the line connecting Samarkand with Andijān and Tashkent. At this point stands a much more curious piece of engineering, which dates back to the time of Timur. At right angles to the new railway line a gigantic brick arch juts into the shallow spreading stream. It is 100 feet in height, and at least as broad; and traces of two similar arches are to be seen in the river-bed beyond. The intention of the designer is not by any means clear. It could hardly have been to throw a roadway over the Zarafshān, which is not navig able, and would not require a bridge more than twenty feet in height. In the opinion of savants, this huge work was built to serve as a regulation of the current, forcing a certain proportion of the water into a channel reserved for the exclusive use of Bokhārā, which is entirely at the mercy of Samarkand in the matter of irrigation.

The administration of Samarkand offers much interesting material for study. We see in Transcaspia a system of local government imposed on the unsophisticated Turkomans. At Bokhārā we observe the rules on which the paramount Power conducts its relations to the ruler and people of a protected state. It remains to sketch the means taken by our rivals in Asia to improve a mechanism evolved in a comparatively civilised community.

Samarkand is a province of Turkestan, and under the control of the governor-general at Tashkent. It embraces the four districts of Samarkand proper, Katta Kurgan, Jizāk, and Khojend. The first-named has an area of 12,300 square miles, with a population of rather more than 300,000. It is administered by a chief who is a military officer of field rank, aided by a personal assistant.1 Under him are officers styled pristas, in

1 Colonel Kulchanoff now holds these functions. He is a Tartar from Orenburg, and is a perfect mine of information on the history and usages of the province. Though a Mohammedan, he lives in European style, and

charge of subdivisions, which are again split up into volosts, or groups of 2000 to 2500 houses, governed by officers termed volostnois. Every village in the volost has its mayor (starshina). The duties of this class of officials are purely executive, and confined to the repression of crime, the execution of judicial decrees, and the collection of revenue. They form, too, the police force. On the occurrence of an offence it is reported to the starshina, who sends information to the volostnoi. An investigation follows, and, should the charge be considered prima facie true, it is reported to one of the two judges of instruction stationed at Samarkand. These officers are subordinate to the Ministry of Justice at St. Petersburg, and have charge of all steps in criminal inquiries up to the actual trial. When their work is complete the case comes before the judge of the peace, who is also an officer of the Ministry of Justice, and is disposed of under the Russian criminal code. Civil causes in which either party is a foreigner are tried by this functionary, whose tribunal is also that for suits referred to him by both litigants, though both may be natives of Turkestan. The ordinary tribunals for this latter are those of the Kāzīs native judges stationed at the volost headquarters, who are guided in their decisions by the Mohammedan law. The executive officials are also responsible for the collection of revenue. Its chief source is the land tax, for Samarkand was, before its conquest, a province of Bokhārā, and the state in all Mohammedan countries is theoretically the owner of the soil. In this department things are not yet on a sound footing. When the Russians assumed the administration of the country they were compelled to trust to the information as to the demand from each villager furnished by the officers associates freely with his colleagues. Madame Kulchanoff presides at table, and converses with a charming grace with strangers who know Russian.

of the late Government. The statistics thus obtained were, of course, vitiated by the corruption of public servants universal throughout the East; but they still form the basis of the annual demand which is assessed collectively on each village by the district chief, and paid into the treasury by the starshinas. The rate ranges, with the nature of the soil and the facilities for irrigation, between 2s. and 3s. 4d. per acre. The Russians are therefore in much the same predicament as were the English masters of Bengal in 1793, when the annual demand was crystallised for ever by that gigantic fiscal blunder, the Permanent Settlement. They possess the advantage of having a free hand; and for several years past a commission has been incubating a scheme adjusting the burdens on land with some regard to its actual produce. The imposts on merchandise and the poll-tax levied on non-Musulmans under the old régime have been abolished, and traders are classified in guilds according to the scale of their operations, and pay a licence tax on a graduated scale. Irrigation has been left in native hands, and every village has its ak-sakal (whitebeard), or superintendent, who has the power to demand the service of the entire male population for work on the canals.3 Vernacular education has not made much progress since the conquest; and the system is subject

1 Lord Cornwallis encountered similar difficulties in fixing the demand on which the Permanent Settlement in Bengal was based. An eminent Hindu reformer, who at that period (1793) was head native officer in the district of Rangpur, is said to have received a bribe of a lakh of rupees (£10,000) for omitting a cipher in the reported gross revenue of a single estate.

2 By far the best work done by the Civil Service of India is that which is known as Settlement, i.e. the land valuation on a vast scale. The Russians would gain enormously could they obtain the service of a few of the younger men who have taken up this branch of executive duty.

3 The dimensions of some of the ancient works in Samarkand are stupendous. In one case the wells attain a maximum depth of 420 feet, and are connected by a tunnel in which a man can walk upright.

to the same defects as those which render Bokhārā a hotbed of fanaticism. Many years ago an attempt was made by Government to introduce the study of Russian; but priestly influence ran counter to the reform, and the classes were poorly attended. An administrative order was, however, issued in 1897 which made a knowledge of the conqueror's tongue obligatory on candidates for the posts of volostnoi and kāzī; and self-interest has already modified the popular attitude towards the innovation. Those who wish well to Russian rule must see to it that the pendulum is not allowed to swing in the opposite direction. No greater mistake could be made than to force a superficial study of Russian on classes rendered unfit to profit by it by social status or inherited defect.

CHAPTER XI

FRIENDS OR FOES?

In

IT has been acutely observed that we bring back from foreign countries no more than we take thither. other words, we view them through the medium of our own personality, which is the growth of heredity, education, and environment. It is almost impossible for an Englishman to judge the subjects of the Tsar dispassionately. Forty-five years ago a friendship which had lasted for centuries was shattered by that greatest blunder of the century, our Crimean campaign; and the fierce passions which it engendered have not yet spent their force. The Russian advance in Asia, which we have described as a movement automatic and uncontrollable, has been interpreted by an influential school of writers as a menace to our position in India. Twice of late years have we been landed on the very brink of war by a public opinion goaded to frenzy by such baseless fears. For it may be affirmed with perfect truth that the absorption of India is a dream too wild for the most aggressive adviser of the Tsar. Such is the geographical position of the peninsula, that it can be held by no European Power which is not Mistress of the Seas. How, it may well be asked, would it profit Russia to assume the responsibility of governing three hundred million of Asiatics whose ignorance of Malthusian doctrines renders them a prey