On the morning of the 29th of August we moved at dawn, with buoyant spirits, and followed the course of the Moorghab, or river of Merve, for twelve miles before we could cross it. We found it about eighty yards wide and five feet deep, running within steep clayey banks, at the rate of five miles an hour. We crossed by an indifferent ford, over a clay bottom with many holes. There was no village; but the place is called Uleesha. This river rises on the mountains of Huzara, and was long believed to fall into the Oxus or the Caspian. Both opinions are erroneous, since it forms a lake, or loses itself in one, about fifty miles N.W. of Merve. This river was formerly dammed above Merve, which turned the principal part of its waters to that neighbourhood, and raised that city to the state of richness and opulence which it once enjoyed. The dam was thrown down about forty-five years ago, by Shah Moorad, a king of Bokhara, and the river only now irrigates the country in its immediate vicinity, where it is covered with the tenements, or “obas,” of the Toorkmuns; for there are no fixed villages. These people cultivate by irrigation, and every thing grows in rich luxuriance. The Juwaree (holcus sorghum) has a stalk thicker than a walking-stick, and in the uncultivated parts there is the richest fodder for cattle and the finest thorny shrubs for the camel, an animal which is here found in vast herds. Above Merve the country is called Maroochak, and said to be unhealthy: there is a proverb, at least, which runs thus,--“Before God gets intelligence, the water of Maroochak has killed the man.”[2] This river is the Epardus of Arrian, a word which, I observe in one author, is said to mean _irrigator_,--nor is it here misapplied. The historian would even appear to have been acquainted with its course; for we are told that the Epardus “hides its streams in the sand, as did many other great rivers.”[3] ~Amusements.~ The transition which we had experienced, from a sandy desert to the verge of a running stream, was most gratifying; every one seemed delighted, and even the animals appeared to feel the change. Throughout the day the banks presented a spectacle of merriment and joy; the Toorkmuns plunging into the water with their horses, and the greater part of the caravan sporting about in the stream. We hit upon a contrivance, which contributed not a little to our sport, and produced a “tunga,” or the third part of a rupee, which was to be the reward of the person who could first cross the river. The enormous sum was solemnly vested in a committee; I believe even the blessing was said; and sixteen competitors appeared on the occasion. It was won by a Toorkmun of Shurukhs, who had the art of running quickest in the deep water. ~Knights and heroines of Merve.~