"Your satisfaction could not be complete, for old Merv has been rebuilt four times.

If you had seen the fourth town, Bairam Ali of the Persian period, you would not have seen the third, which was Mongol, still less the Musalman village of the second epoch, which was called Sultan Sandjar Kala, and still less the town of the first epoch.

That was called by some Iskander Kala, in honor of Alexander the Macedonian, and by others Ghiaour Kala, attributing its foundation to Zoroaster, the founder of the Magian religion, a thousand years before Christ.

So I should advise you to put your regrets in the waste-paper basket." And that is what I did, as I could do no better with them.
Our train is running northeast.

The stations are twenty or thirty versts apart.