The Oxus, which flows between the two fortresses just mentioned, is nearly twice as broad as the Danube where it runs between Pesth and Ofen. The current is very strong, with banks of sand here and there. {229} Our passage over, as unluckily we were carried a little too far down the stream, lasted three hours. When things are most favourable for crossing--that is, during the summer months--the passage over where the river is deepest requires full half an hour, for it is unheard of, nay, impossible, for a ferry boat to cross without the boatman being obliged to step into the water and drag it by the rope over some shallow part. Happily, the heat was not as great as when I had before crossed, at Khanka; we did not, therefore, suffer much. The boatmen were humane and civil enough not to require from us any fare. Scarcely had we reached the opposite bank, when we were stopped by the Deryabeghi (intendant of the ferry) of the Governor of Kerki, who accused us of being runaway slaves making for Persia, our heretical fatherland. He forced us, bag and baggage, into the fortress, there to be heard by the Governor in person. Imagine my astonishment. My three colleagues, whose physiognomy, pronunciation, and language at once attested their origin, were not at all alarmed, and were, in fact, soon set free. With me they made a little difficulty, but, as I saw that they were about forcibly to take away my ass, I fell into a passion, and, employing alternately the dialects of Tartary and the Turkish dialect peculiar to Constantinople, I handed in my passport, demanding in a violent manner that they should show it to the Bi (governor), or that they should usher me to his presence. On making this disturbance, I saw that the Toptchubashi (commandant of artillery) in the fortress, a Persian by birth, who had elevated himself from the condition of a slave to his present rank, whispered something in the ear of the Deryabeghi; he then {230} took me aside, and told me that he had been several times in Stamboul from Tebriz, his native city; that he could distinguish people from Roum very well; I might be easy, nothing would happen here either to me or my property; that all strangers were obliged to submit to the examination, because every emancipated slave on his way home was obliged to pay here, on the frontier, a tax of two ducats, and that often, to smuggle themselves through, they assumed different disguises. Soon afterwards, the servant returned who had shown my pass to the Governor; he gave it me back, with five Tenghe presented to me by the Bi, without any request on my part. [Ersari Turkomans]