Two years later, a Turkmen traveller arrived in Astrakhan and announced to local authorities that the Oxus River, formerly flowing to the Caspian Sea, had been diverted by the Khivans to the Aral Sea in order to extract golden sand from the river waters.
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He left some of the Cossacks on his way in order to set up the forts in Krasnovodsk and Alexandrovsk.
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According to a few surviving members of his contingent, they advanced to within 120 km from Khiva, when the khan attacked them with a 24,000-strong army.
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Prince Gagarin, who was a local governor at that time, sent his envoys to the Khanate of Khiva in order to verify the fable.
He was a serf belonging to Count Sheremetev and had grown in the family of his uncle, Semyon Mikhaylovich Argunov, who was a steward of princess Cherkassky and later a major-domo for count Sheremetev.
Ivan Cherkassky was the only son of Boris Kambulatovich Cherkassky and Marfa Nikitichna Romanova, a sister of Patriarch Filaret.
In the United States, Cherkassky continued his piano studies at the Curtis Institute of Music under Josef Hofmann.