Czar, and who was fated now to bitterly expiate his Russian proclivities. Of course sentimentality, unknown in politics, had never a home in St. Petersburg, and Russia, disregarding all previous promises relating to the frontier points, thought proper to annex as much as she could, and by using the device of Prince Bismarck, namely, "Beati possidentes," to fix a line wherever favourable circumstances afforded the best opportunity.

Apart from this move to the south, on the banks of the Heri-Rud, Russia had begun simultaneously to push on towards that portion of the Murghab river which was the indisputable possession of the Afghans, namely, to Penjdeh, in order to secure a firm footing in the cultivable regions of the Paropamisus outskirts, after having crossed the desert from Merv to the last-named place. The plan as to this portion of Afghanistan had already become ripe in 1884, for, after the successful termination of the comedy of voluntary submission at Merv, vague rumours were spread about concerning an equally voluntary submission of the Sarik Turkomans living in and around Penjdeh, and, in fact, certain elders of the said tribes presented themselves at Ashkabad, and, after having obtained presents from General Komaroff, deposited their oaths of fidelity to the Czar, without the slightest right, however, of representing their own nation, as

we afterwards learned. To Russia this farce was sufficient to make her come forward with claims upon Penjdeh. Major Alikhanoff, entrusted with the occupation of Penjdeh, tried several times to get possession of the place, and having found there in June, 1884, a strong Afghan garrison, and seeing that the Sarik had not the slightest notion of the so-called voluntary submission to the Czar, for they were ready to attack the Cossacks in company with the Afghans, he saw himself compelled to retire upon Merv, without giving up, however, the hope of a future successful annexation.

Sir Peter Lumsden, together with the members of the Delimitating Commission, on seeing how totally different the state of things on the spot was from what he had reason to expect in London, and finding how difficult it was to carry out the instructions given to him by the Liberal ministry, at once entered upon a lively exchange of despatches with his superiors, and pointed out that there must be something wrong about the whole question of frontier rectification. We, the distant lookers-on, felt from the beginning a distrust of the whole concern. The writer of these lines was one of the first who ridiculed the whole affair of future delimitation, in a paper published in the National Review of November, 1884. He styled the whole thing one of the most ridiculous farces

ever played in politics, and concluded the abovementioned paper by saying: "For whilst public opinion in England is lulled by these palliatives into the torpor of security, Russia has the finest opportunity, backed by this illusory frontier-line, to prepare herself in silence for that leap which will deal her death-blow to Great Britain, great and powerful as she still is at this moment." A few weeks later, the same writer, feeling his patience exhausted at the designedly dilatory steps of Russia, drew the attention of the British public, in a letter addressed to the editor of The Times, to the ignominious forbearance shown by the British Cabinet in permitting the Commission to be kept waiting for months, camped beneath the inclement sky of the Paropamisan winter, and explained that he discovered an intentional insult in the fact of the British Lion being made to antechamber at the Russian Bear's.

This letter had the desired effect upon the English public. The great majority of the English press joined in reproaching the Government for its unjustifiable and undignified forbearance. Questions were repeatedly put in the House of Commons, the diplomatic correspondence between London and St. Petersberg grew quicker and more excited, assuming a tone of asperity, and it was then only that the question began to show itself in its true and genuine shape,

betraying, at the same time, the serious importance of the claims put forward by Russia. First of all we got to hear that the cabinet of St. Petersburg had made up its mind to form a strictly ethnical, and not a geographical frontier, being the very cabinet which, eleven years before, had said in the famous circular of Prince Gortschakoff in 1864, that she had a strong belief in "les conditions géographiques et politiques qui sont fixes et permanentes." This was, at all events, a very strange obliviousness in the matter of principles ; an obliviousness quite suited, however, to the actual purposes in view; for, whilst on the banks of the Yaxartes the frontier line between Tashkend fully justified the adoption of a geographical method, the circumstances on the Murghab were of quite a different nature, and necessitated the adoption of the ethnical method instead, for the simple reason that Russia, anxious to get at the cultivable region of Afghanistan, had to put forward her claim upon the Sarik population. It was announced in the usual high-sounding phrases, that in order to tranquillise the whole Turkoman country, it had become unavoidably necessary that not a single member of that family should be left out, for should the Sarik in the east, and the Salor in the south, remain independent, or under Afghan rule, their predatory habits would cause disturbance, and highly aggravate, nay, render impossible

a settled rule in Merv, and in the Tedjend oasis. What very strange logicians these Russians are! Ten years ago, when reducing the Yomut tribe, they did not entertain the slightest scruple at leaving a large portion of that people under the Persian sway, and, satisfied with the geographical frontier of the Gurgan, the idea of an ethnical frontier did not so much as enter their minds. But, good gracious! times and circumstances change. Now, the ethnical frontier had come to the fore, and seemed to them the only sound basis for an arrangement. At all events a ludicrous idea, for whilst the geographical frontier is steady and immovable, the ethnical one, based upon the roving habits of nomadic and plundering Turkomans, is of a pre-eminently shifting character, but exactly suiting Russia, who was also bent upon shifting the limits of her possessions towards Afghanistan, and endeavouring to get as near as possible to the roads which would bring her the more quickly to the Gate of India.

Nearly four months now elapsed, spent in continual discussion, carried on partly between the two Cabinets, partly between the press of the countries. What the contents of these despatches may have been, we, uninitiated mortals, have no right to inquire into ; but with reference to the enunciations of the press, we have seen that the question mainly turned on the