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UNIVERSITEITSBIBLIOTHEEK UTRECHT

3559 2272

CENTRAL ASIA, AND ITS QUESTION:

being

A PAPEE

READ IN THE SPEECH-ROOM OF HARROW SCHOOL,

On the 18th March, 1873.

BY

COL. SIR FEEDEEIC JOHN GOLDSMID, C.B., K.C.S.L

(MAJOR-GENERAL IK PBBSIA AND ADJACENT COnNTEIBS) ;
LATE OS SPECIAL MISSIOKS TO StSTAM AND MAKRAN.

V lt;■ .;•{, ., _________^ r.

LONDON:

EDWAIID STANFORD, 6 amp; 7, CHAKING CROSS.

1873,
Price One Shilling,

PEBFATORY NOTE.

A KIND and genial reception, and the expression of favourable
opinions from those whose presence at the reading was, of
itself, an honour, have induced me to print this very rough
summary of a very important subject. Notwithstanding the
somewhat ambitious title of the Paper, no pretensions to supply
in it a history, or even a key to a complex question, is advanced.
But it is not impossible that the perusal of the following pages
may lead to a study of comprehensive works ; and, in some cases,
such study may not unnaturally tend to the prosecution of
further and fuller inquiries ; which process, again, may result
in the acquisition of knowledge fitting the possessor, at some
future period, to grapple with an eventuality which, whatever
its substance, casts beforehand the shadow of a difficulty. In
such contingency, the map for which I am indebted to the
courteous intervention of General Adye, and of which the
Lecture was rather designed to be explanatory than vice versâ,
will not have been exhibited or interpreted in vain.

Hastings, 2m March, 1873.

CENTRAL ASIA, AND ITS QUESTION.

Towards the close of the past year the interest of a
large section of the British public was fairly aroused
to certain regions which, in spite of classical associa-
tions and medieval repute, had, as a rule, either
passed away from the recollection, or failed to
maintain the continuous attention of modern English
politicians. And to judge from the mass of newly-
printed and newly-spoken opinions on this one topic
which almost every day brings forth in our metro-
polis of many interests, it cannot be said that the
excitement thus awakened has subsided or even
diminished.

The subject in question has been rather vaguely
characterized as that of quot;Central Asia.quot; I say
quot; vaguely,quot; because the centre is somewhat uncer-
tain. Are we to take meridians of longitude or
parallels of latitude, or both, to find it ? For our
present purpose the matter may be appropriately
considered under two heads :—

1st. What is meant by the term quot; Central Asia\'\'
geographically, and with reference to other parts of
the vast Asiatic Continent ?

2ndly. What is meant by the \'\' Central Asian
Questionquot; ?

B 2

Practically, however, we shall find that an expo-
sition of the geographical status will leave httle to
be said in the way of defining a political complica-
tion inseparable from it.\'

In giving to the paper wMcli I am about to read
this evening the title of quot; Central Asia, or the Coun-
tries between Europe and British India,quot; I have
proposed to treat mainly of that quasi-central part
of the largest division of the globe which would be
comprehended under the second and more minute
definition. Indeed, I shall only be following the
example of newspaper controversialists and lecturers
of the day if, in speaking of Central Asia as it is
found on the map, I confine myself to those countries
east of the Caspian but west of Chinese territory
which have acquired a special interest in connection
with the popular designation, without accepting the
more comprehensive interpretations warranted by a
stricter adherence to geography. And were it not
that Persia, Afghanistan, and even Baluchistan
belong, more or less, to the political case to be set
before you, I should have been content to have sub-
stituted the simple name of quot; Turkistanquot; for that
now adopted, in the sense in which the compound
term quot; Central Asia quot; is commonly received. This
Turkistan comprises not merely Trans-Oxiana, but
the countries of the Western centre of Asia, and
therefore Khiva, as well as Bokhara, Khokand, Yar-
kand, and the Eussian conquests exhibited like a
wedge driven m southward amid the independent

Khanates, i. e. territories of the independent khans
or chiefs. And here, it may be said, it is that the
public interest is at this particular moment concen-
trated. Let us briefly review these Khanates ac-
cording to their position on the map.

KHIVA.

First, on the westward, there is Khiva. This
province, known to history as Kharazm, and by its
neighbours as Urganj, holds, according to Yambery,
the former appellation from a Persian word signify-
ing quot; warlike.quot; Orientals habitually account for the
names of places in the wildest and most incongruous
manner; but I confess to miss even the word alluded
to in the present instance. Nor can I gather more
satisfactory information from Richardson, who gives
currency to a fanciful derivation of the name from a
Persian expression of Cyrus. It seems to me, how.
ever, that we may be content to accept, as fact, that
the Kharazmis of Eastern annals are the Chorasmi *
(^opacrjU,ioi) of Herodotus, described by Lempriere
as quot; a people of Asia near the Oxus.quot;

There is no actual lack of published notices of
Khiva, and many of these are readily procurable for
reference. Vambery\'s comparatively recent journey
has been for ten years before the public in its Eng-
lish dress, and possesses the sensational element to
a sufficient extent to make it exceptionally attrac-
tive. Abbott\'s two interesting volumes, and Shaks-

* Gaisford\'s \' Herodotus,\' vol i., Thalia 93.

peare\'s and Taylonr Thomson\'s short narratives, are
equally the result of actual visits, effected at least
within the last forty years, and by Englishmen.
Col. Sheil, once H.M. Minister in Persia, in his
notes to Lady Sheil\'s \' Life and Manners\' in that
country, published in 1856, states that two English-
men, named Thomson and Hogg, undertook, almost
alone, a journey from Asiatic Russia to Khiva; that
their adventures are shortly described in Jonas
Hanway; and that they were probably tlie first
Englishmen who beheld the Uzbek capital. But I
think there is evidence that one of our countrymen,
Mr. Anthony Jenkinson, sent out by the Muscovy
Company, was there, or at least in the province, more
than 300 years ago: for we find him at three days\'
journey from the old mouth of the Oxus in the Cas-
pian Sea, entertained by a chief named Azim Khan,
who with his brethren quot; ruled all from the Caspian
Sea to Urgence.quot;* Now Urgence must be Urganj,
and we learn that our traveller moved from his en-
tertainer\'s camp towards Bokhara, or eastward. I
may mention that the repast of which he partook
on the occasion noted consisted of the flesh of a
wild horse and mare\'s milk without bread.f

Mouraviev\'s journey to Khiva in 1819-20 is also
a well-written and instructive report. But I shall
have to refer to more than one Russian work as I

* According to Purchas, the original edition of whose \' Pilgrims\' was
published in 1617.

f Purchas\'s \' Pilgrims,\' p. 480.

go on; and it may suffice here to state that Russian
explorations have not been infrequent in these
tracts since the days of Mouraviev.

Many authors, English as well as foreign, have
also described this part of Central Asia without per-
sonal knowledge or experience of the locahty.
Among these, well-known names might be cited;
few perhaps with greater respect than that of Sir John
Malcolm, whose \' History of Persia\' cannot but pos-
sess great value for the Oriental student. In that
work, while reviewing a series of revolutions in Persia
for 500 years, or from the accession of Ismael Samani
to the conquests of Jenghiz Khan and Taimur, he
makes occasional mention of Khiva under its name
of Kharazm. During this period, extending from
A.D. 874 to 1380, it was assailed by the Seljuk
Tartar Alp Arslan, who has the credit of haying
bridged the Oxus. Some notion of the power of
this remarkable monarch may be gathered from the
statement that he ruled from that river to the
deserts of Arabia. He defeated and took prisoner
Romanus, surnamed Diogenes, who married the
widow of Constantine XI. Malik Sanjar, also,
another of the Seljuk monarchs and virtually King
of Persia, bestowed, we are informed, Kharazm on
his cup-bearer; and the descendant of the latter,
named Takush, was strong enough to defeat and kill
Toghral III., a successor of Sanjar.*

* A.D. 1193. Malcolm\'s \' History of Persia,\' vol. i., p. 380.

Yet nowhere does Khiva or Kharazm appear with
any historical distinctiveness, nor have we. requisite
material to attempt the exhumation of its annals as
an isolated State, even if the task were possible of
accomplishment. I have alluded to the great Tartar
invasion ; and in the Uzbeks who rule in Khiva,
and have probably ruled there for centuries, we still
find a Tartar race. Lieut. Wood, the explorer of
the Oxus, an officer whose labours have, unfortu-
nately, only become appreciated now that he has
passed away from his sphere of usefulness, thus
speaks of them :—

quot; A tribe of Tartar, or rather Scythian, origin,
which in a comparatively modern era crossed the
Jaxartes and fixed themselves in Trans Oxiana. The
descendants of the ruthless Jenghiz Khan then oc-
cupied that country, but were soon forcibly dispos-
sessed. Their chief, the renowned Baber, after
vainly endeavouring to stem the torrent of invasion,
yielded to its strength, and led his forces into Hin-
dostan, where he established the Moghul Empire,
called after Moghul Khan, the founder of his line.
Those of the disinherited nation who neither sub-
mitted to the Uzbek nor accompanied their chief, re-
tired across the river Oxus ; and in the Turkomans
of that locality I think we may recognize their de-
scendants. .... Though the language of the
various hordes that now roam over Central Asia are
different, there is reason to believe that the Huns of

antiquity are the prototypes of them all, whether
designated Kalmuks or Kirgiz, Uzbek, or Turko-
man. . . . The Uzbeks are semi-Muhamadans, and
consider an intolerant persecution of the other sect
as the best evidence of the sincerity of their own
faith and of their attachment to the Prophet. They
are much fettered by their priests, to whom they
yield implicit obedience in all things temporal and
spiritual.quot; *

This character, though applied especially to the
Uzbeks of Kunduz, a State within the now declared
^nbsp;limits of Afghanistan, will doubtless serve to de-

scribe, with truth, the Uzbeks of Khiva and in Tur-
kistan generally.

If we are to believe Muhamadan writers, and
Abulghdzi, the one concerned, is perhaps among the
more trustworthy, Tatar and Mongol were two
brothers whose names became generic appellations
of thousands of Asiatic families; the orthography
of the former having been modified by the Latin
^nbsp;writers of the thirteenth century, who, with a certain

suspicious significance, introduced the letter r at the
end of the first syllable.f

* \' Journey to the Soui\'ce of the Oxus,\' Murray, 1872, pp. 140, 141.
t Mr. Arthur Lumley Davids writes : quot; Some of the Eastern writers
have derived the name Tatar from a river, on the hanks of which was
the original seat of this tribe; hut all coincide in employing the term as
the designation, of a particular body of people, and not as that of a race.
The alteration of this name into Tartar by the Latin writers of the
thirteenth century appears to have arisen from the similarity of its
sound to their own Tartarus, the corruption being rendered somewhat

The inhabited part of Khiva is estimated at less
than 200 miles from north to south, and 100 from
east to west ;* and is confined to the lower section
of the Oxus, south of the Sea of Aral. The re-
mainder of the Khanate, or rather the outlying
country acknowledging in any way the sovereignty
of the Khan, may be considered, with few excep-
tions, a perfect desert. The principal places in the
cultivated and populated lands are Yenghi, or New
Urganj, and Khiva the capital. Kohnah, or Old
Urganj, once the capital, is now reduced to insigni-
ficance, and of its former splendour there only re-
main two ruins of towers of the same massive
designs as the other towers of Central Asia. Yam-
béry eulogizes the fertility of the soil, and considers
the corn, rice, silk, cotton, and a dye-yielding root
called quot; ruyan,quot; especially excellent. As regards
the fruits, he holds that not Persia and Turkey alone,
but even Europe itself would find it difficult to
contest their superior merit. He instances apples,
peaches, pomegranates, and, above all, melons quot;re-
nowned as far even as remote Pekin, so that the

appropriate by the terrors which the incursions of Tchingis Khan and
his descendants excited.quot; And he quotes the words of St. Louis to his
mother as remarkable, hereon : quot; Erigat nos, mater, cœleste solatium,
quin, si perveniant ipsi, vel nos ipsos quos vocamus TaHaros, ad sitas
Tartaraes sedes unde exierunt retrudemus, vel ipsi nos omnes ad cœlum
advehent.quot;—Preliminary discourse to \' Q-rammar of the Turkish Lan-
guage,\' Parbury and Allen, 1832.

* Burnes : \' Travels into Bokhara ; General and Geographical Memoir
on Part of Central Asia,\' 2nd edition, Mvirray, 1835.

Sovereign of the Celestial Empire never forgets,
when presents flow to him from Chinese Tartary, to
beg for some Urganji melons.quot; Among manuamp;c-
tnres, the Urganj striped, two-coloured, stuff dress-
ing-gown, the Hazarasp gown, and the Tash-hanz
linens, as also the brass of Khiva, are cited. The
trade is with Eussia, Persia, and Herat, but chiefly
with the first.*

The inhabitants consist of Uzbeks, Turkomans,
Karakalpaks, Kazaks, Sarts, and Persians. Of
these the Uzbeks may be described as fixed
cultivators of the soil, dwelling under the protec-
tion of their own legitimate chief. Yambery does
not hesitate to give them a good character, add-
ing that the Khivan Uzbek not being well
instructed in the doctrine of the Muhamadanism
which he professes, retains not only many of the
national usages of heathenism, but also of the
religious observances of the Parsis or Fire-wor-
shippers. These, I need scarcely tell you, were
the ancient inhabitants of Persia, converted or
driven out by the early Muhamadan invaders,
excepting from the account the few families settled
still at Yezd, Kirmao, and one or two other
cities.

The Turkomans are divided into numerous tribes,
and are scattered in hordes along the northern
frontier of Persia, and north-west of Afghanistan.

* Vambeiy: \' Travels in Central Asia,\' Murray, 1864.

Those in Khiva Proper belong chiefly to three
tribes, of whom I will speak anon.

The Karakalpak, Blackcaps, inhabit the farther
bank of the Oxus, but have been subject to Khiva
from time immemorial. Vambery states their num-
ber to be computed at 10,000 tents.

Of the Kazaks but few are subject to Khiva.
The Sarts are the ancient Persian population of
Kharazm, and called, as elsewhere, Tajik; and the
so-called Persian section of the population are
colonists or slaves. Many of the latter, however,
as lately explained by Mr. Mitchell with reference
to Russian prisoners, prefer an easy livelihood in
Khiva, to taking advantage of liberty, if offered on
condition of returning to their homes.

quot;When Mr. Taylour Thomson was at Khiva in
1841, he learned that the population from where
the Khan collected his revenues amounted to
100,000 families: that he had an army of 30,000
horsemen, with 17 guns and a mortar, besides 100
regular soldiers and a Russian artilleryman; that
he possessed, moreover, 500 men slaves of his own,
and 4000 in the employment of subjects on the
State lands.*

BOKHAEA.

Crossing the Oxus, and descending the lands
known to Oriental history as Mawar \'al Nahr,—
literally, in Arabic, quot;that which is beyond the

* \' Life and Manners in Persia,\' by Lady Sheil. Murray, 1856 (notes).

river,quot; a name which must have been given by
Arab invaders from the south,—we come to Bok-
hara situated just below the 44th parallel of lati-
tude, possibly, as Burnes infers, the quot; Bazaria quot; of
Quintus Ourtius. It is mentioned in the open-
ing sections of the eighth book, later in which is
related the murder of Clytus, and where Alexander\'s
conquests of the Massagetge, Dahse, and Sogdiani
appear to have been accomplished. Sogdiana, if
not the province of Bokhara itself, must have been
in its immediate vicinity. Samarcand is, in fact,
situated in the valley of the Sogd.

According to a Russian authority, M, Veniukoff,
that part of the Oxus which skirts Bokhara, and,
indeed, an extent of 540 miles along its banks, from
Balkh to Fitnek, a southern limit of populated
Khiva, is a sultry valley in which, while there are
towns and villages at the ferries or intersections of
karavan routes, there are but few fixed inhabitants.
At Oharjui, a point within this range, he gives to
the river a breadth of 235 and a depth of 4
fathoms, but is not sanguine as to its ever becoming
a commercial highway between Europe and India.quot;^

The distance from Khiva to Bokhara by the high
road (one of three recognized routes) is laid down
at 60 parasangs, or perhaps 210 miles, in eight
marches averaging not less than 26 miles each.
The first march of 21 miles is through a cultivated

* \'The Pamir and Sources of the Amu-Daria.\'—Journal of the
Eoyal Geographical Society for 1886.

country rich in mulberry trees, and within an hour
from the Oxas ferry, at this point so wide that both
banks are barely visible at the same time. The
second march takes the traveller across the river ;
and the third, out of Khiva territory, through a
fair amount of cultivation on the right bank, to the
edge of the Tartary desert, where the Kirgiz find
pasturage for their flocks. The next two marches
hug the cultivated strip along the river side,
avoiding as much as possible the sandy wastes on
the left hand. From the point then attained the
caravan road is again beside the river for between
30 and 40 miles, whence begins the passage of the
desert in earnest, a task which must be faced if
Bokhara be the goal in prospect ; and this trial is
undergone for some 60 miles before the propinquity
of the city is made known by canals, cultivated
fields, and finally, most grateful gardens. Yambely
seems to have turned at once to the desert from the
fifth march, and thus experienced a hundred miles
of suffering and privations under a hot July
sun.*

On Bokhara there is unquestionably fuller and
more detailed information than on Khiva. At
present I will not attempt anything like a correct
list of travellers thither, whose personal experience
of the country has been recorded. Names which
naturally occur to me are those of the brothers

* Vambéry, whose description is well worth referring to at pp. 160,161.

Nicolo and Maffeo Polo in the thirteenth, and Mr.
Anthony Jenklnson in the sixteenth century; in later
years Baron Meyendorff and other Russian officers;
among Englishmen, Burnes, Conolly, Stoddart, Dr.
Wolff, and more; among foreigners generally, M.
Yambery is eminent; but I may here casually men-
tion that there are recorded far more than 100 names
of travellers, chiefly Russians, who visited Central
Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
lt;Teneral Ignatiev, now and for many years past
Russian Ambassador at the Porte, has, I believe,
published a narrative of his travels in Central Asia.
When at Constantinople some eight or ten years ago,
I heard him speak of his residence in Bokhara.
Though a recognized official visitor there, he was in
a kind of imprisonment, and those who brought
him his food were made to taste it before him in
token that it was innocuous.

The fact is, that this particular region, though
farther from the natural boundaries of Europe and
European civilization, has been found more acces-
sible and less isolated by surrounding deserts than
Khiva. Nor has the latter ever attained the world-
wide reputation of Bokhara, which, at least in the
estimation of Muhamadans, is the seat of exceptional
learning and sanctity. But it has lost much of its
greatness in recent years, and has forfeited the
privilege of practical independence still retained by
its old rival and enemy. Of the eight natural and

political divisions of the kingdom or khanate re-
corded by Barnes, it may be doubted whether more
than half now nominally remain; and even the
actual frontiers given many years later by Yambe\'ry
have been modified to the detriment of the reigning
Amir. The deserts north and west, and the Oxus
south, still serve to mark the limits in those direc-
tions ; and on the left bank of the Oxus, Chaijui and
Karki belong also to Bokhara; but it is no longer
bounded by Khokand on the east, for Samarkand,
Tashkand, and Khojand intervene in their new
geographical classification, as parts of Russian
Turkistan. Vambery thinks two millions and a
half not too high a figure for the estimated popula-
tion, and divides them into Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kirgiz,
Arabs, Marvis, Persians, Hindus, and Jews.

The first is the dominant tribe, and is that of the
quot; Amir,quot; a title which seems rather to belong to
Bokhara than to Khiva; the Tajiks, similar to the
Sarts, or Persian aborigines, are in great number
also; the Kirgiz are few.

The Arabs, reckoned at 60,000, are the con-
querors from the south, whom, it is presumed, we
must hold responsible for the local Arabic names,
such as Mawar \'al Nahr, and many others. Indeed,
the native name of the Oxus, quot;Amu,quot; shown by
Colonel Yule, the editor of \' Marco Polo,\' to have
been quot; Al Nahr,quot;* the river, in earlier Muhamadan

* See the exhaustive and interesting introduction to Lieut. Wood\'s
book before quoted.

history, is not improbably a vulgarism derived from
quot; Um al Nahr,quot; or quot; the mother of rivers,quot; a title
strictly warranted by precedent and common usage
among Arabs in regard to so remarkable a stream.
Balkh, for example, is called the quot; Um \'al Bilad,quot;
mother of cities.

The Marvis are descended from Persian captives
taken at Marv more than sixty years ago. The Per-
sians, like those of Khiva, are in compulsory or
voluntary slavery; and recent Russian report places
them in number at the high figure of 10,000.

Of the Hindus I can speak from personal know-
ledge, as it was my lot to reside for many months at
Shikarpur, in Upper Sind, the great depot, as it
were, for Bokhara Hindus. They are industrious,
plodding traffickers and usurers, content to leave
their houses and families to manage the money
transactions of Persians, Afghans, and Uzbeks, men
of a different creed and totally different mould from
themselves; and living in self-imposed exile until
they outgrow domestic affections, or become strange
to their own kin. Vambery reckons that there are
500 of them in Bokhara; and of the Jews about
10,000. The latest Russian authorities, however,
reduce the number of the latter to some 2000. The
Hindu merchants find their way to Bokhara and
back by the Bolan Pass, Kandahar, Kabul, and
Khulm.

When Burnes visited Bokhara in 1832, he

reckoned the population of the city to amount to
150,000. Captain Kostenko, in 1870, basing his
calculations on an estimate of 15,000 houses only,
diminishes the sum total to 74,000, or one-half.
He reckons the infantry soldiers to consist of 10,000,
and the artillery of 1000 men, and states that the
Amir keeps 300 cavalry and 3000 foot besides in
Hissar. Of the infantry hardly 200, he says, are
provided with even flint guns, and of 200 guns in
store, scarcely twenty are fit for use. The climate
is described by Burnes as salubrious and pleasant,
dry, and in the winter very cold, proved by the
freezing of the Oxus. The summer heat rarely
exceeded 90° in the capital, though in the desert it
was above 100. Besides the Oxus there is a river
called the Zarafshan, rising in the mountains south
of Kokhand, which passes north of Samarkand and
Bokhara, and fertilizes the lands near both towns.
The Sir, or Jaxartes, is now no longer within the
Amir\'s dominions, as it was in Burnes\'s time. Ka-
rakol, Karshi, and Karki, deserve mention among
the more important towns still under his control.

The vegetable productions of the country are
tolerably abundant, and fruits are celebrated. The
sheepskins and goats\' wool are well known, and
much esteemed in Persia and Afghanistan.

To summarize in a few words the history of Bok-
hara—the aborigines were a Persian population,
and for centuries, perhaps, subjects of the vast

Persian empire of old. Nor did the Arab invasions
and innovations, on the spread of Muhamadanism,
change their immediate allegiance in this respect.
But the incursion of the Mongols was attended with
different results; and, lastly, the Uzbeks became
rulers, to the exclusion of the Persians. New revo-
lutions ensued, and conquests and losses of territory
followed one the other for a series of years. The
Uzbeks still maintain the sovereign power, and
religious fanaticism has increased in a high degree
under their favour and support. It is just thirty
years ago that Colonel Stoddart, after painful years,
and Captain Conolly, after painful months, of cap-
tivity, were cruelly murdered in Bokhara by sanction
or order of the Amir, Nasr Ullah, father to the present
Amir, Sdiad Muzafar and the tale is a sad one to
be told to Englishmen of Enghshmen. In consider-
ing it, we have at least the satisfaction of feeling
that both officers met their final fate as Christian
soldiers and gentlemen; and that their services,
though unrewarded, and sufferings, though un-
avenged, have not failed to secure to their memories
the sympathy of survivors, as also of future gene-
rations.

KHOKAND.

The mode of writing Khokand, according to our
latest maps, is not that invariably adopted. I have
seen it spelt Khokan, Koukan, Kokaun, Kokun, and

0 2

Khokand. Vambery, adopting the last, makes the
word a possible corruption of quot;Khubkand,quot; a beau-
tiful spot. Without venturing any decided opinion
hereon, I think that quot; kandquot; must be the second
syllable, where such important places as Yarkand
and Tashkand are found east and west of it; and
the word quot; Farghdnah,quot; which all writers agree to
have been its more ancient name, conveys a Perso-
Arabic signification of pleasurable repose, not out of
character with the Persian quot; Khub.quot;

When Burnes wrote of the country, the power of
its chief, Muhamad Ali, was on the rise ; he had
established his influence over Tashkand, and many
of the Kazak tribes between him and Russia. He
was, moreover, disputing with the Mir of Kunduz
the right to Darwaz, a district now included within
the Afghan frontier. The present chief has but a
narrowly circumscribed tract of Independent Tartary
to call his own. He has Russian annexations north
and west; Shahr Sabz, a questionable district of
Bokhara, with the Karatau Mountains to the south-
west and south and Yarkand to the east and south-
east. Burnes remarked that, while Khokand did not
hold much intercourse with Bokhara, the commu-
nication between it and Constantinople was more
regular than that of the other states of Turkistan;
and that this practice was in vogue long after
Burnes wrote, I can answer from personal know-
ledge. Among many photographs collected by me

in the course of travel and duty, is one of a
Khokand Envoy to the Porte, with whom I had
much talk at Karachi, on his way to Constantinople,
via Bombay and the Red Sea. He was in manner,
in dress, and in physique, the Uzbek of Turkistan,
and his Turkish approximated sufficiently to what
is called the Osmanli of Constantinople to enable us
to understand each other. But this mission, and
the missions of other envoys, have not been of avail
to keep off the Russian enemy, and the Russians and
the Khokandis have been left to fight it out without
the intervention of a third power.

Khokand is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazaks,
Kirgiz, of whom I have already spoken, and Kip-
chaks. Yambery considers these last to typify
the original Turkish race, and his judgment is
formed from their physiognomy, character, lan-
guage, and customs. He professes inability to
detect in the Turkish that they speak a single
Persian or Arabic word; and classes them, as in
bravery, superior to all nations of Central Asia,
being quot; the truest specimen remaining to us of the
immense hordes that revolutionized all Asia.quot;* He
states that they can only number from 5000 to 6000
tents; and yet the Khans of the Kipchak, sprung
from Jenghiz, were once the ruling dynasty in
Kazan, Astrakhan and dependencies up to a.d.
1506.f There were colonies of Jews in Namaghan

* \' Travels in Central Asia,\' p. 383.

t Bianchi and Kieffer,\' Dictionnaire Turc-Franfais.\' Paris, 1860.

and Marghilan, but of these I can find no recent
information.

The capital town bears the name of the Khanate ;
and is said* to have 70,000, or according to late
Russian authority, 100,000 inhabitants. It is placed
in the latest maps on the right bank of a tributary
of the Sir, or Jaxartes, formed by the junction of
two streams rising in a western spur of the Alaï
Mountains. Burnes places it on both sides of the
Sir, but then he wrote from hearsay. By the desert
route and following a course almost due east, Kho-
kand maybe reached from Khiva in about fifteen days ;
but the journey must be a trying one. The computa-
tion of 3,000,000 inhabitantsf for the whole Khanate
requires considerable reduction owing to the territo-
rial losses of the last few years. Tashkand alone, in
1866, could boast of a population of 64,416.

For the following summary of political events in
Khokand I am again indebted to Yambéry, who ap-
pears to me the best authority on this little-investi-
gated subject.

The present reigning family pretends to a direct
descent from Jenghiz Khan; but the family of
Jenghiz was dethroned by Taimur ; and after Baber,
the last descendant of Taimur in Khokand, the
Shaibani and other Kipchak and Kirgiz chiefs seized
on the Government. The late ruling Khan, Muha-

* Maunder\'s \' Treasury of Geography.\'nbsp;t Vambéry.

X \' Ahuanack de Gotha.\' Eussian accounts say about 100,000.

mad Ali, was of Kipohak origin. He waged war
with Nasr Ullah, Amir of Bokhara, in pursuance of
an old family policy. Khokand had been incorpo-
rated into the former state and had forcibly freed
itself, making alliance with Yarkand and certain
neighbouring States now included within the Chinese
dominions; and the consequence was a kind of
chronic animosity between Khokand and Bokhara.

Although the two hostile Khans above mentioned
had died, that is the Bokhara chief had killed the
chief of Khokand, and the survivor had been carried
off by sickness, the contest was continued by their
successors, and up to 1863 there seems to have been
fighting without cessation. Peace was only obtained
at that period by the division of the Khanate into
two Governments, each under a grandson of Muha-
mad Ali. The wars with Eussia will be spoken of
under the head of Russian Turkistan.

YARKAND.

From the town of Ush, on the eastern frontier of
the Khanate of Khokand, to Kashgar is a ten days\'
journey over a mountainous country.* And a few
marches farther in a south-easterly direction bring
us to Yarkand and the countries immediately north
of Cashmir and British India. Time will not allow
of any detailed account of the interesting region of

* Vambery.

Eastern or Chinese Turkistan; but the records of
the Royal Geographical Society have recently
furnished many new and valuable data for its illus-
tration; and the appointment of Mr. Shaw, the
indefatigable and intelligent Yarkland explorer, as
Commissioner of Ladakh, is a warrant of progress
in our relations with the people and lands north of
the Karakorum.

I will add a few words on the tracts north and
south of the more westerly of the Khanates just
discussed, viz. Khiva and Bokhara, without refer-
ence to the political question of sovereignty. East
and west of the Sea of Aral, and generally from its
centre northwards, is the country of whose brave
queen and people Herodotus writes with some detail
in the closing sections of his first book; a country
now occupied by the Kirgiz nomads of the Steppes,
a pastoral community bearing a reputation for valour
certainly inferior to that gained by the conquerors
of Cyrus, the Massagetse of 2000 years ago. While
on this subject I may recall the account of Thomyris,
the Boadicea of the Scythian plains, given by Hero-
dotus. Her address to the dead Cyrus, on dipping
his head into a skin filled with human blood, will
not readily be forgotten quot; Thou hast destroyed me,
living and conquering thee in fight, having taken
my son by stratagem ; and I, as I have vowed,

* Gaisford\'s \' Herodotus\': Sv fiev efie ^wova-dv re kui viKwa-dv a-t
fidxTj diragt;\\((Tas iraiba tov iXSiv SoXco. lt;rc 6 fya, Kaxdirep ^neiXrjrra,
aiixaros /copeVco. —S. 214, Clio.

will satiate thee with blood.quot; Ctesias, it is true,
tells quite a different story. He goes farther East,
apparently, in search of a similar legend, and makes
Amorges, King of the Sac8s, the conqueror of Cyrus,
but does not kill him until some time afterwards
in a war witli the Derbices, when lie is mortally

wounded by an Indian.*

Yambery, in opposition to Wood and others, but
in accordance with the views of Sir Alexander
Burnes, considers the Kirgizes to be the same as
the Kazaks, and intelligibly explains the name
Kirgiz to be a Turkish compound, meaning quot; wan-
derer in the plains.quot; On the other hand, I have
one dictionary which translates the Tartar word
quot;Kazakquot; as quot;robberquot;; but this interpretation
appears to bear no original meaning, and to be
admissible only by virtue of the predatory habits of
the Cossacks themselves. Doubtless the compara-
tively peaceful habits of the Kirgiz on the more
northerly shores of the Aral at the present day, are
mainly, if not wholly, attributable to a restraining
superior influence exercised over this particular
territory. Uncontrolled, there is abundant evidence
to prove their habits quite as predatory as pastoral.

We learn, on good authority, that many years
ago there were two routes to Khiva from Orenberg,
the capital of the aovernment of that name, and the
most southerly of the old European Russian dis-

* \' Purchas, his Pilgrimage,\' p. 401. London, 1617.

tricts bounded by the Ural Mountains. One of these
routes was east and the other west of the Sea of
Aral. The former, according to M. Khanikofif, had
its first authentic delineation by a mission of Messrs.
Gladishef and Muravin, who performed the journey
from Orsk to Khiva in 1740. In later times it was
described to be about 1000 English miles in length,
of which two-thirds passed through a barren, sandy
country, the fertile and irrigated portions being for
the most part those nearest Orenberg. The second,
and more than a hundred miles the shorter, abounded
also with water, pasturage, and fuel at the outset;
then changed to salt marshes and waste; then
rising to what is called the plateau, or table-land of
the Ust Urt, afforded scanty pasturage and pre-
carious supplies of good water. Descending the
Ust Urt on the southern side, and turning towards
the populated parts of Khiva, it yielded sufficient
fuel and water, and partial pasturage. To what
extent these routes, or either of them, have been
since rendered available for the march of troops or
for the passage of caravans, intelligence is scarcely-
obtained with the same facility as for the several
roads from the Caspian to Khiva. It is certain that
in 1839 G-eneral Perovski\'s force, which attempted
the more westerly of the two routes, was unable to
advance farther than Ak Boulak, a post barely one-
third of the whole distance which it was contem-
plated the army would traverse. Russian authori-

ties mention the plateau of the Ust Urt to be 240
miles in length, and 160 in breadth, or the actual
extent between the Caspian and Aral. It rises to
an average elevation of 620 feet.

South of the Khanates, to the east, is the Afghan,
and west, the Persian, frontier. The former has
been dissected in the political correspondence of the
day, and tlie names of Badakhshan, Waklian, the
Panjah, and the Gokcha, will have become as familiar
to those who interest themselves in these questions
as the old names of Bactriana, Sogdiana, the Oxus
and the Ochus, are to the classical student. The
latter is divided from Kharazm by a kind of neutral
zone occupied by the Turkomans, the most noted of

Eastern highwaymen.

A word also on the two great rivers of Central
Asia, which are, in the west, indisputably the
Jaxartes or Sihun, and Oxus or Jihun, called the
Sir and Amu at the present day. The first is
formed by minor rivers fed by streams issuing
from the mountain ranges north and south of
Khokand respectively, and the Narin, rising from
the southern slopes of the Kirgiz Ala Tdu, and north
of the Tian-Shan. Below Namaghan it zigzags in
a south-westerly course past Khokand, receives the
waters of other streams from the southern hills, and
turns abruptly north towards Tashkand to make a
long north-westerly bend to the Upper Aral. The
waters forming the second, issue from the Kara Tau

ranges north, and Hindu Kush south—to speak
generally, from the western limits of the Pamiv
table-land; and the junction of the Surkhab and
Panjah rivers from these particular directions be-
comes the larger volume of water called Amu
Daria. This important river first receives the
Gokchah in its passage from Badakhshan westward,
then bending somewhat towards Kunduz and Balkh,
on its south, takes a long, continuous sweep to the
north-west, enriching Bokhara and wholly sustain-
ing Khiva, till it reaches the Lower Aral.

RUSSIAN TUEKISTAN.

But our account of Turkistan, or West Central
Asia, would indeed be incomplete were we to omit
that important part of it which has been added to
the Russian dominions. The numerous papers trans-
lated by Mr. Michell on the subject, independently
of his own published memoranda, all references of
high practical value, render the task of compiling
an intelligible account comparatively facile.

General Perovski, in relating the circumstances of
his unfortunate expedition to Khiva in 1839, has
prefaced his narrative by a historical sketch of Cen-
tral Asia, and the causes which led to direct Russian
aggression. Commencing with a mission of the
Bishop of Shernburg to India by way of the Caspian
and Independent Tartary, the credit of which is
given to Alfred the Great of England, he passes

at once from the ninth to the thirteenth century,
taking the latter period as a starting point for the
maintenance of quot; frequent intercourse between
Europe and the Western portion of Central Asia for
political and commercial objects.quot; He reviews the
movements of the Crusaders, the G-reeks, Venetians,
and Genoese in Eastern Europe, and the invasion of
Jenghiz Khan from the east westwards ; showing tlie
result of such simultaneous action to be a necessary
rapprochement of Europe to Asia, and vice versa.
This was the especial feature of the thirteenth century,
when the Polo family were foremost in the rank of
distinguished travellers. I have seen a list of no
less than thirty-fiive names, including those of the
brothers Nicholas and Matthew, and the younger
Marco, Polo, whose travels in Central Asia are said
to have been recorded within a period of 265 years,
or from 1243 to 1508. Some of them may be mere
compilers, but I do not so understand the matter.
A second list, comprising the names of thirty-three
more travellers visiting Central Asia between 1558
and 1684, shows nearly half the number to have
been Englishmen.*

At the close of the seventeenth and commence-
ment of the eighteenth century, Russia, under Peter
the Great, sent out her explorers to penetrate
into the same regions from the north and west.
Peter wished to establish commercial intercourse
with India; but the independent Khanates beyond

* See ante, p. 15.

the Steppes were not quite prepared to encourage so
civilized an object by giving free passage to com-
merce through their territories. He, however, when
able to turn his attention from the Swedes and Turks,
entered into some sort of correspondence with Khiva;
for it is urged on behalf of Russia, that so far back
as 1703, the Ozar received the Khan\'s allegiance, at
a time when the latter was sorely pressed by the
Amir of Bokhara; and from 1714 to 1717 efforts
were made to establish Russian authority on the
eastern shores of the Caspian, and generally in Tur-
kistan. Accounts of two expeditions with this object
in view are given in the \'Journal of the Russian
ImperialGreographical Society\' for 1853. One was
despatched from Siberia under Colonel Bucholz, and
one from Astrakhan under Prince Bekovich.

But although Peter the Great continued to push
forward his scheme of intercourse with India, and
for this purpose sought to make a ready road through
Bokhara and intervening countries, no positive mea-
sure of occupation or annexation in Central Asia
seems to have been carried out until after that
monarch\'s death, in 1725. He had, by his own pre-
sence and that of a numerous army, made the tribes
on the seaside of the Kharazm desert accustomed to
personal contact with the Europeans or semi-Euro-
peans north of the Steppes and the Caspian; but by
treaty with Persia he had abandoned claim to posses-
sion of any tracts east of the latter. In 1732, however.

the Khan of the Lesser Horde of Kirgiz was formally
received under Russian protection, and a consider-
able extent of country came under Russian organiza-
tion and supervision.

quot; Dating from this time,quot; says Gleneral Perovski,
quot; civil order was gradually introduced into the depths
of Central Asia. In 1822 a series of regulations
were promulgated for the Government of the Kir-
gizes, who wandered in the Irtish Ishim Steppe,
and from 1834 they are under the jurisdiction of
local courts. In 1834 the Alexandrovski fortifica-
tion was erected near Kaidak,a bay of the Caspian.
In 1846 the fortresses of Orenburg and Uralsk were
founded in the heart of the Steppe, on the rivers
Irgiz and Tuegai respectively. In 1847 Fort
Raimsk was erected near the mouth of the Sir
Daria, and on the reduction of Ak Mashhad in
1853, the Russians established themselves along the
whole of this river.quot; In 1854, the writer himself
proceeded on a second expedition to Khiva, accepted
the nominal submission of the Khan, Muhamad
Amin, at the city itself, and returned.

From General Perovski let us now turn to Roma-
novski, one of the principal actors in the drama of
conquest and annexation, which appears to have
reached a new phase in the departure of the expedi-
tion to Khiva now attracting public attention at
home. He states that in 1854, or at the outset of
the Crimean war, it was resolved by a Special Com-

mittee, and confirmed by the Emperor Nicholas, to
connect the then newly-established Sir Daria line
with the newly-advanced Siberian line of frontier.
This was considered to be the best measure to secure
the object of the advance into the Steppes, made
already by the force of circumstances. The question
is too wide a one to admit of present description
and illustration. It would carry us into China
and Russian progress China-ward, a subject which,
though thrown out of this night\'s consideration, is of
very great interest and importance. We are, how-
ever, concerned to know that between the years
1850 and 1860 the Russian detached posts, forts,
and military settlements were quot; scattered over the
vast surface of the Steppes, on the one side from
the Ural and Irtish to the north-eastern part of the
Caspian as far as the northern parts of the Sea of
Aral and Sir Daria; and on the other as far as the
Hi River at the base of the Tian Shan Mountains.quot;
The Mangishlak Peninsula on the west. Fort Perov-
ski on the Sir Daria, and the Hi River west of Kulja,
will exhibit the supposed limit as nearly as possible
on the 44th parallel of latitude.

In spite of endeavouring to consolidate without
further extension, and of keeping on the best terms
with the rulers and people of the Khanates of
Central Asia, the Russians complained that their
relations south of the Steppes were far from satis-
factory. Khiva and Kokhand were usually hostile,

and Bokhara was not so friendly as she might be.
A flotilla on the Sea of Aral, and other moves, offen-
sive or defensive, kept the Khivans from open
warfare, but Khokand not only refused to make
concessions to the northern intruders, but became
their assailants within the limits occupied. The
connection of the Orenburg and Siberian lines was
looked upon as the fittest remedial measure. Eoma-
novsky informs us that, quot; while accepting this
decision, which must have inevitably led one way
or another to the subjection of Khokand, Bokhara,
and Khiva to our influence, the Eussian Govern-
ment was far from entertaining any ambitious
views.quot;

In accordance, then, with the approved scheme,
Russian troops took possession of the trans-Ili
region, built forts Yernoe and Kastik, north of the
Issik Lake and Ala Tau mountains ; destroyed the
Kokhand forts of Pishpek and Tokmak, and, later,
captured that of Yani Kurgan; and carried on
several important local military surveys, with a
view, if necessary, to further operations. These
were occurrences of the years between 1854 and
1864. Then began the work of actually connect-
ing the two Russian frontiers. A line was first
proposed to be drawn from about Fort Yernoe east
to Anlia Ata, the small Kara Tan range, and Julek
in the west; but this plan being overruled, an
advanced line was substituted, comprising Shem-

D

kand. To put the new proposal into execution, it
became necessary to take forcible possession of
Aulia Ata, the town of Turkistan, and Shemkand.
Troops were, therefore, again put in requisition, and
the end achieved. The despatches mention that at
Aulia Ata the enemy\'s loss was not known, but that
the inhabitants buried 307 bodies, and there were
390 wounded Khokandians; the Russians themselves
having only three men slightly wounded, and one
officer and one man bruised. On the two other
occasions the Russians lost, in all, one officer and
ten men killed ; but there is no mention made of
casualties on the other side.

The immediate consequence of these strong
measures was the publication of a circular mani-
festo addressed to the Embassies and Legations of
H.I. Majesty at foreign courts, and couched in the
most conciliatory and moderate language, explain-
ing how the force of circumstances rather than the
exercise of free will had brought about the results
above described, and the formation of a new
province aptly designated Russian Turkistan.

I will not attempt any long or detailed account
of subsequent operations. A glance at the map
will show that the line taken up and declared eight
years ago has been further extended to the south,
and, to repeat Captain Trench\'s appropriate expres-
sion, a quot;wedgequot; driven in, which, whatever its
nature or purport, can hardly imply permanence or

anything but disquiet and disorder. Suffice it to
summarize the main facts.

After the formation of Russian Turkistan, the
Bokhara and Khokand Uzbeks resumed their nor-
mal state of internecine strife. General Ohernaiev,
commanding Russian troops, and watching proceed-
ings from Shemkand, sent out a quot;corps d\'observa-
tion quot; towards Tashkand, and this detachment was
attacked by Khokandians ; whereupon the Russians
faced and defeated their assailants, and en revanche
stormed and captured their fort of Niaz Beg. This
led to further reprisals, and finally the capture of
the city of Tashkand. The Bokharians demanded
evacuation of the place by Chernaïev, and on the
General\'s refusal to comply with the demand,
stopped a Russian karavan, and imprisoned the
merchants who composed it. After further mea-
sures of retaliation on either side, the contending
parties arrived at a quasi-friendly understanding,
and a scientific and diplomatic mission was sent by
Russia to Bokhara. The Amir, however, when he
had given the delegates a fair reception, reverted
to the normal treachery of his race, and forcibly
detained them. Chernaïev marched out of Tash-
kand with a force, intending to move on Bokhara ;
but he was delayed at Jazak, west of Samarkand,
attacked, and compelled to retreat to the Sir River.
These events occasioned this General\'s recall from
Saint Petersburg, and the appointment of General

D 2

Eomanovsky as his successor, who reached Tash-
kand in March, 1866.

The new Commander-in-Chief and Military
Governor in Eussian Turkistan, under the Governor-
General of Orenburg, did not long remain quiet at
his post. He had been sent out, apparently, to act
as much as possible in a conciliatory spirit, but was
evidently not hampered by inexpedient restrictions.
The water communication established on the Sir
River enabled steamers to ascend from Fort Perovsky
to Chinaz below Tashkand, so that the new position
occupied was not without natural advantages in
regions so remote from the civilized world as the
Tartar Khanates. This facility of transport was
turned to account, and Romanovsky soon found
himself actively engaged with the Bokharians, not-
withstanding the smooth speeches with which he
was greeted by them. Marching out of Fort Chinaz
to an entrenched camp defended by their artillery
at Irjar, he stormed and carried their works, and
routed them with great slaughter. A few days
later he took the fortified and populous city of
Khojand, after a week\'s investment and bombard-
ment; thus severing, as it were, Kokhand from
Bokhara,—this place being intermediate to the
two. These operations were succeeded by a
lull; the Russian delegates were released and
returned, but there was no sign of settled peace.
Nor could there well be under the circumstances :

for Russia took Kholiandian towns and forts claimed
by Bokhara, and Bokhara felt- the blow to be one
levelled at her own power in Central Asia. That
this state of things gave rise to internal revolution
cannot be held surprising. An outcry was raised
against the ill-starred Amir by the Mullahs, or priest-
hood, and others, and the standard of rebellion was
raised by a bold and ambitious chief. General
Romanovsky had been replaced in Russian Tur-
kistan by General Kauftman, its Military Governor,
I believe, at the present hour; and the question of
administering the newly-acquired province, gt;s well
as policy to be pursued with the neighbouring chiefs
and people, engaged the serious attention of the
higher authorities.

General Kauffman entered into negotiations with
the Amir of Bokhara; but the excitement of his
subjects against the latter was such, that before a
treaty could be signed, a holy war wa^ proclaimed,
and the neighbouring Khans of Khiva and Khokand
called on to join the Bokharians. It was clear,
however, that nothing but a decisive victory could
produce an eflamp;cient alliance against the common
enemy, and Kauffman shattered their hopes of
unanimity and success by adding Samarkand to the
list of captured cities. Perhaps no place in the
wliole of Central Asia had been more universally
lauded and esteemed than this. It had become a
sort of by-word to the Oriental for all that was

poetical and luxurious in life, and, even in its com-
paratively fallen state, was, theoretically, to the
Uzbek what Baghdad is to the Arab, and Shiraz to
the Persian.

Finally, to the capture of Samarkand succeeded
that of Kette Kurgan, one of the strongest of
Bokhara forts, together with a series of sharp
decisive actions in which Generals Kauffman and
Abramoff contrived to rout their ill-disciplined
opponents. The Amir of Bokhara, driven to ex-
tremities, made peace with his conquerors, who
consummated the act by assisting him to quell
rebellion, and restoring to him the town of Karshi
which they had taken, on his behalf, from the
rebels, one being his own son. According to Cap-
tain Trench, in his carefal digest of the quot;Russo-
Indian Question,quot; Saiad Muzafar, the reigning Amir
of Bokhara at the particular period referred to,
quot; sent envoys to General Abramoff with presents, to
express his gratitude for the services he had ren-
dered him.quot;

If we are to accept without reserve the significant
paper forwarded to \' The Times \' from its Persian
correspondent on the 16th November last year, a
treaty of mutual obligations was signed by Adjutant-
General Kauffman on the part of Russia on the
29th January, 1868, and by Khuda Yar Khan,
ruler of Khokand, on the 13th February following,
by which Russian merchants and Russian merchan-

dise were to be treated with marked favour. In
like manner a treaty of commerce most advan-
tageous to Russian commerce, and guaranteemg
protection to Russian subjects, was accepted by
Saiad Muzafar, Amir of Bokliara, after a second
cession of a captured town was made to him in
1870. Of the Khan of Khokand the writer in the
\'Official Gazette\' says, that he quot;being our nearest
neighbour, was the first to realize the impossibility
of military resistance.quot; As to the Amir of Bokhara,
he quot;had convinced himself that we wished to live
with him in peace and amity, and had no desire to
extend our possessions at his expense.quot;

In respect of Khiva, the paper says, quot; All our
attempts to establish friendly intercourse with that
Khanate came to nothing, and, indeed, only served
to open our eyes to the hostile dispositions of the
Khiva Government. Yet all we asked for was that
the Russian subjects detained as prisoners at Khiva
should be set at liberty, that our traders should
have free access to the Khanate, and that they
should be protected while there. These, our just
and moderate demands, were either left altogether
unanswered, or on other occasions dechned, or made
the pretext for raising absurd pretensions. Matters
cannot possibly remain in this state ; the less so as
the maintenance of order and quiet in our Orenburg
Steppes is altogether dependent on our relations
with Khiva.quot;

The latest intelligence that we now possess is to
the effect that three Russian columns are to march
upon Khiva, one from Orenburg in the north, one
from the Caspian, and one probably from the east-
ward or some part of Russian Turkistan. The
most frequented and best known routes, and the
most easily traversed and shortest, are those taking
a north-easterly direction from the Caspian, on the
eastern shores of which are Russian forts or depots
at Tiuk Karagan, Bekter Liman, Krasnavodsky,
Mulla Kari, and the little Balkan at Chikishlar,
occupied so late as November, 1871; and down
to the extreme angle of the coast at Ashurada in
the Bay of Astrabad. The two last-named posts
must be held especially important, as they command
the mouths of the Atrak and Grurgan rivers, whence
pass the mountain chains and valleys marking the
Northern frontier of Persia, and opening out a ready
road to the east and south-east, wholly independent
of, and unconnected with, the mountainous districts
of the Oxus-sources which have recently engaged
the attention of geographers and politicians at home.

PERSIA.

Persia and Afghanistan are both, as it were,
geographically shut out of the Central Asian belt
represented by the Independent Khanates and
Chinese Tartary; but many geographers would, I
believe, be content to admit them as essential and
legitimate parts of Central Asia. What I have to

say of the former has either originated or been
confirmed by personal experience. Of the latter, I
can speak from a tolerably long acquaintance with
its people, and a recent journey into one of its
western districts.

I need not tell you how old a country is Persia,
how powerful and extensive she was in the days of
Ahasuerus, who reigned five centuries before the
Christian era, quot; from India even unto Ethiopia,-ewn-
an hundred and seven and twenty provinces ; quot; how
great at the Macedonian conquest. We must be
careful not to compare the quot;Persia,quot; distinguished
in ancient days as a mere province like the neigh-
bouring-Media, Carmania, and Susiana, with the
great Empire which bore that name, has borne it
from time immemorial, and bears it at this hour.*
Even under her Muhamadan rulers she has attained,
at times, a reputation of which Turkey in its palmy
days might be envious; but her splendour at such
periods has been rather in flashes; and to the
quot;came, saw, conqueredquot; of her modern warrior
kings might with equal propriety be added the
words quot; and lost again.quot;

Persia has of late years been striving to recover
something of the outlying regions she has held under
her monarchs of the Safavian dynasty, who reigned
from A.D. 1478 to 1722. But only the East has

* For the student of geography and ethnology it is hardly necessary
to refer to the valuable and comprehensive notes to Professor Kawlinson\'a
\' Herodotus,\' as the source of full information on these heads.

been open to her encroachments; and the great
moral roller of annexation set going by her Govern-
ment has been therefore confined in its movements
to one particular quarter, the Afghan and Baluch
frontiers. This, you will observe, is precisely the
same direction as that towards which Russia is
approaching from the far North, and its terminus,
irrespective of China and the far Bast, is British
India. On the West, Persia has a neighbour who,
even if not sufiiciently strong to resist her armies,
can shelter herself under the £egis of civilized
mediation. But Turkey is the stronger of the two,
and is, moreover, careful of having a strong Govern-
ment on her Asiatic frontiers. On the South, there
is the sea, that most effectual of all barriers to
Oriental aggression, except where there is a fleet, a
requirement barely in accordance with the genius of
the Persian people. On the North, as we have
shown, there is Russia, and Russia\'s move to the
Atrak River sets a bar to the extension of her
weaker neighbour\'s territory in that direction. Yet
it is not much more than one hundred years ago
that the Persian Empire extended to the Oxus.
Well might Purchas be supposed to have in view
the modern conquerors of Turkistan when he wrote
in the dawn of the seventeenth century:—quot; I know
not how Divine Providence seemeth to have set
those Scythian stints to the Persian proceedings;
those great monarches, both in the elder, and our

later world, ever finding those Northern windes
crossing, and in some dismall successe prohibiting
their ambition that way.quot; *

Before the famine of the last two years, Persia
was estimated to possess a population under five
millions. Of these a fifth were supposed to be the
inhabitants of large towns or cities, and nearly two-
fifths were Turks, Arabs, Kurds, and other members
of nomad tribes. The most populous city is Tabriz,
in the West; next in order are Tehran, Ispahan,
and Mashhad; none are, according to the returns,
equal in numbers to Hull or even Portsmouth.
The extent of the whole country is about 700 miles
from north to south, with 900 from east to west,
and the small proportion of seven inhabitants to the
square mile has been considered a correct representa-
tion. Some large tracts of Eastern Baluchistan,
found to have been possessed by Persia within the
last few years, may need inclusion in this rough
estimate; but on the other hand, the famine must
have sorely diminished the numbers of the sparse
population.

I have myself travelled over the country in nearly
every direction during the last eight or nine years.
In 1865 I landed at Enzeh in the south-west of the
Caspian, and proceeded, vid Eesht and Kazvin, to
Tehran, the capital. Thence, after a delay of four
months on duty, I moved on to Ispahan, and turning

* His \' Pilgrimage,\' p. 401. ,

eastward to Yezd and Kirman, continued my route
to the sea-coast through Baluchistan. From Enzeli,
on the Caspian to Charbar, the small fishing village
then reached, the distance may be roughly computed
at 1520 miles. Of this I performed 450 post, or
quot; chapar,quot; as it is called, 840 by marching stages on
my own horses, and 230 on a camel. The posting is
exciting, and not unpleasant for a day or two, but
becomes irksome without a companion or some strong
incentive to progress. Much, however, depends on
the horse ; for it may be quite as wearying to ride
20 miles on an expended animal as four times the
distance on four decent roadsters. You divide your
luggage with your servant, and may further dispose
of a pair of well-packed saddle-bags by using the
back of a third horse belonging to the post-horse
groom. Any distance between 60 and 100 miles a
day may be reckoned fair quot; chaparing.quot; I will not
describe the mysteries of camel driving. Once on
the back of the animal, and risen with him, you
have his nose-rope put into your hands, and you
soon discover what to do with it.

In 1867, I landed at Poti, on the Mingrelian
coast of the Black Sea, and finding my way, in a
troika, or open cart, drawn by three horses, to
Kutais, and thence, in a tarantasse, or springless
carriage, to Tiflis and the Persian frontier on the
Arras, I took post-horses again from the latter
point to Tehran. Thence, after a delay of more than

three months at the capital, broken by a ride to
Hamadan (Ecbatana) and back, I posted to Bagh-
dad in Turkish Arabia, and proceeded from that
city by water to Bombay. The total of the land
journey thus performed, including the Hamadan
visit, was 1740 miles, the whole of which (400
odd miles of Caucasian jolting excepted) was by
horse-post.

In 1870, I again passed through Persia, from the
Caspian to the Makran coast, reaching the sea on
this occasion at G-wMar, a port about 80 miles
east of Charbar, whither I had marched some years
before by land from Karachi, in Sind. I returned
by sea to Bushire, in the Persian Gulf, and from
Bushire to Tehran and Bnzeli, having performed
altogether a land journey of more than 2000 miles.

And in 1871-2, I made the journey from Bandar
Abbas, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, to the
Afghan frontier iii Sistan, thence moving to Mash-
had in Khorasan, thence to Tehran, and again to
Enzeli on the Caspian, a further distance of more

than 2000 miles.

On the two last occasions I marched with fellow-
countrymen, with excellent Persian servants, and
for three-quarters of the way with tents and pur-
chased horses, leading an out-door life of the
healthiest kind, save at the setting in of the hot
season, and one or two exceptional changes of
weather and temperature. If I rejoiced more than

my neighbours at exchanging the vicissitudes of
Persian travel for Russian steamers and Russian
railways, it may be that there was more mental
holiday in the one than the other.

I mention these somewhat egotistical facts not
with the irrelevant object of showing the amount of
mileage performed in so many hours, bnt to explain
how I have become personally acquainted with
Central Asia, or at least its outlying regions to the
south-west, and what opportunities I have had of
personally studying the character of the people.
Were it a question of riding long distances in short
spaces of time, or traversing and retraversing certain
sections of Persia, I could not pretend to achieve-
ments such as performed by my younger associates,
the officers of the Persian telegraph.

To summarize my own impressions of Persia as
a country, and its inhabitants as a people, I must
ask you to suppose a high land of the extent already
stated, dropping to the Caspian Sea for nearly one-
third of its northern frontier, and to the Persian
Gulf in illustration of its southern limit. The low-
lands naturally are the tracts near the sea-coast.
In the north they are covered with forest, and the
climate there is damp, feverish, relaxing ; in the
south they are dry and barren, and the winds are
hot and violent, yet a relief to the scorching summer
atmosphere. In the central high lands (and Persia
generally may be understood in this division) there

are few rivers, and the country is either composed
of parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening
plains, or of irregular mountain masses with fertile
valleys, basins, and ravines. For irrigation the
plains and valleys depend on the mountains, and at
the base of these are quot;kanats,quot; or underground
canals, which, with watercourses on the surface, are
scattered throughout the land. Yet where rain
and snow fail during the year, there is scarcity of
water; and where both are wanting there is distress.
The valleys and ravines are more fertile than the
plains, affording often bright, picturesque, and
grateful prospects, while the latter are for the most
part barren and sandy wastes, scored or streaked,
as it w^ere, rather than ornamented, with patches of
green oases. Forests are rare, and not dense ; nume-
rous gardens are commonly found in the neighbour-
hood of large towns, not cared for as with us, yet
pleasant in their wildness; and there are many
beautiful trees usually also near the centres of
population. Cities are not such as we should sup-
pose them, estimating from experience in Europe.
The passing stranger sees no ■ street in any of them
at all comparable to a respectable street or building,
as England, France, or Grermany rate structural
respectability. Blank mud walls and narrow, ill-
paved thoroughfares are the rule ; the windowed or
terraced front of a Persian house is for the inner
court or inner precincts of the abode, and not for

the world without. Some mosques are handsome,
some karavanserais solid, some bazars highly credit-
able to the designer and builder; but everything is
irregular, nothing is permanent, and architectural
ruin blends with architectural revival in the midst
of dirt, discomfort, and a total disregard of municipal
method. Even Constantinople and Cairo cannot
bear the ordeal of close inspection. Beautiful and
attractive as they may be from without—and the
first has a charm beyond description—they are
palpably deficient in completeness within; and yet
Tehran, Baghdad, Ispahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Shiraz,
these are far behind them in civilized construction
and order. As for the people, their physique is
intrinsically fine, but seldom fairly developed. As
a rule, the rich and middle classes, despite of abili-
ties and reasoning power, ruin their constitutions
by sensuality and dissipation; while the poorer
and working classes, with less power of reasoning,
but healthier tastes and habits, have barely suflQcient
sustenance to give nature fair play.

The crown implies despotism ; but the Shah, or
sovereign of the day, though wayward and capri-
cious enough to do startling acts, is rather cautious
than otherwise in the free exercise of his power.
The government of the land, if composed of men
of the old school, and pursuing its way after
the fashion of bygone years, admitting the corrupt
and venal practices of its predecessors, is strong.

because it is known to the country and outlying-
provinces, and because it rules in accordance with
custom of time immemorial. If composed of new
men, as at present, and ruling more or less abnor-
mally, it grasps at civilization as at something it
seeks to appropriate as well as appreciate; but is
better known to the foreign Legations at head-
quarters than through the length and breadth of the
land. Under no circumstances can the few favoured
individuals forming a Ministry be held to represent
the Persian people and Persian nation. These have
really no representatives west of Oriental Russia
and Turkey; and hence the national feeling towards
foreigners entertained in Persia, as a kingdom, can
only be partially known to our side of Europe.
England has for many years been on intimate rela-
tions with her, irrespectively of a little war and an
occasional rupture; first in pursuance of our policy
towards the first Napoleon, secondly in our endea-
vour to check Russian encroachment eastward. 1
am not prepared to say what has been substantially
gained in either case, but times have changed suffi-
ciently to cancel the old programme. Prance is no
longer a rival in the sense of hostility, while with
Russia we negotiate on her Central Asian move-
ments in the most unreserved and friendly manner.

At the present day there are Legations from
England, Russia, France, and Turke}^, at the Shah\'s
Court, and Persia sends her envoys to these fonr

E

Courts in return. Austria is to be added to tlie
list. It is the policy of the existing Government in
Persia to be on good terms with all, and the reigning
monarch gives no sign of individual reluctance in
accepting the arrangement. T have spoken of the
Ministers at the capital. To these should be added
the governors of provinces, men who in some cases
have won their position by money and influence, in
some cases by money alone, for the boon is to the
highest bidder. Then there is the priesthood, bigoted
and intolerant as a body, but with notable excep-
tions among individual members. The army is
fairly numerous, but poorly organized, boasting
excellent material, but insufficiently fostered and
developed. Persia is without a fleet, but she has
a maritime and chiefly alien population whence
sailors might readily be drawn.

Such then, in few words, is Persia,—a country
rising, perhaps, in political importance in relation to
Europe, but effete as regards her ancient Asiatic
prestige. Had there been time we might have
travelled over a great part of her dominions this
evening. As there is none to spare, I will content
myself with glancing at a passage of my recent diaries
of travel bearing upon the Turkomans, a people in
every sense belonging to Central Asia, and par
excellence to Khiva.

They are divided into nine quot;Khalk,quot; or people,
an Arabic word used in Baluchistan down to the

sea-coast. Of these nine divisions the Yamiit, the
Goklan, and the Tekke inhabit, or rather overrun,
the northern frontiers of Persia, or from the Caspian
eastwards, a line generally indicated by the Atrak
and Gurgan rivers, the chain of mountains north of
Mashhad, and town of Sarrakhs. All organized
marauders, mainly plundering with a view to human
spoil, while the quot; beats quot; of the Yaniut and Goklan
are the lower eastern shores of the Caspian and
valley of the Gurgan respectively, the Tekke moves
down from Merv and its neighbourhood into
Khorasan and Kaian. Their quot; chapaos,quot; or assaults,
are sudden and on open ground, so that flight with-
out dismounting is always practicable. The horses
are marvellously swift, and bear away captives as
well as captors without strain or effort.

In coming up from Sistan, last year, to Mashhad,
I heard many reports of local raids; and at a place
called quot; Seh Deh,quot; or the three villages, north of
Birjand, the capital of the Kaian district, we were
informed that fifty persons had just been carried off
from the vicinity by Turkoman robbers. The next
day we fell in with a poor dumb vagrant who signi-
fied to us by wild pantomimic gestures that he had
lost all but life and liberty at their hands. And,
indeed, for 260 miles, or from the town of Kaian to
Mashhad, and for 290 miles from Mashhad to
Shahrud, below the south-easternmost shores of the
Caspian, 550 miles in all, only seven marches, or

B 2

160 odd miles, could be considered free from Turko-
man invasion; and we had to be provided with
escorts of cavalry, infantry, and at times, even
artillery—for we had a real field-piece and the
recognized complement of gunners—to accomplish
this part of our journey. With the exception of the
irregular footmen, whose appearance was decidedly
incompatible with either spectacle or strategy, we
had no cause to be dissatisfied with our soldiers.
An amusing instance of what duties are assigned
and what orders imparted to some of the quot; sarbaz,quot;
or regulars, in Persia, may here be cited.

I had crept out of a small bell-tent one night, and
was returning thither to sleep, preparatory to an
early morning march, when my attention was
a rrested by observing the Persian sentry standing
with sword ported, watching my movements. The
arrangement, whatever it was, had clearly been
made for my special benefit; but as I did not
require such immediate surveillance, I thought I
would dispense with his services. My friend dared
not go ; he was under orders. There was no need,
however, for distress on his account. That he was
not really designed for heavy night duty was ap-
parent from his naïve reply to my further question-
ing as to the exact nature of his instructions.

quot; Sir, the \' Yawar \' (Major) ordered me to remain
only till you were asleep. Then, I was to proceed
to my quarters.quot;

Well, we passed through the Turkoman-infested
tracts without meeting the enemy, but experience of
the country served to convince me of its wretched
condition, subject to inroads of so disastrous a nature
as those described. It would be well if the Persian
G-overnment could stamp out the evil. Russia will
probably do so on her side ; she has already com-
menced with the Yamuts on the shores of the
Caspian; and a combined movement could hardly
fail of success. Whatever may be the true motives
and designs of Russia, she can hardly fail to com-
mand some sympathy from European States in
releasing her own subjects from slavery in Khiva or
elsewhere, and preventing a traffic in human beings
from being carried on with impunity in the west of
Central Asia.

AFGHANISTAN AND BALUCHISTAN.

There now remain Afghanistan and Baluchistan,
to complete our survey of the regions between
Europe and British India. As parts of Central Asia
they hardly demand a detailed examination.

Our geographies inform us that Afghanistan is
bounded on the north by Turkistan, east by Hin-
dustan, south by Baluchistan, and west by Persia;
that in the direction of east and west it stretches
over 500, and north and south over between 400 and
450 miles; that a large portion consists of alternate
rocks, mountains, and deserts •, that its rivers partake

of the nature of torrents, being nearly all fordable
during the greater part of the year, but that the
Kabul, Helmand, and Farah are noble streams;
that its climate is, in the higher lands, very cold,
and in the plains intensely hot, though from its
general elevation it is colder than Western Asia,
and much colder than Southern Asia. The area is
estimated at 220,000 square miles ; but these figures
must have undergone a considerable change during
the revolutions of recent years. Especially notable, as
its geographical features, are the mountains belong-
ing to the Hindu Kush system in the north and
north-east, the high Suliman range dividing it from
India on the east, and the valleys and mountains on
the south near the Kelat border.

The origin of the Afghans is a moot point, and
involves an inquiry of much ethnological interest.
What affinity, if any, they bear to the Arians and
Arachosians, whose territories they occupy, or
whether they are all or for the most part settlers
brought in by conquest or circumstances, we cannot
now discuss. Before the successful invasion of
Persia in 1722, their nation had been, according to
an author of the period, quot; unknown to Europe, and
scarce known to Asia, where it lies in a corner.quot;*
When they had overthrown an illustrious dynasty of
Persian kings they became suddenly notorious ; but

* Father Kriisinsky, translated by Father Da Cerceau, \' tlislory of
the late Eevolutions of Persia,\' 2nd Edition. London, 1733.

tlieir notoriety had no permanent honour. In a very
few years, and after two short incomplete reigns, they
were found incompetent to perform the task taken
in hand, and hurled back ingloriously to their own
country. Their tribes are numerous, and tribe dis-
tinctions kept up with scrupulous care. A wild,
warlike people brought up in an atmosphere of
deceit and suspicion, it is difficult to surmise what
subjects they would prove under a civilized Govern-
ment; but for my own part I should certainly
prefer the Persians as soldiers or servants, and as
companions.

Afghanistan, as a consolidated kingdom, dates
only from about 125 years ago, when it was founded
by Ahmad Shah, Abdali. This chief, taking occa-
sion to break off allegiance to Persia, on the death
of his acknowledged sovereign, Nadir Shah, and
failing to influence the succession in that country,
retired to Kandahar with his numerous followers,
and constituted that city the capital of a new State,
comprising also within its limits Kabul and Herat.
He died after a glorious reign of twenty-five years,
remarkable for several invasions of India, the last of
which might have given him the throne of Delhi, had
his ambition so willed. He was succeeded by his
eldest son, Taimur, who transferred his capital from
Kandahar to Kabul, and reigned twenty years. On
Taimur\'s death in 1793, his third son, Shah Zaman,
became king, but his own weakness and the turbu-

lent rivalry of his brothers caused internal revolu-
tion, the fall of the dynasty, and eventually the
splitting up of the consolidated kingdom into chief-
doms, of which Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, were
the most important, the last being at one time quite
independent of the other two*

For a long series of years the country was a prey
to family feuds and party rebellions; and in 1839
British troops crossed the frontier to support a
certain candidate to power. That step was preg-
nant with disaster, and although the massacre of our
troops at Kabul was avenged by an after expedition
of no common repute, it must be generally admitted
that the prestige of England suffered, at least for a
time, from the nature of her interference in the
affairs of her Asiatic neighbour. At present the
political horizon looks brighter, and Afghanistan
turns towards our rulers with an evident increase of
confidence. There is now, moreover, under the
auspices of the Amir Shir Ali Khan, an appearance
of territorial consolidation; and should the latest
policy of the Indian Government prove successful,
an Afghan monarchy may be revived, if not equal
in splendour, at least superior in civilization, to that
of Ahmad Shah.

The late Sir Henry Pottinger, who travelled in

J Appendix to \'Historical Memoir on Shikarpur,\'printed in Part 11.
Miscellaneous Information on the Proyince of Sind.\'-Bombay Govern-
ment Records, No. VII,, New Series.

Baluchistan in 1810, was for nearly half a century
the great, almost the only, authority on that country;
but within the last ten or fifteen years it has been
opened out by more recent explorers. Shortly
before Pottinger wrote, the country was under the
rule of a single powerful chief, a nominal tributary
to the Afghan king, as he once had been to Persia ;
but in the hands of his son and successor the despot-
ism gradually waned; many petty chiefs threw off
allegiance, and the confederac}^, which had been a
strong one so long as its component parts were held
firmly together, fell to pieces when the grip relaxed,
and the master influence was gone. The boundaries
of Baluchistan may still be considered to be Af-
ghanistan north, the sea south, India and Persia
east and west respectively, and the whole area not
less than 160,000 square miles; but a line must be
run down the centre to mark off the later acquisi-
tions of Persia; and to find the country which still
belongs to the Brahui Khan of to-day, we must
look east of the meridian 62°, instead of 58°, accord-
ing to the position given by all except the newest
maps.

This last-mentioned territory touches our Indian
frontier from the plains above Shikarpur in Sind,
along the mountain ranges called Hala, to the sea
west of Karachi. It is in parts very mountainous,
in parts very desert. The maritime tracts between
Karachi and the Persian frontier include the country

of the quot; Ichthyophagoi,quot; and the modern name
Makran bears a strange similarity to the Persian
word quot;Mahi-khoran,quot; a literal translation of the
Greek plural word*

Having myself passed over the utmost length of
Makran in the course of duty, entering it twice from
the Persian, and once from the Indian, side, I have
no hesitation in pronouncing it to be one of the
most desolate and arid of regions. As a rule, the
coast is a flat sandy waste ; but here and there the
inland chains of mountains throw out a spur towards
the sea, and a few abrupt cliffs, laved by the salt
waters, block up the traveller\'s path, and drive
him to the interior. There are no less than twenty-
seven quot;khors,quot; or mouths of temporary rivers,
which come down suddenly after rain, and disappear
as rapidly as they rise.

The people of the country are divided by Pottin-
gerf into two great classes, Brahui and Baluchi,
between which he finds there is no affinity of lan-
guage or physique. Kelat, the ruling chiefdom in
Eastern Baluchistan, or that half which is not under
Persian supremacy, is peopled mostly by Brahuis.
Like its larger and more important neighbour
Afghanistan, although it has been through a phase of
hostility towards us, its ruler and people are now
our allies, and its relative position to British India

* \'Brief History of Kelat,\' by Major Leech, in Asiatic Society\'s
Journal, 1843.

t \'Travels in Baluchistan and Sinde,\'Longman, 1816.

may reasonably place it in the category of protected
States.

Having thus taken a cursory glance at the coun-
tries below that Central Asian belt which may be
comprised in the designation of quot;Turkistan,quot; as
well as at the Khanates, which it would be mockery
to characterize any longer as quot; Independent,quot; I will
endeavour to impart a practical meaning to our
inquiries by bringing before you two or three of the
more prominent routes to India from Khiva, Bok-
hara, and Khokand.

From Khiva, whatever way we proceed, the dis-
tance is great for a large moving body. The route
through Herat, Kandahar, and Quetta would, perhaps,
be the shortest and best; but it lies through Afghani-
stan and Kelat, and only with the active assistance
of those States could it be accomplished. From
Astrabad, at the south-east corner of the Caspian, to
Karachi, there are roads through Sistan, and thence
not only by Kandahar, but by Eastern Baluchistan.
These might be made available if Persia chose to
make them so, as she has done for her own troops;
not otherwise. She can ■ bring her soldiers to
Peshin in the Kej valley, within 400 miles of
Karachi; but the distance from the Caspian would
exceed 2000 miles, and many marches are in a
complete desert.

From Bokhara and Khokand there are roads
throuo-h Kabul, or Kashgar in the far east. The

first would necessitate a continuance by the Ehaibar
Pass to Peshawar, or by the Bolan Pass to Shikar-
pur. The difficulties of the Khaibar have been
proved by our own troops; they would be great for
any troops, except these had a common cause and
object with the mountain tribes around ; and if such
contingency were to arise, there might be left to the
new-comers a choice of passes. The Bolan is not
new to us, and is one much used by our Kabul and
Bokhara-going Indian merchants. The second, or
Kashgar road, is now engaging marked attention in
a commercial rather than strategical point of view;
and whether communications to that town and to
Yarkand be carried on through the Pamir high-
lands, or through Leh, or both, in either case over
immense elevations, must remain a question for the
future to decide.

On commencing the present paper, I had pur-
posed to seek, in contradistinction to the political
and general geography of Central Asia, a separate
argument, as it were, in the Central Asian Question.
But even had your patience not been tried by a
longer exposition, under the former head, than
originally contemplated, I think that an understand-
ing on the position and character of the States
between Europe and British India will suffice to
remove all doubt as to the nature of the question
thence arising. If Russia ask herself what is her
next move, and whither do her conquests tend,

England may, with equal propriety, ask how the
late Russian moves should affect her present policy,
and how may the coming moves affect the future
peace and security of her Indian empire ?

Each of these is literally a quot;question.quot; The
two together, and, it may be, many more ambigui-
ties combined, make up the general question.

So far as England has moved in the matter, she
has drawn out a line of frontier north of Afghani-
stan, which Russia has agreed to respect. This
frontier takes within the territories of the Amir
Shir Ali,—

1st, Badakhshan and Wakhan, from the Sari
Kul on the east, to the junctions of the Gokcha and
Oxus. 2nd, Kunduz, Khulm, and Balkh, defined
liy the line of the Oxus prolonged to Khojah Saleh
on the Bokhara road. 3rd, The districts of Akcha,
Saripul, Mainianeh, Shibberghan, and Andkuhi,
defined by a line abandoning the left bank of the
Oxus, and taking a south-westerly direction till it
joins the already recognized Perso-Afghan frontier
west of Herat.

And she has, by her officers employed during
the last two years and a half, drawn out a line of
demarcation between Persia and Afghanistan, in
continuation of the Herat frontier line, as also a
line of demarcation between Persia and Kelat, for
future understanding of boundaries in Baluchistan;
which two settlements should supply one continuous

line of frontier for Eastern Persia from Herat to
the sea.

These measures, like all public measures, are
open to discussion, and the question of their expe-
diency or otherwise is also further illustrative of what
is popularly called the quot; Central Asian Question.quot;

In conclusion, I wilh venture to add a short
remark about travel, and a shorter one about
diplomacy. There may not, improbably, be present
here both travellers and diplomatists of the future ;
and if there be, there is just a chance that what I
have to say may not be quite valueless to, or quite
unremembered by them.

To many minds there is something very attrac-
tive in travel; and if we only possess a natural
spirit of inquiry and a body unafflicted by ache or
disease, the more we travel in early years, the more
does the taste grow upon us. The cases are, more-
over, not few in which the physical sufferer derives
benefit from change of air and scene, even when
obtained at the cost of a long journey from home.
But I think it will be admitted that more people
travel from necessity or for pastime than to add to
the knowledge of the mass, and a great many of
those do not even take the trouble to jot down their
experiences except for the commonplace purpose of
personal gain or personal satisfaction. Doubtless,
that many a traveller, mute and inglorious so far as

posterity and the world are concerned, would have
given to the public a book, or at least a pamphlet
or magazine\' article, had he been pressed by a pub-
lisher, or judiciously goaded by a friend ; but then,
again, why should publishers press for manuscripts
except where pecuniary profit is clear ? and as for
friends, how few there are whose judgment in these
cases is unimpeachable! My own travel has been
mainly a work of necessity ; but its experience has
in a great degree warranted me in urging travel
upon others as a means of combining knowledge
rnbsp;and amusement ; the first to be stored in memory

and a note-book, for the use of those whom it is
inbsp;likely to benefit most, the second as a preventive

of sickness of mind and body, and a healthy stimu-
lant to the worthy use of time.

As for quot;Diplomacyquot; I fear the word is often
misunderstood both at home and abroad, and trans-
\'nbsp;lated somewhat metaphorically as double-dealing,

instead of in its more literal and professional sense.
Surely this interpretation should be rejected in the
!nbsp;nineteenth century in every quarter of the globe !

A great deal has been often said of the training
;nbsp;required for this profession, and especially for

inbsp;dealing with Orientals. Knowledge of the language

is, of course, useful, in the East, and knowledge
of men and manners, everywhere ; but beyond this,
Inbsp;I think the training of an English gentleman

supplies the best and highest diploma for qualifica-

lion to treat with foreigners as with one\'s own
!\'Ountrymen. And the more astute or cunning our
opponent, the more dangerous and treacherous his
fencing—the better foil in our hands is Honesty.
Tact is invahmble, but its use need not be deroga-
tory. It may sound like a platitude ; but i believe
It an important truth, that the highest diplomatic
tact is that which makes success the result of
untiring and uncompromising straightforwardness,
whether exercised in the salons of civihzed Europe,
or on the sandy wastes of Khiva and Khorasan.

FINIS.

LOKDOK; PEINTKD BV EDWARD STANPOKD, 6 AKD 7. CHA KING CKOSs.

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