The Zarafshan (Zerafshan, Zeravshan) (see Map II), the Polytimetus of the ancients, the nourisher of Sogdiana, is the river of the Duab. It is the Strewer of Gold, the Picture of Life, the River Symbolic.

What the Duab is for Middle Asia as a representative of type, that the Zarafshan is for the Duab, a summary of its features. Along its course the whole panorama from mountain snows to desert sands is unfolded before us. I shall therefore use it as a thread on which to string the first part of my description.

The Zarafshan is the very essence of life to Samarkand and Bokhara. Springing from the Alai mountains it runs for two hundred miles through a ravine and then for two hundred more in open country, ultimately losing itself in the plains without reaching its destination, the Oxus.

Let us issue forth from the busy streets and crowded bazars of the noble city of Bokhara. Through the massive gate we pass and through the silent graveyards where the dead lie in tombs of brick; we walk along the shady avenues outside, where hostelries and tea-houses are filled with the din of caravans. Gradually the rows of shops and houses break up and we pass between the interminable mud walls of vast gardens, with their mulberry trees and vines. Through many villages we travel, around us the thick abundance of a fertile soil, till, at last, the clusters of dark foliage open out to the gaps of a distant view. The trees are rare and lonely in the last yellow wheat fields, the canals and runlets vanish one by one, losing themselves in swampy pools and clumps of huge reeds.