On the 1st of April the British envoy reached the desert of the Kuzzaks, a beardless race, living almost wholly on the milk of sheep, mares, and camels, with occasionally a little camel's flesh salted and boiled. Their dislike of 'villanous saltpetre' is not inferior to the aversion avowed by Sir John Falstaff, and of artillery they entertain a superstitious dread. Men and women dress alike. Ignorant, or careless, of the use of linen, they content themselves with a mantle of the half-tanned skin of a sheep or young camel, with the wool turned inside, and sometimes of the skin of a horse, with the hair outside. The women are said to be too red and too robust, and, 'perhaps,' the ugliest in the world.

In ten days more the Caspian was sighted, but not a single sail broke the monotony of the blue expanse, for quite recently the Toorkomans had set fire to every Russian vessel upon which they could lay their hands. Rejecting the proposition of his treacherous guide that he should purchase a boat and a couple of Russian slaves, and make for an island about five hours' sail from the shore, where he would be certain to find shipping, Major Abbott resolved to push on to the Russian outpost, about three marches distant. The headman of a small Kuzzak tribe, in league with the Chawdor Chieftain, undertook to conduct him, but in the darkness of the second evening the envoy was suddenly assaulted, badly wounded, and beaten almost to death. His servants also were maltreated, and his property divided among his brutal assailants. His life, however, was saved by the interposition of the Kuzzak's brother, but for many days he was dragged from one encampment to another, until he was released through the marvellous fidelity of a messenger despatched by Major Todd from Herat, who had started from Khiva, without stopping to refresh himself after his forty days' journey, and, as if dropped from heaven, arrived at a moment when Major Abbott's life hung by a thread.

The envoy was then safely guided to Fort Nuov Alexandrofski, into which he was admitted after some comical precautions on the part of the commandant, and ultimately forwarded to Orenberg, whence the gallant, if unfortunate, General Perofski sent him on to St Petersburg. Though robbed, bruised, and crippled for life in his right hand, Major Abbott did not the less exert himself to accomplish the object of his humane and hazardous mission. In the following year his preliminary labours enabled his successor, Captain, afterwards Sir Richmond, Shakespear, to proceed to St Petersburg in charge of 400 Russian slaves, who were exchanged for an equal number of imprisoned Oozbegs and Toorkomans.

CHAPTER X.

KHIVA.

KHIVA: HISTORICAL NOTICE-NATURAL PRODUCTIONS-THE SAXAUL-POPULATION-THE CAPITAL CITY-THE KHAN AND HIS WIVES-EXECUTIONSPERSIAN CAPTIVES-CARAVAN ROUTES—URGHUNJ, OLD AND NEW-HAZARASP-KUNGRAD CAPTAIN CONOLLY'S JOURNEY FROM ASTRABAD TO HERAT -MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE TOORKOMANS-MERV.

THE extensive and fertile oasis in the midst of the sandy deserts of Central Asia, known in these days as the Khanat of Khiva, was called by the Greeks Chorasmia, and by the Arabs Khwarezm. The Chorasmians were of the Aryan race, and their contingent to the army of Xerxes was equipped precisely in the Bactrian fashion. It is probable that Chorasmia formed a portion of the short-lived Greco-Bactrian monarchy, and it certainly passed under the domination of the White Huns, from whom it was subsequently wrested by the Toorks. In the legendary history of Persia, all the country enclosed between the Oxus and Jaxartes, between the Caspian Sea and China, is designated Tooran, from Toor the son of Feridoon, a prince of the Paishdadian dynasty, whose founder Kaiomurs, a grandson of Noah, selected Balkh as the seat of his government.

The most celebrated monarch of this line was Afrasiab, the son of Pushung, who conquered Persia and reigned over it for twelve years. Then arose the great Persian patriot and hero, Roostam, who encountered Afrasiab in battle and, dragging him out of his saddle, would have slain or captured him, had not the king's girdle broke at the critical moment. Falling to

the ground, he was rescued by a desperate charge of his troops. The independence of Persia, however, was achieved, and the river Oxus was mutually accepted as the boundary line between the two States.

Peace did not long subsist on those terms. More than once afterwards Afrasiab invaded Persia, but was at length completely worsted by Roostam, and compelled even to cede Bokhara and Samarkand, with other important districts. In the end he was put to death by Khai Khosroo, the third sovereign of the Khaianian dynasty, who slew Afrasiab's son, Sheidah, in single combat, and stigmatized the prostrate province with the name of Khowarezm, or Easy Victory.

Surer footing is found when we come to the conquest of Khorassan and Mawaralnahr, and their conversion to the faith of Islam. During the ninth century Khwarezm was an appanage of the Samanides, upon whose extinction it fell into the hands of Mahmoud of Ghuznee, the first Mohammedan invader of Hindostan, and destroyer of the Temple of Somnauth. Its next rulers were the Seljooks, the last of whom, Toghrul II., fell in battle against Sooltan Allah-ood-deen Takkesh, Khan of Khwarezm. The first independent ruler of this oasis was Kootb-ood-deen Mohammed, ewer-bearer to Sanjar the Seljookian, upon whom it was conferred by that unfortunate monarch at the close of the eleventh century. The last of this family was the gallant Jelal-ood-deen, whose active valour repeatedly checked the Moguls in the career of victory,' and who, 'could the Carizmian empire have been saved by a single hero,' would, in the opinion of Gibbon, have achieved that illustrious distinction. His father, Mohammed, provoked an unequal conflict with the Moghul hordes of Chinghiz Khan, in the early part of the thirteenth century, and after the loss of his dominions expired, unpitied and alone, in a desert island of the Caspian Sea.'

For the next 120 years Khwarezm was governed by the

descendants of Chinghiz Khan, who gave place to a succession of petty Oozbeg princes, until the power of Timour Lung extended, at the opening of the fifteenth century, 'from the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago.' From one of Timour's feeble successors it was torn in 1498 by Shah Bukht Sooltan, who, in his turn, was vanquished and slain at Merv twelve years later by Shah Ismail, the founder of the Souffavean dynasty and the implacable enemy of the Oozbegs. Very shortly afterwards, however, the Oozbegs of Khwarezm again asserted their independence of Persia, and maintained a separate misrule until they passed beneath the shadow of Nadir Shah. Their Khan, Sooltan Ilboorz, then suffered 'the death of a dog,' by having his throat cut, and a kinsman of the Khan of Bokhara was placed upon the throne he had dishonoured and forfeited.

Under the famous Beggie Jan, the Khan of Khiva was reduced to a state of vassalage to Bokhara, but since the death of that half-crazy monarch, in 1802, the mutual relations of the two States have been those of independent kingdoms divided by jealousy, while their common safety depended upon close union and concerted action. The Muscovite consequently sits in the seat of his ancient master, the Tatar, and the Cossack domineers where the Kuzzak was despised.

Khiva is bounded on the west by a desert which stretches for 800 miles in a north-easterly direction, from the southeast angle of the Caspian to the base of the Moughojar range, and for an equal distance from that sea in a south-easterly direction to Balkh. This vast tract,' Canon Rawlinson remarks, void of all animal life, without verdure or vegetation, depressed in parts (according to some accounts) below the level. of the ocean-the desiccated bed, as Humboldt thinks, of a sca which once flowed between Europe and Asia, joining the Arctic Ocean with the Fuxine-separates more effectually than a water

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