land everywhere, and the exports of the latter to Russia are enormous.1 The bulk of the live stock belongs to the nomad tribes, and it is rising in value. The Turkomans owned £5, 7s. worth per head of the population in 1890; £7 worth in 1896. This growth has taken place in spite of epidemics due to the terrible winters of the northern steppes. The Mangishlāk peninsula, embracing the Ust Urt Desert, so fatal to Bekovitch's expedition, lost 40 per cent. of its cattle and sheep from cold and starvation in 1890. Horses, on the other hand, are decreasing in number and quality, for the repression of raids by the strong arm of the law has destroyed the demand for them. The deterioration has engaged the serious attention of the Russian. A committee appointed to inquire into the cause recommended that the Turkoman breed should be encouraged by prize competitions and the introduction of English and Arab blood. But the law governing supply and demand cannot be long evaded, and we are within measurable distance of the extinction of this incomparable strain. Domestic industries, as in old times, are confined to the women, for their lords and masters disdain sedentary labour. The manufacture of carpets heads the list. Three-fourths of these are still made at Merv, where the variety of designs, handed down from long-past generations, and never committed to paper, is bewildering. Here, too, the Russian conquest has brought with it a blight, for the hideous aniline dyes exported from German chemical works are supplanting the beautiful and durable colours extracted from indigo and other vegetable substances. Exports have fallen considerably during the last seven 1 The movement by rail in 1896 was upwards of 60,000 tons. Transcaspian cotton is rapidly ousting the American product, thanks to protec tive tariff. It is a remarkable fact that the market price of cotton is higher in Transcaspia than at Manchester. years, and the case is the same with the embroidery, shawls, and dress fabrics once produced in thousands by the deft fingers of Turkoman maidens. The nomads, who constitute the vast bulk of the population, have not yet taken kindly to commerce. The people of Merv, indeed, accompany the caravans which still ply between the oasis, Persia, and Khiva, but 3 per cent. only of the merchants and shopkeepers of Transcaspia are Turkomans.2 Until 1890 Transcaspia was a province of the Caucasus, but in that year it was constituted a government, and intrusted to the care of General Alexis Kurapatkine. No living soldier has had a more brilliant career. It began at the storming of Samarkand in 1868, when, as a sub-lieutenant of the Turkestan Rifles, he won the Orders of St. Stanislaus and St. Anne for special gallantry. Three years later he was promoted lieutenant-captain, and entered the Military Staff College for a course of special training, which lasted till 1874. Then, having attained the rank of captain, he was posted to the Turkestan Staff. In the following year he was despatched on a special mission to Germany and France, in the course of which he took part in an expedition from Algiers into the Sahara, and became a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Returning to his old love, Turkestan, he was employed in 1876 in the reduction of Tashkent, and gained the crosses of St. George and St. Vladimir. In the same year he was sent as envoy to Ya'kūb Beg, a Mohammedan chieftain who had wrested Kāshghar from the Chinese, and obtained the cession of the town and district of Karashara. In 1877 came the Russo-Turkish 1 The value of exported carpets and rugs in 1891 was 160,000 roubles. In 1894 it had fallen to 60,000, and is now probably 25,000 only. The official statistics for 1896 give the following percentages:-Persians, 39.2; Armenians, 32.2; Tartars, 11.7; Russians, 6.8; Jews, 5.0; Turkomans, 3; and "others," 2.1. War, and the Tsar needed the help of his best and bravest soldiers to hold his own against the stubborn Nizams. Kurapatkine became lieutenant-colonel and chief of the Staff under General Skobeleff, commanding the 16th Division. He covered himself with glory at Lovsha, in the expedition to the Green Mountain, and at Plevna; and gained the rank of colonel, with more of those baubles so dear to the military heart. In 1879 he exchanged the sword for the pen, and became professor of Military Statistics at the Staff College. But he pined, as all true soldiers must, for active service, and his wish was speedily gratified. He was appointed commandant of his old corps, the Turkestan Rifles, and in 1880 commanded as brigadier-general in the reduction of Kulja. Towards the close of that year he was sent in charge of reinforcements to General Skobeleff, then engaged in a death-struggle with the Tekkes of the Akkal oasis. His prowess in that memorable campaign has been already noticed. In the next eight years he was attached to the St. Petersburg Staff, and was employed in framing schemes for mobilisation and the defence of the western frontier of the empire. He also gained the Tsar's special thanks for his services on a commission for settling the system of government in Turkestan. As governor and commander-in-chief of Transcaspia he showed that he possessed a rare combination of the qualities which adorn civil life as well as win battles. His methods were based on an intimate knowledge of native character, and a keen appreciation of its noble qualities; and on his translation, in the beginning of 1898, to the great office of Minister of War, he left behind him the reputation of a firm but sympathetic ruler.1 The charge for which he had laboured so 1 Mr. E. C. Ringler Thomson, late assistant agent to the GovernorGeneral of India in Khorasan, who knows General Kurapatkine well, wrote |