Wonderful, indeed, is the effect of habit upon men! Although I had advanced to the maximum of these extremely different forms of existing civilisation, as it were, by steps and by degrees, still everything appeared to me here surprisingly new, as if what I had {298} previously known of Europe had only been a dream, and as if, in fact, I were myself an Asiatic. My wanderings have left powerful impressions upon my mind. Is it surprising, if I stand sometimes bewildered, like a child, in Regent Street or in the saloons of British nobles, thinking of the deserts of Central Asia, and of the tents of the Kirghis and the Turkomans? {299} PART II. TURKOMANS KHIVA BOKHARA KHOKAND CHINESE TARTARY ROUTES AGRICULTURE AND TRADE POLITICAL RELATIONS RUSSIANS AND ENGLISH {300} {301} CHAPTER XVI. BOUNDARIES AND DIVISION OF TRIBES NEITHER RULERS NOR SUBJECTS DEB ISLAM CHANGE INTRODUCED BY THE LATTER ONLY EXTERNAL INFLUENCE OF MOLLAHS CONSTRUCTION OF NOMAD TENTS ALAMAN, HOW CONDUCTED PERSIAN COWARDICE TURKOMAN POETS TROUBADOURS SIMPLE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES HORSES MOUNDS, HOW AND WHEN FORMED MOURNING FOR DEAD TURKOMAN DESCENT GENERAL POINTS CONNECTED WITH THE HISTORY OF THE TURKOMANS THEIR PRESENT POLITICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL IMPORTANCE. _Non se urbibus tenent et ne statis quidem sedibus. Ut invitavere pabula, ut cedens et sequens hostis exigit, its res opesque secum trahens, semper castra habitant; bellatrix, libera, indomita._--Pomp. Mela, de Situ Orbis, 1. ii. c. 4. THE TURKOMANS IN THEIR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS. Boundaries and Divisions. The Turkomans or Türkmen, [Footnote 95] as they style themselves, inhabit for the most part that tract of desert land which extends on this side of the river Oxus, from the shore of the Caspian Sea to Belkh, and from the {302} same river to the south as far as Herat and Astrabad. Besides the partially productive soil which they possess along the Oxus, Murgab Tedjend, Görghen, and Etrek, where they actually busy themselves a little with agriculture, the country of the Turkomans comprises that immense awful desert where the traveller may wander about for weeks and weeks without finding a drop of sweet water or the shade of a single tree. In winter the extreme cold and the thick snow, in summer the scorching heat and the deep sand, present equal dangers; and storms only so far differ from each other in these different seasons, as the graves that they prepare for the karavans are dry or moist. [Footnote 95: This word is compounded of the proper name Türk, and the suffix _men_ (corresponding with the English suffix _ship, dom_); it is applied to the whole race, conveying the sense that the nomads style themselves pre-eminently _Türks_. The word in use with us, Turkoman, is a corruption of the Turkish original.]