throne. Behind it is an oval metal plaque bearing a funeral inscription dating as far back as A.H. 550, or 1155 of our era.

1

The Russians' quarter of Samarkand lies to the south of the native city. Their occupation has lasted for thirty years, and their dwellings have lost the garish newness which strikes a jarring note at Askabad and Merv. Broad avenues, at right angles to each other, a leafy park, and a splendid Boulevard, which Samarkand owes to its good genius, General Abramoff, who was governor in 1874, such are the pleasant, if somewhat prosaic, features of Russian Samarkand. Government House has the vast reception-rooms met with in such places throughout the empire, and it has a large garden, which has trees, water, statues-everything except flowers. The officials' bungalows mostly face the Abramovsky Boulevard, and are planned on the familiar Anglo-Indian lines. Then there is the obligatory military casino, which eclipses the finest of our mess-houses and has a splendid ballroom. Hard by is the garrison church, a clumsy erection, which seems the more insignificant by reason of its juxtaposition with the glorious remains of Mohammedan days. The museum is still more unworthy of a provincial capital. It contains the dreary array of stuffed beasts and widemouthed bottles familiar nearer home. No region in the world is richer in memorials of past ages than the valley of the Zarafshān. Heaps of small clay figures,

1

1 Schuyler gives a very brief biography of this excellent man at p. 267 of his Turkestan. Like Kurapatkine, he was equally great in war and in civil life, and of that very high type of officials produced only in the Panjāb and Turkestan. The earnestness and keen sympathy with the people which characterised Henry Lawrence, Montgomery, and Herbert Edwardes shine. conspicuous in the "Chernaieff school," so called from an illustrious soldier and statesman who inspired his lieutenants with his own devotion. His unmerited disgrace, which followed a display of splendid moral courage, and his old age spent in the cold shade of imperial neglect, are not the most creditable episodes in Central Asian annals.

supposed to represent the horse, show that Hinduism prevailed there at some remote period, for they are identical in shape with those deposited as ex votos at many Indian shrines. Crosses figuring on rude bas-reliefs serve as a reminder of another vanished faith. The Nestorians, hounded as heretics from Europe in the fifth century, spread over the Asiatic Continent, and established bishoprics in Samarkand, Merv, and Herāt.1 With a degree of moderation which belied their uncompromising tenets, the Caliphs protected the professors of this rival faith. Its golden age was the twelfth century; but Timūr was not a man to tolerate any dissidence in his empire. His ruthless persecution stamped out Christianity in Central Asia. The museum also exhibits vessels of beautiful iridescent glass and pottery, the spoils of Afrasiyab, a city of immemorial antiquity, which covered the hills and ravines between Samarkand and the Zarafshān. The semimythical king whose name it bears 2 lived, according to tradition, in the eleventh century before Christ. That a high degree of civilisation was attained by the people of his long buried realm is proved by the exquisite designs of the lamps, urns, and pottery exhumed there. A rich harvest awaits systematic exploration. The collection of mineral specimens is equally unworthy of .Samarkand, for the mountains to the east of the city

1 Nestorius, a Syrian priest, became Patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century; but his views as to Christ's personality were declared heretical by a General Council held at Ephesus in 431. He was deposed from his high office, and his followers were driven from Europe.

* Afrāsiyāb is synonymous in Persian legend for anything of extreme antiquity.

Moser was present when the Russian researches began. Every stroke of the spade, he says, revealed new treasures. Enamelled bricks of the finest designs, coins, a lamp like those exhumed at Pompeii, but covered with brilliant enamel, an urn splendidly adorned, and many other discoveries worthy to occupy a savant, were made in twenty-four hours (p. 116).

contain the potentialities of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. There is a mountain of fine coal not twenty-five miles from the walls; and metals of all kinds abound.1 The other modern institutions at Samarkand are more

creditable to Russian enterprise. The jail, a large castellated structure resembling our own prison at Holloway, is scrupulously clean, and has most modern appliances for enforcing labour. The convicts are employed in weaving cotton, and all are healthy and well nourished. But the jail population in Central Asia is a fluctuating one; for criminals sentenced to long terms of imprisonment are deported by rail and steamer to Saghaleen, in the North-West Pacific.2 Two orphanages for Russian children flourish; and the little inmates are happy, clean, and not depressed by that badge of servitude, a uniform.

Samarkand is still a great emporium of trade, though it no longer serves as a depôt for the produce of British India and Afghanistan. The roads are thronged with shaggy camels, and carts perched on two gigantic wheels, which preserve their contents from the thorough wetting which an ordinary vehicle would give them

1 No attempt has yet been made to exploit these regions; but the Russian Government is ready and willing to encourage prospectors. An Englishman is now engaged in searching for the precious metals, and has met with every possible assistance from the authorities.

'During Mr. Skrine's stay at Samarkand a large gang started for this remote destination. Most of them were native bandits, who regarded their expatriation with true Oriental phlegm. But among the group who squatted on the station platform in their sheep-skin cloaks, from which their heavy manacles protruded, were several who inspired more sympathy: a young European girl, who clung piteously to her only treasure-a China teapot; a middleaged man, evidently belonging to a higher social stratum than the rest, was deeply moved by the prospect of exile. The cause was but too apparent, for a little son clung to him, a sharer in his grief; while among the silent crowd, which was kept at a distance by a ring of soldiers with fixed bayonets, was his unhappy wife, come with her three young daughters to bid him a long farewell.