In these solitudes, the traveler may realize in all its sweep the mingled gloom and grandeur of Central Asian scenery. . . . No token of sound or life greets the eye or ear; no outline redeems the level sameness of the dim horizon; no shadows fall upon the staring plain. The moon shines with dreary coldness from the hollow dome, and a profound and tearful solitude seems to brood over the desert. The returning sunlight scarcely dissipates the impression of sadness, of desolate and hopeless decay, of a continent and life sunk in a mortal swoon. The traveler feels like a wanderer at night in some desecrated graveyard, amid crumbling tombstones and half-obliterated wounds. A cemetery not of hundreds of years but of thousands, not of families or tribes but of nations and empires, lies outspread around him: and ever and anon, in fallen tower or shattered arch, he stumbles upon some poor unearthed skeleton of the past.