the campaign in Armenia against Mukhtar Pasha in the previous year, was selected to command it. With Lomakin as his second in command, Lazareff set out at the head of his force-a force greatly in excess of that which had started in 1877-from Tchikishlar on the 18th June. His plan was to inflict a severe defeat on, and to dominate the spirit of the Turkomans before attempting to make a settlement. But at Tchát-i-Atrak, about midway to Kizil Arvat along the Persian frontier, Lazareff sickened and died. Lomakin, who succeeded him, and who shared his views, pushed on then to Kizil Arvat, and thence beyond Bámi, to a point within six miles of Dengli Tepé, a square built fort occupied by the Turkomans with their whole available force. On the 9th of September Lomakin marched against that not very formidable place. After a desperate battle, which lasted all day, and in which up to 5 P.M. they had all the advantage, the Russians were repulsed, and fell back, beaten, baffled, and humiliated, to the Caspian! They were unable even to reach that base before December had well set in !

< But beaten, baffled, and humilitated though she had thrice been on this line, Russia adhered to her purpose with a steadfastness and pertinacity characteristic of her whole policy. Russia never surrenders a firmly-rooted idea. In 5 1880 she made preparations, on a still larger scale than before, to renew the attack on the line between Akhal and Askabad. To command the new expedition she summoned the man who enjoyed the highest reputation in her army, a man who possessed a European reputation for dash and daring, the leader of her war party, the famous Skobeleff.

Skobeleff possessed advantages which had been denied to Lomakin. In the spring then of 1880, the Turkoman chief who had led his countrymen to victory after victory, who in the course of his brilliant career had defeated three

nations, the Khivans, the Persians, and the Russians, the illustrious Nur Verdi Khán, had died. He had left no successor at all equal to himself. Whilst therefore, in 1880, the Russians, alike more numerous and more experienced in the warfare of the desert than in 1879, were led by the best general of whom their country could boast, the Turkomans had no leader who inspired them. with the confidence which, in 1879, had gone far to enable them to repulse their foes.

He made

The plan devised by Skobeleff proved that he had completely mastered all the intricacies of the task which had been committed to his hands. Joined by a small body of men who marched from Khiva to the western border of the Tekke oasis, he marched with a select division, of which those men formed a part, from the Attrek to the Akhal oasis at Bámi, about 180 miles from the Caspian and about 80 from the spot where the Turkomans had congregated, a fort called Geok Tepé, somewhat to the north of the scene of the disaster of the previous year. He then proceeded to fortify this post, covering it with intrenchments, with the idea of making it the base for a further advance. of it in fact what Wellington made of the lines of Torres Vedras. Within the lines thus formed Skobeleff proceeded to store provisions and supplies, turning a deaf ear to the solicitations of those who pressed him to avenge without further delay the defeat of his predecessor. These supplies came from the Volga, from the Caucasus, and from Persia, and were conveyed by camel trains from Krasnovodsk. Several months were employed by Skobeleff in these necessary preliminaries. <At length, in January 1881, he advanced, attacked the children of the desert in their intrenchments at Geok Tepé, stormed their position, slaughtered thousands of the defenders, and pursued the remainder beyond Askabad. This time the rule of terror

did its work. It cowed the survivors into absolute and complete submission. >

The usual political consequences followed. In the month of May of the same year the Czar issued an ukase by which he declared that the Transcaspian territory, the abode of the Akhal Tekkes, was annexed to Russia. >

Nor was Russia worse served by her administrators than by her generals. In an incredibly short space of time, lines of rails, intended during the Russo-Turkish war for the use of the army of the Danube, and which had since been lying idle in Southern Russia, were transported to the eastern shore of the Caspian and were at once utilized in the newly acquired territories. So thoroughly in earnest were the officials, that before the conclusion of 1881 the line had been completed as far as Kizil Arvat, 144 miles from the Caspian. It is a remarkable fact; worthy of appreciation, that at that very moment the British Indian Government were selling the rails which had been brought at considerable expense to Quetta for the purpose of connecting Sibi with that important frontier fort, and that fort with Kandahar !

In a lecture of remarkable clearness and ability delivered at the Royal United Service Institution on the 16th May, 1884, Sir Edward Hamley, after describing the progress of Russia in the Transcaspian regions up to the period of Skobeleff's success at Geok Tepé in 1881, proceeded to point out how the Russians, never losing sight of the definite aim of their policy, had, whilst passing on the railway from the eastern shores of the Caspian to Kizil Arvat and beyond Kizil Arvat, been at the same time careful to unite to the empire by the same iron band the Caucasian shores of the same. After pointing out the advantages of Baku on the Caucasian shore, as producing an inexhaustible quantity of fuel for railway consumption, and

informing his audience that at the end of 1882 the railway of the Caucasus was continued from Tiflis to Baku, with a branch to Batoum, a more convenient and healthy port than Poti, Sir Edward thus drew the following conclusions as to the advantages to be derived from the new route thus constituted :-" From Odessa," he continued, "troops can be conveyed across the Black Sea to Batoum in two days, from thence by rail to Baku in twenty-four hours, another twenty-four hours would see them landed at Krasnovodsk, transferred in lighters to the shallow water to Michaelovsk, and the entrainment of them begun, when the journey to Kizil Arvat, the present but by no means the final terminus of the Transcaspian line, occupies twelve hours.

"The communication with Odessa, of course, admits of the reinforcement of the Caucasian army to any extent. But the Caucasus itself forms an effectively independent territory for beginning a campaign. It is no wild, barbarous region, but a country rich, well-watered, and now thoroughly Russian, and its capital, Tiflis, in the advantages of its site and climate, its public and private buildings, and its establishment as the head-quarters of an army, may stand comparison with nearly any city in the Czar's dominions. The war strength of the army of the Caucasus is 160,000

men.

"The efficacy of the other channel of communication. between Russia and the Caspian has also been largely increased of late years. Besides four lines of railway to points on the Volga, complete communication between the Neva and that river is afforded by the canal system of the country. And to obviate the interruption occurring in the winter months, a line of railway is projected from a point where many lines from Russia converge, in Cis-Caucasia, to Petrovsk on the Caspian, and thence along its shore to Baku. You will therefore probably agree that there is not

E

at present much difficulty, and that such as there is will shortly disappear, either in bringing reserves and stores, to any extent, on the lines from Northern Russia, and also from Southern Russia, to the Caspian, or in conveying the army of the Caucasus with its stores from that sea to the Transcaspian railway, and along that line to Kizil Arvat. That terminus is 135 miles from Askabad, to which place the railway will doubtless be carried. Askabad is 186 miles from Sarakhs and Sarakhs is 202 from Herát, only a few miles more than the distance from York to London." I make no apology for this quotation, for the words of which it is composed present in the fairest and clearest light to the reader the immense advantages which Skobeleff's victory at Geok Tepé, and the consequent annexation of the Transcaspian territory, has procured for Russia. That territory is united now by the speediest of all modern modes of communication with St. Petersburg, with Moscow, and with all the great arsenals of Russia. That conquest brought not an isolated and outlying portion of Russia-but the whole Russian empire bound into one solid mass by the iron road, as near to Herát, within a few miles as the most advanced outposts of British India!* As we go on we shall see that the evil did not stop there!

Nor was the power to concentrate an irresistible force upon the furthest point of its Transcaspian territory the only advantage gained for his country by Skobeleff at Geok Tepé. Leaving absolutely out of consideration the prestige, the moral influence-though that is a factor which must enter largely into the calculation of a statesman when he has to deal with Eastern peoples-there remain two distinct material advantages, both of which will affect very powerfully any struggle which may occur in Afghánistán or

* Kizil Arvat is 523 miles from Herát; the British outposts are 514.