, at the foot of which flows the Oxus, and which is itself covered with the most beautiful verdure. From this point there is a way lying in a north-easterly direction, through the sandy desert of Khalata Tchöli, otherwise designated Djan Batirdigan [Footnote 39] (life destroyer), but {154} which is only frequented in winter, after heavy falls of snow, at times when the Karaköl route is infested by the Turkomans, who at that period of the year, owing to the freezing of the Oxus, circulate in every direction without obstacle. [Footnote 39: More correctly Batirdurgan, present participle of the verb batirmak (destroy).] In the meantime the heat became more and more intense, but it did not much affect us, as we reposed every day on the banks of a mighty river, full of sweet water; and what feelings of grateful gladness were ours when we recollected Kahriman Ata, and other places in the great desert between Khiva and Gömüshtepe. Unhappily we were soon disturbed in our agreeable reflections, and placed, by the freaks of some Turkoman adventurers, in a position of danger such as might have brought us all to a terrible end, had we not been preserved by an accident or fatality. [Alaman of the Tekke; Karavan alarmed returns to Tünüklü]