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met their Russian colleagues on the shore of Lake Victoria, a wild mountain tarn which gives birth to the Oxus. No time was lost in tracing the boundary prescribed in an agreement entered into between the two Powers. Starting from the eastern side of the lake, it follows the crest of the Sarikol range until the Chinese frontier is reached. "From the sixth mile," wrote Sir T. Holdich, K.C.I.E., the chief survey officer, "a rugged and inaccessible spur of the Sarikol range carried the boundary into regions of perpetual ice and snow to its junction with the main range. Here, amidst a solitary wilderness, 20,000 feet above sea-level, absolutely inaccessible to man, and within the ken of no living creature except the Pamir eagles, the three great empires actually meet. No more fitting tri-junction could possibly have been found."

The cordiality which marked the relations between the subjects of Queen and Tsar was even more marked than on the earlier occasion. On their arrival at the scene of action the travel-worn Britons were hospitably received in the Russian camp, and a feeling of good-fellowship was then and there engendered which never afterwards grew cold. The scanty leisure left the commissioners by their duty of traversing ninety miles of the most difficult country in the world was devoted to races and shooting-matches.

The Kirghiz of the Russian escort astonished our countrymen by their prowess at ulak, a struggle on horseback for a goat, similar to the Bokhāran game of baigha. The Cossacks, too, displayed their wondrous equestrian skill. August 3rd, the name-day of the Dowager-Empress of Russia, was the occasion of an outdoor service, and the sweet plaintive melody of the anthems of the Greek Church never sounded so impressively as it did on those remote mountain heights.'

1 The Englishmen were particularly struck by the eagerness shown by their

Every lover of his country will re-echo the hope expressed by the Russian commissioner at a farewell banquet given to his colleagues on 11th September 1895, that "the agreement just concluded would be the beginning of more cordial relations between the two countries, and of a better understanding of their national aims and desires."

rivals to support the national sports of the nomads, the liberal prizes awarded and the careful observance of ceremony in their official intercourse with Asiatics, a policy which inspired the latter with a sense of their liberality and power. This is an attitude which would do much to consolidate our own power in India (Report of the Pamirs Boundary Commission).

CHAPTER VI

THE CENTRAL ASIAN RAILWAYS

THE conception of a railway between the Caspian and the heart of Asia took shape, as we have seen, during the campaign of Geok Teppe, when a little portable line between the base and a point thirteen miles inland was of good service to the transport. The new railway battalion redoubled its efforts after the fall of the Tekke stronghold, and before the close of 1885 the line had been carried as far inland as the large Turkoman village of Kizil Arvat, 135 miles from the Caspian. A mighty impulse was given to schemes for railway extension by the cession of the Merv oasis in 1884. The entire area between the Caspian and the Amu Darya was now in Russian hands, and there were no political and few natural obstacles to delay the construction of a railway which should connect the great arteries of traffic. But the advisers of the Tsar were by no means unanimous in approving of the enterprise. A strong party favoured the canalisation of the Amū Daryā, and an attempt to divert its stream to its ancient channel, which entered the Caspian at Krasnovodsk. Another faction pointed to the vast results achieved in India by the network of railways, which enables a European military force barely 60,000 strong to dominate 250,000,000 Asiatics; and urged the necessity of providing the means of rapid transport of troops and material between the Caucasus

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