with the proper ammunition, equipment, tents, and clothing, for a march of 1,100 miles through a desert country. In spite of the severe cold the column reached Fort Emba, on the river of the same name, 400 miles from the starting-point, near the end of March, without the loss of a man. The column consisted of nine companies of infantry: 1,600 men; nine sotnias (squadrons) of Cossacks: 1,200 men; eight pieces of artillery, a rocket and a mortar battery, with three times the ordinary store of amunition. The transport train consisted of 5,000 camels. Supplies were taken for two months and a half, and the entire column had felt tents for every twenty men.
The Kinderly column contained 1,800 men with ten pieces of artillery. It was provisioned and equipped similarly to the Orenburg column, which it was intended to join at Lake Aibugir. It suffered terribly in the desert, partly from the intense heat of the middle of the day and partly from great scarcity of water. There were few wells along the route, and such water as could be found was very bad for men and animals. Sunstroke, dysentery, and general debility were prevalent, and fever was so common that nobody seemed to mind it. On two or three occasions the whole expedition was in peril of death from thirst; one march of three days was made with practically no water, the Turcomans having poisoned the only well on the route by throwing into it the carcases of putrefying animals. The march ended with the entrance into the oasis near Kungrad, and the joy of the soldiers can be imagined when they found green pastures and flowing water after a journey of two months across the desert and terrible suffering from thirst. The columns of General Verevkin and Colonel Lomakin joined near Kungrad, which was taken without a blow. And hereby hangs an interesting incident.
Up to their arrival at Kungrad neither of the columns met any opposition from the Khivans. They showed
