Karangu-chai and still separate us from Mianeh. Uphill we have to go on foot, and when we reach the top we have steep slopes on both sides, enjoying an extensive view over the extremely diversified country with its flat undulations, which are too rounded and uniform to produce any picturesque landscapes. In the distance Mianeh may be distinguished by a greyish-blue veil of smoke which rises from its chimneys and forms a light haze in front of Kaplan-kuh.
This range now stands out in all its length and dominates the eastern horizon with its dark crest entirely free of snow. The road runs down to the bottom of a tributary valley, and we follow its stream, avoiding hills for a time. The valley is small and narrow as a hollow road, but the hills at its sides are low and not very steep. In an expansion lies a village with room enough for its huts and fields, and a little farther down we come to the broad valley of the Mianeh-chai, with its bottom filled with banks of sand and pebbles and erosion furrows, which testify to the huge volume of water which the river holds at certain seasons. The river itself, formed by all the streams and brooks we have crossed during the latter days, is now quite insignificant, though its grey turbid water, which we drive through fourteen times, rises in its deeper places over the wheels of the carriage and fills the bottom of the vehicle. Here it is vain to try to make a road ; we drive where the ground seems best. The whole valley floor is certainly filled up in spring and summer and after heavy rains.
We have on the right Mianeh-bagh, whither an irrigagation canal leads off from the river, and shortly after from the side valley Guru-chai the small town of Mianeh comes in sight with its houses, trees, straw stacks, and arable ground in an expansion. We lose ourselves in a confusion of grey mud huts, uniform and of the same height, where only a small green mosque strikes the eye.
During the hour I devoted to Mianeh, chiefly famous for a remarkably poisonous species of bug, I looked in on the head of the telegraph office, a German, Herr Renz, from Odessa, who with his wife and children had spent
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