He confesses his inability to perceive any material benefit likely to accrue to Russia from accessions of territory in Central Asia, and he is fully persuaded that the scientific results of her recent extensions in that direction are superior to all other considerations. 'Those,' he adds, 'who form a correct estimate of the power of the Russians to affect us in any way on the north-west frontier of India, and who know the footing on which they stand in relation to the Khivans, Bokharians, Kokandians, and nomads, entertain only a feeling of pleasure at the prospect of comparative well-being now opening before the degraded fanatics of those regions, and they rejoice to see that a large tract of the earth's surface is being cleared of the dark shadows which tyranny and barbarism have so long cast over it. With these feelings, on the other hand, is mingled a not altogether unfounded suspicion that the position of the Russians in Central Asia is extremely precarious. Their position in Turkestan is so isolated, their means of communication with the mother country so difficult, their forces in the province so slender, whilst the races are so numerically overwhelming, and moreover so mistrustful, treacherous, and fanatical, that they might any day be overtaken by some great calamity.' Possibly, Mr Michell might now be willing to modify convictions so little justified by subsequent facts, but which were shared by no less distinguished a personage than the late Sir Roderick Murchison, who spoke in equally slighting terms of a Russian invasion of India. 'When we consider,' he said in his annual address in 1868, that the Russian forces which have now extended along the Syr Darya to Tashkend do not exceed eight or ten thousand men in the remote provinces they have brought into order, and that they are separated from their great centre of supply by many wild and sterile countries, I trust we may hear no more of this phantom.' In 1868, as Mr Michell informs us, Russia possessed an area of 143,000 square miles, along both banks of the Syr, occupied by one million of inhabitants, in addition to a triangular slice out of the territories of Bokhara and Khokan, her possessions south of the Syr extending from Khojend and Fort Chinaz to Samarkand. The Russian picket-posts formed one continuous chain from Jizak, eighty miles south of Chinaz, to Uratupeh, 135 miles to the south-east, skirting the base of the Noura-tagh range to the north of Bokhara. From Uratupeh the line tended in a north-easterly direction to Khojend, passing Fort Nau. Bokhara was thus entirely severed from Khokan, and the old caravan route from Khiva to China intercepted and commanded. Again, Khojend, with its forty-five to fifty thousand inhabitants, was connected by a series of military stations with Tashkend, fifty-four miles to the northward, all the country west of the Urtak-tagh being claimed by Russia in her capacity of protectrix of the nomad tribes. From Tashkend the line of posts ran due north, sixty-seven miles, to Chemkend, and thence through a mountain pass between the Kara-tagh and Alexandrofsky ranges to Aulietta, whence it passed along the northern foot of the latter mountains to Fort Vernöe, which is now connected by a short chain of stations with Kulja. In other words, the Russian flag now waves over the whole of northern Asia with the exception of Chinese Tatary. CHAPTER XIII. CHINESE TATARY. FLOODS OF MIGRATION FROM THE NORTH-EAST ZUNGARIA, OR SEMIPALATINSK-FORT VERNÖE -THE PROCESS OF ANNEXATION INTERNECINE STRIFE BETWEEN THE BOGUS AND SARA-BOGUS TRIBES-HABITS AND CUSTOMS OF THE KIRGHIZ-ATTACK UPON A CARAVAN--ISSYK-KUL --SEMIRECHINSK-THE ILI-ALMALIK-THE TRANS-NARYN DISTRICTTOWNS-USH-RUSSIAN TOORKESTAN KHANAT OF KHOKAN-CHIEF FROM Chinese Tatary issued the migratory hordes that overwhelmed and destroyed what little of Greco-Persian civilization had taken root in the wide-spread regions stretching westward to the high lands of Khorassan, and southward to the Hindoo Koosh. From the contiguous steppes of Mongolia moved the nomad tribes that, each in its turn, overwhelmed the Chinese emigrants, and which, in the fulness of time, were themselves borne down by other floods of population pouring forth from the same inhospitable, but strangely populous regions. It is, indeed, a problem worthy of a Colenso, to reconcile with credibility the ordinarily accepted statements of the countless myriads that are alleged at different periods to have swept over Central and Western Asia. That their numbers were greatly exaggerated by the abject terror of the conquered peoples, may be fairly assumed, and it must not be forgotten that whole nations, including women and children, flocks and herds, rather than mere armies, were in motion-pressing onward like a swarm of locusts, eating down every green thing in their way, and, wherever they passed, creating a wilderness. - It is related by Sir Alexander Burnes how, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, a Kalmuk colony that had migrated to the shores of the Black Sea, being dissatisfied with their new settlement, set out in a stupendous column, three days' march in breadth, for their original home in the far distant province of Kashgar. They numbered one hundred thousand families, including the aged and infirm, children of tender years, and babes in their mothers' arms, and were accompanied by their flocks and herds, and whatever could walk or be carried, an exceeding great multitude. Though harassed by the Mussulmans throughout their long and tedious march, 1500 captives being made in Bokhara and sold as slaves, the vast host pushed ever onwards until they reached their haven of rest and security. This story is certainly hard to believe. Taking a day's march at fifteen miles, we have a column fortyfive miles in breadth passing like the breath of the simoom over the immense tract of country that lies between the Baltic and Eastern Toorkestan, traversing several mountain-ranges, crossing streams of considerable magnitude, and finally arriving at their destination with no greater diminution of their original numbers than is made by the dashing onslaught of kites and crows upon a cloud of locusts 'warping on the eastern wind.' This startling episode, however, is an exact type of the more extensive and aggressive migrations of the Haiatilla, Toork, Moghul, Tatar, and Oozbeg hordes that have successively been propelled from the 'frozen loins' of the 'populous North,' and the question again and again recurs, How came these barbarians to multiply so fast in those dreary wilds? whence did they procure arms and even armour? how did they maintain themselves and their little ones and their four-footed accompaniments, while crossing the rugged mountains and barren deserts that intervene between Bokharia and Mongolia ? It is, of course, no new thing that a comparatively civilized and disciplined soldier should be panic-stricken by the shrill, piercing yells, the repulsive ugliness, even by the rude, illshaped weapons, of untrained barbarians, ignorant of danger, reckless of human life, and stimulated to frenzy by the presence of their wives, their parents, and their children. And there is, besides, good reason to believe that the ruling tribe, or 'governing classes,' in the settled districts were ill supported by the mass of the population whom they held in subjection. The mere conquest, therefore, of these fertile and flourishing countries by the northern savages has in it nothing very extraordinary, nor is there any cause to marvel at the celerity with which the latter degenerated from their original fierceness, and became an easy prey to the next horde that went forth from the ancestral steppe in search of a fat and pleasant land. The real subject of wonder is the fact, if it be a fact, that the scanty pastures of Mongolia should have been so much more prolific of human life in the olden than in the present times. The seemingly immeasurable extent of those grazing lands was well described by Defoe, when he makes his immortal hero, Robinson Crusoe, remark: 'We were now launched into the greatest piece of solid earth, if I understand anything of the surface of the globe, that is to be found in any part of the world; we had at least 1200 miles to the sea eastward; 2000 to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, westward; and above 3000 if we left that sea and went on west to the British and French Channels; we had full 5000 miles to the Indian and Persian Sea, south; and about 800 to the Frozen Sea, north. Nay, if some people may be believed, there might be no sea north-east till we came round the pole, and consequently into the north-west, and so had a continent of land into America, the Lord knows where.' Truly, a mighty tract of dry land, but, one would say, capable of supporting only a thin and scattered population, living on the produce of their flocks and herds. A purely |