Geok Teppe, the scene of the crowning mercy of 1881, is the next halting-place. In this dry atmosphere the vestiges of the Tekkes’ last refuge enables the traveller to conjure up the fearful scenes enacted there eighteen years ago. A hundred yards north of the railway stretches a long earthen rampart 12 or 15 feet high, broken near its south-east angle and on the eastern face by huge gaps, through which the infuriated Russian soldiers pressed on the memorable 24th of January 1881. The interior of the rude fortress is still scored with funnel-shaped holes, and strewn with fragments of iron left by the exploding shells. The whole scene comes vividly before him who ascends Dangil Teppe, a mound at the north-west corner whence the Turkomans plied their only gun during the siege.[678] He seems to see beneath, the dense mass of dark felt kibitkas lit up by the explosion of missiles charged with petroleum. His ears are stunned by the shrieks of the agonised women and children who seek shelter in vain from these messengers of death, the hoarse cries of the combatants locked in a death-struggle, the roar of musketry and the clash of steel. While he is fain to admit that civilisation has gained by the issue of the tremendous struggle, the Englishman bares his head in honour of the brave men who bled for freedom here. The Russian lines can still be distinguished to the east of the crumbling ramparts; and, as if to point Gray’s sad moral, “the paths of glory lead but to the grave,” three graveyards alone remain where the pulse of war once beat highest, tenanted by the bones of those who died at their Tsar’s behest. The Cossack and the Stavropol Regiments have their own God’s acre, and in a third, which stands near the site of Skobeleff’s camp, is a white-washed mound with an iron plate recording the number of the slain. A little museum of relics of the siege has lately been opened between the rugged earthen wall and the railway line. The contrast between past and present is placed in a startling light by a large cotton-pressing factory which has been established by a Jew near the western face of Geok Teppe. Here gangs of Turkomans, some of whom were doubtless once eager in war and foray, may be seen toiling at the screw-presses under the sharp spur of necessity.