The Russians are well aware that the people of the Khānate prize the measure of national life allowed them, and prefer the rough-and-ready methods of an Amir of their own race to the highly developed mechanism imported from the West. They dread the responsibility of granting citizenship to two and a half millions of Asiatics, spread over an area of 80,000 square miles, which costs them nothing to administer, while its products swell the growing volume of the empire's

commerce.

CHAPTER X

SAMARKAND

SAMARKAND is 150 miles by rail from Bokhārā. The line follows the course of the Zarafshan, and passes through a carefully tilled country, a large proportion of which is under cotton.1 Rather less than two-thirds is grown from acclimatised American seed (gorsypium hirsutum) introduced by the Russians, whose persistent aim it has been to render their mills independent of the United States. The seed is sown in April, on soil which has been well ploughed and harrowed, the proportion allowed being 21 pounds per acre. The fields are irrigated thrice and kept scrupulously free from weeds. Towards the end of September the ripe pods are picked and exposed in heaps for sale. In average years an acre yields 1400 pounds, and gives a net return of £5, 10s., considerably more than other crops. But the culti

1 The official figures for each district in 1896 were

In round figures, 45,000 acres. This is about 5 per cent. of the entire cultivated area of the province of Samarkand, which is officially stated as 364,200 dessiatines.

1

1

vator has to face extraordinary fluctuations in market prices. In 1895, though the harvest was exceptional in bulk and quality, the price advanced to 4d. per pound, and the acre yielded £8. This flood of wealth thus poured into the cultivator's lap was the better appreciated because the lowering of railway rates has rendered the production of bread stuffs unremunerative. In point of fact, the Central Asian farmer is suffering, like his comrade of the West, from the effect of free-trade dogmas. The Russian Empire is a world within itself, blessed with every variety of soil and climate, and gives ample scope for Cobden's theories. But cotton is essentially an object for petite culture. Plantations have been tried without success, and few who raise this lucrative crop devote to it more than one-eighth of their farm; in other words, a plot of three-fourths of an acre. The intense pressure of population on the soil causes a keen demand for cotton lands, and speculators take advantage of the limited supply to engross large areas, and sublet them in plots to tenants who agree to bring them the whole produce. The profits are supposed to be divided equally, but the landlord of course retains the lion's share. The raw cotton is sold in open market, and is either exported in the pod or purchased by capitalists owning cotton-cleaning mills.1 Speaking generally, the prospects of the cultivator in the rich valley of the Zarafshān are not very promising. The soil is a yellow loam of great natural richness, but the incessant demands of a teeming population, continued for hundreds, nay thousands, of years, have brought it within measurable distance of exhaustion. Manuring is an imperative necessity, but cattle are few owing to the absence of grazing grounds and fodder;

1 There were, in 1896, twenty, nine of which were worked by steam or oil engines, ten by water, and one by horse-power. Three hydraulic and seventeen hand-screw presses were at work.

and the process can be repeated only once in three, or even six years. Thus corn shows an ominous decrease in weight; a pound now contains only 16,800 grains, compared with nearly 20,000 a couple of decades back. The Russians have to face a problem as difficult in its degree as that which will one day cause a cataclysm in British India, the ever-growing tendency of population to outstrip the means of subsistence.

Soon after passing the spick-and-span Russian town of Katta Kurgan, the growing freshness of the air proclaims a higher level; and, in point of fact, Samarkand is more than 2000 feet above the sea. At last the eye, which so eagerly scanned the eastern horizon, lights upon a sea of verdure, from which a fluted dome rises just as St. Paul's seems to float like a vast balloon over London fogs. There are a few cities which touch a chord in him who sees them for the first time. The glamour of their fallen majesty is heightened rather than destroyed by the railway; for it brings before us, as if by magic, a panorama often seen in spirit, and its prosaic surroundings serve as a foil to the halo of romance which still lingers over the seat of a vanquished empire. Who will ever forget the flood of associations that overpowered him when he first heard "Roma" shouted by a railway porter, or when he exchanged the roar of the train for the peace which broods over the vista of palaces on the Grand Canal? The famous city is, as in other cases, at a distance of several miles from the railway station, the environs of which are crowded with the mean shops and drinking-dens usually found in such places. The road thither, as all the chief thoroughfares, is of great width, and overshadowed by splendid trees. It is this feature of Samarkand landscapes, not less than the innumerable gardens and vineyards in which one treads knee-deep in luscious grapes, that stirred the imagination of Eastern

poets. In melodious strains the eternal city is styled the "Mirror of the World," "the Garden of Souls," "the Fourth Paradise." But Samarkand was great and glorious ages before the good Hārūn er-Rashid reigned in Baghdad, or Sa'adi planted flowers of poesy in his Garden of Roses. At Maracanda, in Transoxiana, Alexander of Macedon paused in his mad career, and there he slew his faithful Clitus. Centuries glided by, and it became Sa-mo-kien, the most western province of the Celestial Empire. Then the tide of Mohammedan conquest rolled over Samarkand; followed by the rule of the Seljuk Turks, destined five centuries later to extend their sway from Mongolia to Constantinople. The old city now became what Moorish Spain was a chosen abode of all the arts that adorn and sweeten life. The whole fabric of civilisation was drowned in blood by the ruthless Chingiz Khan, and the ruin of Samarkand seemed irretrievable. It was lifted from the dust by a greater genius than Chingiz. Tīmūr made Samarkand the "eye and star" of an empire which extended over a third of the known world; and to his loving care belong the works of art which, in hopeless ruin, still excite the admiration of mankind. Their glories were were soon obliterated by the uncouth Uzbegs; and 150 years ago the city site was a waste scored with mounds and caverns from which the ruined churches and colleges of a happier age soared heavenwards in desecrated majesty. It became a province of Bokhārā and the residence of the Amirs during the summer heats, and commerce slowly revived. The story of the last wave of invasion which swept over Samarkand has already been told in these pages.

Chief among the monuments of this war-worn city is the tomb of Timur, spoken of throughout Central Asia as Gür Amir-the Amir's sepulchre, just as our