A REMARKABLE STORY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 263, 29 March 1913, Page 9

A REMARKABLE STORY

AN EXPEDITION INTO TURKESTAN. A remarkable story was told recently to a representative of the Standard of an expedition made into the Turkestan desert of Kara-Kum in search of the Saksaul tree, on which the new Russian ( military railway depends for its fuel. This tree, the scientific name of which is Haloxylon Ammodendron, is only found in Turkestan, and possesses the peculiarity of being able to flourish in a soil comparabid to a bed of hot ashes, that is nourished semi-annually by a five-min-ute patter of rain. The sands for many miles along the railway had been denuded of saksaul by the native Sarts. who hauled the wood to the stations on their camels. Hence the question of fuel became a pressing one, and to find

iout whether the saksaul would grow up again, and so could he relied on for the . future provision of fuel, the Imperial I Geographical Society of St. Petersburg I sent out an expedition to unearth the saksaul in its virgin haunts, where no, camel-drivers had ever been, in order to study its habits and bring back photographs of it. • The expedition, consisting of' two Europeans, a Cossack guide, a Turkoman camel-driver, two camels, three horses and a donkey, set out into the desert.

The first day the guide lost his way, the party got separated from the camels with the water-kegs, and in a temperature of 1(50 degrees in the sun they spent a time of terrible suffering, being in the saddle for eleven hours, the last six of which were spent without a drop of water. After this experience the expedition penetrated into the very heart of an unexplored region of saksaul country. A member of the party thus describes the sight which met their eyes: "The sands there." he says, "were what is known as 'burgristie' desert, and look exactly like the surface of the moon. Far off into the burning distance, ending in mirages and sand clouds, there was nothing but an endless sea of irre-gularly-shaped hillocks, sparsely covered with the lialf-dead. rotting ghosts of the trees we had come thousands of miles to explore. The tawny sand was strewn with greyisb. twisted, grotesque brandies that had died and fallen of their own weight." The scene resembled "some vast Danlean inferno, where the bleached bones of the world's innumerable dead lay scattered over the burning floor of a gruesome desert catacomb." This expedition affords a striking example of the manner in which science goes hand in hand with modern military strategy and commercial enterprise.