The Merv correspondent of the _Daily News_ in a letter dated the 30th of
April, 1881, remarks, “I was very much amused by the description given me
by some Tekkés of the Serdar’s departure for Russia. It seems that my
informants accompanied him up to the point where the trans-Caspian
railway is in working order. ‘They shut Tockmé Serdar and two others in
a large box (sanduk) and locked him in, and then dragged him away across
the Sahara. And,’ added the speakers, ‘Allah only knows what will happen
to them inside that box.’ The box, I need hardly say, was a railway
carriage.”