with which he could face death. Long years afterwards a mysterious stranger left at the door of a house in London a prayer-book which had belonged to Arthur Conolly, in which he had entered a touching record of his sufferings and aspirations in the well at Bokhara, and then vanished. The house belonged to Conolly's sister, but of the stranger no trace could be found.*

It is thirty-seven years ago since this tragedy was enacted in Bokhara. For more than a generation English vengeance has slumbered. But it cannot be because the bloodthirsty act of Nasrullah has been forgotten or condoned. Time works many changes, and smooths down the bitterest of wrongs. But the inhuman treatment of those English officers, who went to Bokhara not through any weak desire to gain notoriety, but through a sense of duty, in fulfilment of a great national design, can never be forgotten. It is the one instance in history of the representatives of England having failed to find a vindicator in their country, the solitary occasion when the remembrance of a crime has been sought to be mollified. Yet the story lives in history, and will ever live. The stoicism of Conolly, the intrepidity of Stoddart, are not the least striking proofs our countrymen have afforded before the world of Asia of the possession of great imperial characteristics. It is upon such conduct as theirs that the fabric of British superiority rests in

See Colonel Malleson's "Recreations of an Indian Official,"

page 293.

India, and wherever else we are called upon to face superior numbers and the brute force of semi-civilised peoples. Conolly's brave words are still ringing in our ears, and they, more than any feeble language I can use, should teach his countrymen never to forget his fate. The day must come when Bokhara shall dearly repay the wrong she did our countrymen, and when the inevitable punishment which England exacts for wrongs inflicted upon her subjects shall be meted out to the city of the bloodthirsty Nasrullah.

Until that deed of retribution has been wrought, England's prestige can never be great in Central Asia, but we may confidently expect that, when the citadel of Bokhara goes up in the air with a loud explosion to the manes of Charles Stoddart and Arthur Conolly, all the peoples of Turkestan will remember that, though they are separated from this country by a great distance, by mountain ranges, and steppes, and mighty rivers, yet they are not safe from the just wrath of England. The day may be nearer at hand than we at present suppose when we shall be sufficiently near to Bokhara to deal out that retribution which, no matter how long put off, must most assuredly be exacted eventually; and if we then abstain from exacting it, we shall have failed in the duty England owes to herself and every one of her subjects.

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CHAPTER VIII.

RUSSIA AND PERSIA.

FOR practical purposes Russia and Persia may be said to have first come into contact with each other in the reign of Peter the Great. In the year 1722, when an Afghan prince was seated upon the throne of Isfahan, a Russian embassy arrived in that capital. It came to demand the redress of various wrongs, and the settlement of several grievances. But there can be little doubt that its ostensible object was not the real cause of the rupture between the States which shortly afterwards took place. Mir Mahmoud, Afghan ruler, replied that he could not be responsible for the acts of the previous Persian sovereign, and that, moreover, his authority did not extend over the Usbegs or the Lesghians. The principal cause of offence was the injury Russian subjects had incurred at the hands of the Lesghians at Shamakee; but there is much better reason for supposing that the Czar, piqued by the failure of his Central Asian projects elsewhere, had turned to the task of securing complete possession of

the Caspian Sea as the means towards attaining the end he had always in view of forming a mighty empire in the vast border lands of the two continents of Europe and Asia.

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Therefore he brought imaginary charges against Persia-it is even said that he held her responsible for the acts of the Khan of Khiva,-and when no redress could be given to him he took the matter into his own hands. Mr. P. H. Bruce, an English gentleman who accompanied Peter in this war, says, in his interesting Travels," that "the motives which occasioned the Emperor of Russia to undertake this enterprise were the desire of avenging the insults and wrongs which his subjects settled on the shores of the Caspian had suffered, particularly in the plunder of Shamakee, and a desire to succour the King of Persia against the Afghans, who offered important cessions in return for the aid of the Russian monarch." Peter's first object of attack was the important town and harbour of Derbend, situated on the shores of the Caspian. A large portion of the army destined for what was called the war with Persia was conveyed in boats down the rivers Occa and Volga to the Caspian, and thence to Astrakhan. This portion of the army was composed exclusively of infantry, of which there were thirty-three thousand men on board the fleet. Russia has, therefore, had some experience in the conveyance of large bodies of troops upon the Caspian, and that in days when there was no Caspian fleet, and when the merchant vessels plying upon it were much fewer than they are at present. In addition to the infantry a large

force of cavalry proceeded by land to the vicinity of Derbend, where the whole army concentrated without accident. Derbend surrendered after a short siege; and with Derbend in her possession Russia held the most important position on the western shores of the Caspian. She did not, however, acquire permanent possession of it until fifty years after the death of Nadir. The Russian Government then entered upon a course of intrigues with the Porte and the Prince of Georgia, which had as their object the dismemberment of the Persian Empire. It was with no half-hearted design, nor with any vague object before it, that the Russian Government concluded treaties of the very highest importance with the rival and the tributary of the Shah. The triumph of the Afghan adventurers, the apparently complete disruption of the power of the Suffavean rulers, the general disorders prevailing in the State, the insubordination of Turcoman and Arab vassals, and all those other disturbing elements which seemed to have permanently destroyed the vitality of the Persian power, inspired its ambitious neighbours with a belief in the possibility of dividing the spoil amongst themselves. The prize which Peter, and at a later period the Empress Catherine, aimed at securing was no slight one. It was not so much a mere question of obtaining a strong frontier in the Caucasian range, or even of placing Russian administrators in Georgia and Daghestan, as it was of constructing round the southern shores of the Caspian a belt of provinces immediately dependent upon the Czar. The partition treaty between Russia and Turkey during the reign of