rebuked, and have to pay the penalty of death for Russian disgrace.

As to Afghanistan, the sulky attitude of Dost Mohammed Khan towards England very soon became the cause of the first Afghan war, in which England spent many thousands of lives and over £20,000,000 of money. Kabul and Kandahar were taken, but had to be evacuated; and the disastrous failure, owing not so much to the want of military valour of the British soldiers, but rather to the utter want of knowledge how to deal with Asiatics, imparted the first stain of shame to the English military character in Asia. It is exceedingly interesting to notice how all the personal valour and courage, all the heroic self-immolation, rare circumspection, and ability of single individuals, are rendered of no avail by the short-sightedness of leading politicians, of wavering statesmen, and of an irresolute Government. The news of the English defeat in Afghanistan spread all over Central Asia, and was the first deadly blow to the prestige of Great Britain in the East. The Khans, Emirs, and Begs exulted with joy over the victory of their co-religionists, the Afghans. Mohammedan barbarism thought itself again safe against the threatening attacks of our western culture, and in delusive blissfulness quite overlooked the black clouds gathering in the north

-clouds which cast their gloomy shadows, even at that time, as far as the banks of the Yaxartes, and were fraught with those unmistakable signs that prognosticated the devastating tempest sweeping over Central Asia two decades later.

CHAPTER II.

THE CONQUEST OF THE THREE KHANATES.

RUSSIA, after having subdued the Kirghises; and reached, on the left bank of the Yaxartes, the outlying northern districts of Khokand, had in the meantime fully prepared all the ways and means of an attack upon the three khanates. During my stay in Bokhara in 1863, I heard vague rumours only of the Russian approach towards Tashkend. "The formerly sweet waters of the Yaxartes river," said a pious Mohammedan to me, "have been utterly spoiled and rendered undrinkable, for the Russians have watered their horses and dipped their abominable idols into it; but as to the country of Khokand, they will never be able to conquer it, for the glorious spirit of the holy Khodja Ahmed Yessevi at Hazreti-Turkestan is on the watch, and will never allow the infidels to pass into the region of Islam." Unhappy dreamer! He and his countrymen had quite forgotten that the poor Khodja Ahmed Yessevi was but a doubtful champion against the adventurous General Tchernayeff, who, with but two thousand men, not only trampled upon

the grave of the said saint, but succeeded also in capturing Tashkend, the great commercial centre of the north of the khanates in 1864, and defeating an enemy at least twenty times as numerous as his daring companions in arms.

It was during the very year I arrived in London that the news of the capture of Tashkend had reached Europe. A few weeks before that I happened to meet Lord Palmerston, and I consider it no small distinction to have been listened to with attention by this greatest English statesman of modern times. After having given to him the outlines of my stirring adventures, and related all that I had heard of the approach of Russia, adding, at the same time, remarks upon the comparative ease with which the Muscovite would advance towards the Oxus, the noble lord said amongst other things, that we Hungarians, like the Poles, had a hot brain, and that many generations must pass before Russia would be able to pull down the Tartar barrier and approach the country intervening between India and Bokhara. I very much doubt whether the great English statesman seriously meant what he stated to me, for his careful inquiries into sundry details belied his seeming indifference. At all events he did not continue with that Olympian calmness with which he had tried to impress me at first, and shared by no means in the indifference

exhibited by English statesmen I occasionally met after the publication of the Russian circular of Prince Gortschakoff in 1864. It must be borne in mind that Russia, fully conscious of the importance of the step she had taken, condescended to give explanations even without being asked. The aforesaid circular, intended to appease any eventual anxiety, related in a cleverly written memorandum how the Government of the Czar had been compelled, against his own will and without any hope of material benefit, to annex the country of the Kirghises; and how these Kirghises, unruly fellows, could be only governed and ruled from a point where the cultivable region might secure a firm footing for the invader, and afford the best opportunity to check disorder and lawlessness.

In that famous circular it was said that the following reasons had mainly precipitated the conquest of Tashkend :—

"1. It has been deemed indispensable that the two fortified lines of our frontiers, one starting from China and extending as far as the Issyk Kul lake, the other from the Aral Sea along the Syr-Darya, should be united by fortified points, in such a manner that all our posts would be in a condition to eventually sustain each other, and not to allow any interval to remain open through which the nomadic tribes might effect with impunity their invasions and depredations.