one o'clock in the afternoon
We have entered the Mervian oasis , eighty miles long and eight wide , and containing about six hundred thousand hectares -- there is nothing like being precise at the finish . Right and left are cultivated fields , clumps of fine trees , an uninterrupted succession of villages , huts among the thickets , fruit gardens between the houses , flocks of sheep and herds of cattle among the pastures . All this rich country is watered by the Mourgab -- the White Water -- or its tributaries , and pheasants swarm like crows on the plains of Normandy . At one o'clock in the afternoon the train stopped at Merv Station , over five hundred miles from Uzun Ada . The town has been often destroyed and rebuilt . The wars of Turkestan have not spared it . Formerly , it seems , it was a haunt of robbers and bandits , and it is a pity that the renowned Ki-Tsang did not live in those days .