State assuredly deserve public recognition. Employed under the immediate orders of the Governor-General of India, he was sent a year ago to explore the littleknown regions lying between the Caspian Sea and the gates of our Empire. Within that year's space he has surveyed some thousands of miles of country hitherto unknown, has brought back admirable maps of districts, which may prove of incalculable value; he has literally carried his life in his hand for months together in regions where the slaughter of an unprotected traveller is regarded rather as a meritorious action; he has undergone trials, fatigue, and exposure which no ordinary man could have survived; and he has returned to India triumphantly successful in the objects for which he was sent, only to be received with marked official disfavour, and to meet, for sole acknowledgment, with a curt order to rejoin his regiment. Not a word of thanks, not an invitation to recount the story of his exertions, not even an offer to reimburse him for the expenses to which he has been put, is tendered to him. What misunderstanding or cause for treatment, on the face of it so unworthy, there may be, we do not know.

"We cannot conceive that Lord Lytton should be capable of behaving to an English officer of Major (?) Butler's merit as a Russian Czar behaved to the gallant Vickovitch on his return to St. Petersburg from Cabul. It is not yet, we hope, an English custom to repay exceptionally gallant services with contemptuous neglect. Even supposing that the very strong convictions gathered by this energetic traveller should be

A

unwelcome to the tepid temper of British statesmen, and supposing his political impressions to be opposed to departmental prejudices, we cannot understand why he should be personally neglected or unrewarded. step in rank, an indulgence of leave, and a liberal reimbursement for expenses incurred, should have been the least return for his good service. Whereas it would appear that he has met with nothing but a most ungracious and chilling absence of all acknowledgment on all sides, civil and military, and has been even left out of pocket as regards travelling expenses.

"So patent and obvious was the personal risk and peril dared by Major (?) Butler, that the Government actually took from him an undertaking in writing, that he absolved them from all responsibility in case of his death by violence, before he started in obedience to his orders. He has returned after fulfilling them to the letter, and he is not even thanked. There is gross wrong here, which we trust for England's sake may be righted."

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CHAPTER X.

THE MERV QUESTION.

MERV, the Margiana Antiocha of the ancients, celebrated in Milton's sonorous lines as

"Margiana to the Hyrcanian cliffs

Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales,"

has at all times occupied a foremost place in the annals of Central Asia. It was originally founded-so records say-by Alexander, and became the capital of the kingdom of Margiana, established by Antiochus, one of that prince's generals. When that kingdom fell to pieces it became a portion of the Parthian State, and with the decline of that great people it commenced a downward and constantly changing course until in modern times it became the frontier city of the Suffavean kings of Persia. In those days it was one of the four royal cities of Khorasan, of which the other three were Meshed, Nishapore, and Herat. It had partially recovered from the depression to which it had been reduced by the Mongol conquerors and Tamerlane, and under Persian rule enjoyed all those benefits to

which its position on the great trade route to Bokhara and Central Asia entitled it.

From this time until after the death of Nadir, Merv continued to be a Persian possession, when it fell into the hands of Mourad of Bokhara, who carried away the inhabitants to his country, where the descendants of many of them are still to be found. In the present century it has acknowledged some kind of fealty to Khiva, and on one occasion at the least a Persian army has succeeded in wringing from its chiefs the concession of those claims which the Shah has always considered his due. But in the main it has, since the fall of Bokharan power, been independent, and during many years the head-quarters of the Salor tribe. More recently the Tekes have dispossessed the Salor, and are for the time being supreme in Merv, which they now admit that they hold in subjection to the Shah.

The river on which Merv is situated is the Murghab, which, rising in the Hazara district of Afghanistan, flows in a northerly direction into Kara Kum, finally losing itself in a lake some fifty miles north of Merv. Near that town the river is eighty yards across and five feet deep. There are several fords, but the bottom is clayey and full of holes. Much of the river is drawn off from the main channel by canals, which carry the water over the adjoining lands and make them fertile and productive. The banks of the river stand a considerable number of feet above the stream; but this fact, which gives the Murghab an appearance of greater shallowness than it possesses, is due to the large quantity of water which is carried off for the

purposes just mentioned. Merv, before the time of the Usbeg invasion under Mourad of Bokhara, derived great advantage from the existence of a dam situated just above the town; but among other ruthless acts of that conqueror, this dam was destroyed, and Merv has never recovered its previous prosperity.

The district to the south of Mery is known as Maroochak, or Marutshag, and this is described as being very unhealthy, probably on account of the marshes which are formed here by the Murghab. There is a proverb current in these parts, Burnes tells us, that "Before God gets intelligence the water of Maroochak has killed the man." Probably this local phrase has been assumed to mean more than it actually does, for as far as our information goes, this district is fairly populated. Both Wolfe and Abbott in their journeys to Merv from Herat make no mention of having passed through any pestilential region, although they both refer to the sandy plain which lies for some distance south of Merv, and in the centre of which that place stands.

The present town of Merv is about twelve miles west of the ancient city, which stood on the banks of a canal called the Aub-i-Merv. When that canal was dammed by the Bokharan conqueror, the neighbouring Turcomans moved their encampment to the brink of the river Murghab itself. Here a permanent bazaar of some hundred mud huts was erected, and round this the Turcomans pitched their camp. A mud fort, in which a governor in the time of the recognition of Khivan authority resided, adds little to the appearance