WfV'FRS'/A ^aF .-.piFrAiim/?.- JITVDjO^ %ojnv}-jo>-^ JNYbUl g 1 bJ . r iiiir».' r^v • 5 ^ f I 3 '^/SBj i iloiA,i il RUSSIA'S RAILWAY ADVANCE CENTRAL ASIA NOTES OF A JOURNEY FROM ST. PETERSBURG TO SAMARKAND GEORGE DOBSON, AUTHOR OF THE LETTERS IN THE " TIMES " ON " THE CENTRAL ASIAN RAILWAY. ILLUSTRATED. LONDON W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE AND AT CALCUTTA vX LONDON : PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 70 TO 76, LONG ACRE, W.C. CORRECTIONS. Page ii8 line 3 for 500 read 100 » 189 » 20 )) Burns » Burnes » 211 » 6 » Granges )) Ganges » 242 )j 6 « murdered » executed )) 242 >• 6 » 1848 » 1842 )J 402 » 6 )) Dondonkoff » Dondoukoff » 403 >) 20 » Sessar » Lessar » 415 ^" 10 )) Zedjent )) Tedjent » 416 » 9 » £ 400,000 )) £ 4,000,000 55" y; /2. )i /vex-'vt II y^^O-^-f" ), Lf/1 , 28 Iio.ia 1S90 ro^a KoMMepqecKaa CKoponeiaTHa npeejiii. EsrEnia TnjE. PREFACE The present volume is the outcome of a journey from St. Petersburg to Samarkand in the spring of 1888, on the occasion of the open- ing of railway communication with the ancient city of Tamerlane, and of a series of letters published in the Times in the autumn of the same year, giving the first English description of the Central Asian Railway. I have been encour- aged to return to the subject in the form of a separate publication by the advice of many readers of my letters, and by the use made of them by other authors. Not more than eight of the following fifteen chapters appeared in the Times, and these have been so completely rewritten, altered and amplified, that they con- tain a large amount of fresh, and, I hope, interesting information. The remaining seven chapters are entirely new, and bring the account of the Transcaspian province down to the pre- sent time. vi Preface. While I have certainly not neglected the political side of the subject and the question of Anglo-Russian relations, I have not written from the exclusively political point of view. It has always seemed to me that prejudice and confusion of ideas about Russia are due in a very great measure to this purely political treat- ment. An impartial book of a general character, such, for instance, as Schuyler's " Turkistan," which in my opinion has not been superseded b)' any subsequent work, may be more useful in helping Englishmen to draw their own poli- tical conclusions than many of the writings of professional politicians and journalists. This merit, at least, I hope, I may claim for the results of my own humble efforts. Such information as I have been able to obtain is from purely Russian and mostly new sources. My best thanks are due to many friends in Russia and the Transcaspian, — to General Annenkoff, Colonel Alikhanoff, Prince Gagarine, Dr. Heyfelder, Mr. Rodzevitch and others, who have kindly furnished me with maps, photographs, and information, and other- wise given their assistance. I believe 1 have been able to follow a some- Preface. vii what new line of interest connecting St. Petersburg with Samarkand, Moscow with India, and the Cossacks with the Turkomans, as Hnks in the chain which binds Russia to Central Asia, and has naturally drawn her onward in that direction. The chapter on trade also offers a new aspect of the subject, which has hitherto been overlooked. I should feel sorry if Russian friends attri- buted anything I may have written to malice or Russophobia. My attachment to their country, and the rule of impartiality which I have always endeavoured to apply to my jour- nalistic duties, ought to be sufficient proof against any such assumption. It would be equally unjust if English readers concluded from my residence in Russia that I have become in the least indifferent to the danger involved in Russia's railway advance into Central Asia. G. DOBSON. St. Petersburg, April, 1890. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Hasty completion and opening of the Central Asian Railway — The first locomotive whistle heard in Samarkand — Climax to the Russian tide of conquest — General Annenkofif's triumph — International in- auguration of the railway — Foreign guests — First Englishman to enter Samarkand by railway — Diffi- culties of obtaining permission — Opposition to Annenkoff's desire to throw open the railway to the general public — Invitation to Professor Vambery can- celled by the Diplomatists — Objections to foreigners, especially Englishmen — Excursions to the Afghan frontier forbidden — Authorization required to visit the railway — Authorities to be applied to — Favours to Frenchmen — Permission granted to few English- men — Many applicants refused — Russia's imitation of the ostrich in the Transcaspian Sands — What she is probably afraid of — Asiatic suspicion of character — Russia conquers in Asia by affinity of character as well as by force of arms — Author's application for permission — Necessity for approval of the Governor- General of Turkistan — His semi -independent juris- diction — Strange multiplicity of authorities concerned in granting permission — Telegram to General Rosen- bach — Starting without permission — The most direct routes to the Transcaspian — Projected railways to the Caspian and Persian frontier X Contejits. CHAPTER II. MOSCOW AND INDIA. Railway travelling beyond Moscow — Finger-posts pointing to the East — Moscow's connection with the object of my journey — Comparisons between St. Petersburg and Moscow — Nondescript character of Moscow — Its commercial influence — It sets the business fashion — .St. Petersburg : Russia's European disguise — Moscow : the heart of Russia, and the mainstay of relations with the East and the Central Asian Rail- way — Prominent commercial importance now given to the Russian railway advance — Englishmen first endeavour to reach India overland through Moscow — Voyage of Richard Chancellor — ^Journey of Anthony Jenkinson — Sir John Merrick's negotiations for a transit through Muscovy to India — We incite the Muscovites to independent efforts towards India — Peter the Great — Jonas Hanway — Napoleon — Eng- land's abortive attempts to arrest Russia's movements — More reasonable policy — Useless criticism of new Afghan boundaiy — The danger lies in the inherent faults of Asiatic rule in Afghanistan — Russia's complaints of Abdurahman Khan misconstrued — England has no control over Afghan Ameer — Baron Jomini's suggestion of a permanent frontier Commis- sion — Would not the Russians step into Afghan Turkistan as they walked into Kuldja ? — ^Justifiable opinion that England will never fight over Afghanistan — Dangers and uncertainties of North- Eastern frontier — Probable repetition of troubles of 1885 if this part neglected — Russian explorers already at work . . 23 CHAPTER HI. THE COSSACKS. The most remarkable phenomenon of the Slavonic race — Numbers and territories of the Cossacks — Dress and Contents. xi equipment — Railways through the Cossack provinces — Historical interest and character of the Cossack steppes — Cossack aversion to trees — Reafforestation — Herodotus on the absence of wood — Coal-fields of the Don — Their output — Successful competition of English coal — Coal, wood, and petroleum fuel on Russian railways — Novotcherkask, the modern Cos- sack capital — Starotcherkask, the ancient capital — Cossack regalia and charters — English sword of honour presented to a Cossack Ataman — The Cossack in Europe — Cossack colonizers abroad — The Cossack in Asia — Cossacks selected to attack India— Import- ant extension of Cossack territory — Cossack dislike to trade — Cossack administration — Cossack organiza- tion on the Don out of date — Ineffectual attempts to level the Cossacks with the Russians — Turkoman Cossacks — Cossacks of the Kooban and Terek — Resemblances between Cossacks and Circassians — Russia glides imperceptibly into Asia — No sharp dis- tinctions — A Russian on his experiences in Central Asia — Easy fraternization between Russians and Asiatics — The Cossack an instrument of rapproche- ment — Cossacks and Circassians merge into Turko- mans — Colonel Alikhanoff, remarkable specimen of Russian and Asiatic combined — Absorption of Kal- mucks and Kirghiz by Cossack cavalry — Russia's power of assimilation and coalescence — Carlyle's opinion — Vladikavkaz — Pretentiousness of Russian names — Amiability of Russian railway travellers — Annenkoff's invitations and guests. . . . .48 CHAPTER IV. THROUGH THE CAUCASUS TO THE CASPIAN. Sharp interchanges of climate and temperature — Snow- slips and accidents — Rapid posting with a Russian b 2 xii Contents. PAGE Consul — Lermontofrs dispute between Elburz and Kazbek— False alarm— The Georgian military road — The gorge and pass of Dariel — The Terek — Parting of the waters — Desolate scenery of the northern slopes — Primitive dwellings — The Ossetins — " Moun- tain of tongues " — Ruined towers and castles — Tamara, the Cleopatra of the Caucasus — Kazbek — English climbers — Descent into the valley of the Aragua — Beauty of the Transcaucasus — Boast of the Georgians — Towers of refuge — Game — The Koora — Illusory notion of the Caucasus being a weak spot in Russia's armour — Similar idea of Armenian frontier — English and Russian influence among the Turkish Armenians — Russia's use of the religious element in conquering the Caucasus — England's contrary policy of assisting the Mohammedans — English mistake in this connection during Crimean War — Overdrawn reports of disaffection during Afghan frontier crisis — English hopes of utilizing it, and awkward habit of giving warning — Similar reports of English sympathies among the coast population of Finland —Simply a question of compulsory military service — How settled — Overrated separatist tendencies of "Young Georgia" — The Tsar's visit — Loyalty of the Caucasus — High- way robbery and brigandage — A Circassian Dick Turpin — Circassians running amuck — Unbridled temper of the natives — Insignificant religious antagonism — The Russian's faculty of identifying himself with the Asiatic — Conversation with General Zelennoi — Departure from Tiflis — \'alley of the Koora — Resemblances between the Apsheron peninsula and the Transcaspian — Russified Persians — Arrival at Baku — Taken in charge by the police — Delayed for want of a steamer — Interview with the Governor Baku — The Transcaspian Railway flooded — Baku fair — Start for Oozoon Ada — Foreigners and ^English steamers on the Caspian — Poles in the Transcaspian — Their grievances — A Polish rebel .... ^75 Contents. xiii CHAPTER V. OOZOON ADA AND KRASNAVODSK. Arrival at Oozoon Ada — Wretched Aspect — Delay — Floods — Interrupted communication — Description of town — Buildings and population — Shipping firms — Sand storms — Silting up of harboui- — Inundations — No fresh water — Description of seaboard — Laby- rinth of salt lagoons — Long Island — Dardja penin- sula — Ancient channels and delta of the Amu Darya — Proposed restoration of old bed of the Oxus, now practically useless except for irrigation — General Glookhofsky's project and opinion — Dangerous prox- imity of railway to the Persian frontier — Necessity of supplementary communication by water — Oozoon Ada versus Krasnavodsk — Commission on — The question shelved — Reasons for — Transference of rail- way terminus unnecessary —Effect of proposed branch line to Krasnavodsk — Arrival of train from Askabad — No first-class carriages — Extent of rolling stock — Special accommodation for Mohammedans . . I09 CHAPTER VI. OOZOON ADA TO GEOK TEP]!). Departure from Oozoon Ada — Howling wilderness — Desolation — Persian liamals — Railway dam — Blood- red water — Kizil-Soo — Michailofsk : the original ter- minus — Bala Ishem — The Balkans — The Kuren and Kopet Dag mountains : lifeless appearance and Turko- man avoidance of — Fertility of their Persian slopes — Insignificant valleys and streams on Russian side — Rise of Tedjent and Murghab — The mountains relieve the sight, and supply the water — Failure of wells — Memorial of Skobeleff's march— Gradients — The salt steppe — Mirages — Ninety per cent, of desert — Fast xiv Contents. and movable sands — "While earth," or loess — Pro- posed colonization and irrigation — Expected results — Old channels of the Oxus crossed by the railway — Former bottom of the sea — Naphtha Dag and petro- leum supply— Kazandjik : the first freshwater source — Delays and damage caused by floods — Insufficiency of culverts — Easy construction of the line — Difificul- ties of the sand — Cuttings — Part of road re-made twenty times — Materials lost in the sand — Speed and cheapness of construction — Competition between General Annenkoff and the Minister of Communica- tions — Effects of floods — Troubles and pastimes of AnnenkofTs guests — Kizil Arvat : beginning of the Akhal Tekke oasis — Population— Fountains — Bami — Junction with the Atrek — Character of the oases — Turkoman obas — Towers of refuge — Salt, sand, and grass steppes — Saxaoul — Discomforts of the railway — Military control— Turkoman platelayers — Turko- man dress — Cossack justice — Persian navvies and porters — Russian tenderness for the Tekkes and dis- like of the Persians — Persia and the Yomud and Goklan Turkomans — Russia claims them — Treatment of Persians— Official monopoly of railway accommo- dation — Fellow-passengers . . . . .128 CHAPTER VII. GEOK TEPK TO MERV. Arrival at Geok Tepe — The fortress — Disease — Removal of the Russian settlement — Siege and slaughter — Burning the dead— Skobeleff the "Split Beard"— Unjust criticism of Skobeleft' — Dr. Ileyfelder's opinion of — Author's acquaintance with Skobeleff — His typical Russian character — A great leader of men — His cruelty at Geok Tepe explained — Difference between his mode of warfare and the English method — Killing of women inexcusable — Mr. Marvin on the subject — Contents. xv PAGE Remains of the Siege — Alleged neglect of the Turko- mans to use their water supply against the Russians — Their chivalrous bravery — Osman Pasha's mistake re- peated at the Turkoman Plevna — Arrival at Askabad — Akhal Tekke oasis — Giaours — Ak-soo — Artik — Luftobad — Its retention by Persia disapproved of by Skobeleff — Dooshak — Nearest point to the Afghan frontier — Future junction of Russian and Indian rail- ways — Refusal to permit Englishmen to go to Kelat — Tedjent river and oasis — Sarakhs and Zulficar — Popu- lation and administration — Fever — Tigers, boars, lizards, and tortoises — Losing sight of the mountains — Camels — Their proposed introduction into Russia — Depilation of — Present style of caravan progression — Arrival at Merv — Delay — Merv station — Garden irri- gation — No Native town — Russian town— Floods and draining — Koushut Khan Kala — Forced growth of business — Turkomans in the hands of Jews and Armenians — Attempt to bathe in the Murghab — The " Penjdeh sore " — P'ilters — A wash in a bath-house . 156 CHAPTER VIII. MERV TO SAMARKAND. Departure from Merv — Bairam Ali — Ruins of four cities — Woman's influence in the destruction of ancient, and cap- ture of modern, Merv— Transcaspian Sahara — Abomi- nation of desolation — General Tchernaieff's attacks and General Annenkofit's success — Moving sands — Intense heat — Refreshments — Improvised restaurant of trucks — The stations — Protection of rails from the sand — Saxaul and its uses — Wooden palisades— Wells — Abrupt termination and vagaries of the sand — Oasis of Chardjui — Russian Chardjui — Cutting in two of the railway bridge— Further detention — Night drill of Russian troops — Colonel Alikhanoff — A nice opening of the railway ! — Reasons for cutting the bridge — It xvi Contents. PAGE breaks clown — Description and cost of the bridges — Uncertain navigability of the Amu Darya — Its rapid current — M. Charil^ofl's voyage to Kerki — Dinner to Alikhanofif and the author — Farabia — Train of house- trucks — Repair of the bridge — My hut on wheels — The start over the river — Reception by the Bek of Chardjui — The festival-train — More sand — Kara Kul — A Bokharan bombardier — Arrival at Bokhara — Our reception by Generals Rosenljach and Annenkoff — Lunch — Bokharan guests refrain — Re-departure — Station of Bokhara — Valleys of Miankul and the Zerafshan — The "devil's wain" — Astonishment of Bokharans — Katta-Kurgan — Turkistan frontier — Arrival at Samarkand — Construction and condition of the railway — AnnenkofTs reward — Cost and rapid building of the line — Defects : culverts and weakness of the bridges — Important significance of the railway — General Prjevalsky's opinion . . . . .176 CHATTER IX. SAMARKAND. Arrival at Samarkand, "the Face of the Earth" — In- auguration festivities— The station and the town — Situation of the city— Zarafshan River and Siob Canal — Gold-strewing — Russian town — Fortress and citadel — Coronation stone — Execution block — Contrast of Russian and native quarters— Russian and native art — Deterioration of native talent — Clumsy attempts at restoration — Military club and amusements— Orthodox temple — Site of Russian town — Native town and its ruins — Principal mosques and colleges — The shep- herd saint— Mausoleum of Shah Zindeh— Legend concerning Kazim-ben-Abbas— His tomb— Moham- medan votaries— Bibi Khanum College — Slanting minarets — Tamerlane's tomb — Kala Afrosiab— Oldest Contents. xvii PAGE irrigation canal in the world —Valley of the Siob aryk — Primitive mills — Tomb of a giant prophet — Ali- khanoff in the mosques — Jews and Hindoos — Popula- tion 203 CHAPTER X. SAMARKAND TO BOKHARA. Departure from Samarkand — Our Anglo-French Embassy — Impressions on a Russian railway through foreign territory — Russia's careful absorption of Bokhara — Numbers and particulars of Russian and native troops — Russia holds the key of Bokhara's existence — Quarrels over water, and their consequences — Water police — Water as a measure of wealth and position — Schemes and difficulties of irrigation — Valley of the Zarafshan — The " fire devil" — Origin of the name of Samarkand — Russo-Bokharan frontier — Resemblance and differ- ence between the two conquests under Alexander of , Macedon and Alexander of Russia — Kermine — The "Father of Bokhara" — Arrival at the station of Bokhara — Bad accommodation — We retain our house- car — Journey to the capital — Native carts — Electricity in Ameer's palace — " Shaitan feringhee " — Contempt for Europeans — Gates and walls of the city — Dif- ficulties of progression — Conolly's fate — An English- man photographs the Ameer's lunatics — Russian Embassy — Influence and abilities of M. Charikoff and his secretary — Native women — Various races and their dress — ^Jews — Persian shiites — Bokharan sun- nites, Orthodox Russians and Russian Tartars — Arrival at Embassy — The dostarkhan — Ablutions — Doctor Heyfelder — A Russian ambulance — Disease and rate of mortality — Hospitality of the Ameer and Russian Embassy— Ameer's presents — Ambassador's establishment ........ 226 xviii Contents. CHAPTER XI. THE CITY OF BOKHARA. Stay in the capital — Civilities of the Russian Embassy — Inadvisability of going about unattended — Necessity of a guide — Ameer's chamber of horrors — Visit to the prison — Its inmates and filthy interior — The sheep- tick dungeon and black hole — Conoliy's subterranean cell now closed — Manner of feeding prisoners — Kalian minaret : a place of execution ; ascent of by an Englishman — Ameer's palace and clocks — Official visit to the Ameer's Minister of Commerce — Our pro- cession through the streets —Bokharan guard of honour — Reception by the Minister — More sweetmeats — I'ilaff and Tea — Conversation on trade — Diplomatic answers — Inspection of the guard of honour — Objec- tions to making presents — The reshta worm — Dr. Heyfelder's experiments — Spurious Bokharan postage stamps — Russian and native transmission of corre- spondence — Ameer's absence from the Railway in- auguration — Opening of the line to Bokhara, and invasion of the capital by Russians and Turkomans — Assassination of the Divan Begi — Lex talionis, and torture of the assassin — Ameer's executioners — Ori- ginality and population of the city . . . .251 CHAPTER XII. BOKHARA TO MERV. r)eparture from Bokhara — Breakdown of the Amu Darya bridge — Descent into a barge — Boundary between Iran and Turan — Hardships of Russian Expeditions — Difficulties and dangers abolished by the Railway — Peter the Great's instructions — Expeditions under Tcherkasky and Bucholtz — Peter's efforts to open up roads to India — His apocryphal testament — Perofsky's failure — Successes of Kaufmann and Tchernaiefi" — Contents. xix PAGE Peter the Great's dream realized — Speed and method of constructing the Railway — Comparisons with American construction — The Railway's receipts and traffic — Arrival at Merv — Welcomed by Colonel Alikhanoff — The Governor's house — Turkoman carpets — Alikhanoff s escort — Bathing — Snakes in the Murghab — Origin of the river's name — AlikhanofPs trophies — Relics of the disastrous English retreat on the Koushk — A Turkoman Khan's opinion of the English, Russians, and Afghans — Introduced to the Khans of Merv — Alikhanoff and his Turkoman subor- dinates . . 275 CHAPTER XIII. MERV AND THE TURKOMANS. Russian Merv — Chardjui— Mr. Marvin on personal aspect of the situation — Alikhanoffs importance, career, origin, and appearance — His swordmanship in play and earnest — He reminds me of Skobeleff— Warden- ship of the Marches — Reception of Salors — Alielis — Yomuds — Contrast between Alikhanoff and Komaroff — Alikhanoff as magistrate — Turkoman militia — Alikhanoffs satellites — Turkomanland, a place of exile — Exiles and adventurers — Afghans — Circassians banished to the Transcaspian — Banquet by Yellow Khan — Native dining and smoking — The "earth pipe " — The Khan takes strong drink — Mahommedan tricks to save appearances — Tekke women— Female acts of belligerency — Photographing the harem — Alikhanoffs tutelage of Turkomans — Departure from Merv — Extent of territory and population — Foreign elements in the majority — Administration — Elders and greybeards — Justice — Native punishment — Authority of the Khans — Fiscal, commercial, and agricultural figures — Imports and exports — Religion, customs, and immorality — Militaiy importance of Turkomania, XX Conte7its. PAGE and commercial aspect of Bokhara — Former opinions concerning the Turkomans — Mr. Veniukoff and Mr. Palgrave — Neglect of Turkomansby England, Turkey, and Persia — Russia's policy towards the Cossacks — Persian Cossacks — The Turkomans became marauders from necessity — Turkoman character — Hardships in the Kara Kum — Water difficulties — Underground re- servoirs and water-caverns — Origin and development of the Tekkes — Comparisons with the Cossacks — Turkoman aw/ and Cossack sidch — Prisoners — Hadji Baba — Tekkes and Cossacks as slave-owners and raiders— Cossack Ataman and Turkoman Khan — Turkoman alainan and Cossack nabicg — Dissimilari- ties — The Cossack link — Reasons for not enrolling the Turkomans as Cossacks — Calmuck Cossacks — Proposed Cossack colonies — Natural Turkoman- Cossack organization — Mahommedan militia in the Caucasus — History of the Tekkes for 300 years — Their conquest of the Akhal oasis — The Jews of Nookhoor — Turkomans as Russian troops — Skobe- leffs opinion — Intrigues and denunciations — Askabad — Meeting with General Komaroff — Return to Baku. 291 CHAPTER XIV. THE RAII-WAV AND TRADE. British alarms at the commercial success of the Railway — Exaggerations and contradictions — Facts over- looked — Brilliant future — Big talk — Increased traftic not all increase of trade — Tapping the old land routes — Falling off of Asiatic business at Nijni — Baku fair — Mr. Ivanofi's opinion — Political and commercial centre of gravity — General Tchernaiefi"'s desert tract through the Ust Urt — Inconvenience of military rail- way management— Annenkoffs eye to business — His personal supervision of the line — Mistaken notion of the recency of Russia's conquest of the Bokharan Contents. xxi I'AGE market — Reversal of business methods — Opinions of Messieurs Grigorieff and Petrofsky — Indian tea trade — Russian and Persian figures — Indian testimony — Bad effect of Abdurahman's attitude towards England — Interruption of trade by Afghan troubles — English muslins — Russian and British trade in Khorassan — English cottons at Tabriz — Turban cloths — Former blunders of British merchants— Russian sugar mono- poly — Overturn of Bokharan trade — Messieurs Pe- trofsky, Krestofsky, and Heyfelder on — Will the increase last? — Speculation and loss — Bad wares — Mr. F. Law on Russian speculation in Persia — A German'senterprize in Afghanistan — Export of sheep's gut for sausages — Bokharan sheep in Russia — A coup in sugar — Russian statistics, how obtained — Russian and Bokharan trade with Afghanistan — Figures for 1887 and 1888 — Apparent superiority of Anglo-Indian trade — Figures for 1889 — Deductions from — Balance of trade on the side of Afghanistan — India's participa- tion in the overplus — Latest figures — Exports into Afghanistan conveyed by natives — Decline of Oren- burg — Central Asian cotton — Cotton cultivation on the Murghab 365 CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION. History of the Railway — Technical details — General Annenkoff, Prince Khilkoff, and Colonel Shebanoff — Cost of construction — Traffic receipts - Financial suc- cess — Proposed extension to Tashkent and Omsk — Effect of more direct extension to Orenburg — Isola- tion of Transcaspian line — Proposed lines to the Caspian and the Transcaucasus — Vladikavkaz- Petrofsk — Necessity of direct railway communication with the Caspian — Inconveniences of the Volga and Georgian Road — Proposals for joining the railways xxii Contents. of the Cis- and Trans-caucasus — Projected lines of Vladikavkaz-Petrofsk and Tsaritsin-Petiofsk — General Annenkoff on the strategical importance of his Rail- way against India — Incorrect notion of the centre of gravity having been shifted — Importance of Turkistan in Afghan frontier affairs — New independent admin- istration in the Transcaspian — Personal changes — Retirement of General Komaroff — Alikhanoff — General Kouropatkin — Appointment of M. Sessar to Bokhara — His opinion of Abdurahman — Military train service — Strategical position of Merv station — Proposal to refill old bed of Oxus from Chardjui — Station of Bokhara — Steam navigation on the Amu Daria — Projected canal — Kara Koul wine — Dimissal of the Khans of Merv ...... 403 Appendix 437 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. Arrival of the First Train at the Station of Samar kand ..... 2. Tiflis 3. Georgian Military Road at Ananoor 4. General View of the Station of Geok Tepe 5. Ruined Mosque near Askabad 6. Railway Bridge across the Amu Daria 7. The Tomb of Tamerlane 8. A Street in Bokhara 9. Turkomans drinking Yellow Tea 10. Tekke Turkoman Ploughing . Frontispiece, y, ■ ' PAGE J 78 8S 158 166 1S8 220 254 326 334 MAPS. 1. Existing and Projected Railways between Europe •and Asia 22 2. Central Asian Railway in relation to the Afghan Frontier ........ 3^ 3. The Eussian Cential Asian Railway RUSSIA'S RAILWAY ADVA^XE CENTRAL ASIA. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Hasty completion and opening of the Central Asian Railway — The first locomotive whistle heard in Samarkand — Climax to the Russian tide of conquest — General Annenkoffs triumph — International in- auguration of the railway — Foreign guests — First Englishman to enter Samarkand by railway — Diffi- culties of obtaining permission — ■ Opposition to Annenkoff's desire to throw open the railway to the general public — Invitation to Professor Vambery .. cancelled by the Diplomatists — Objections to foreign- ers, especially Englishmen — Excursions to the Afghan frontier forbidden — Authorization required lo visit the railway — Authorities to be applied to — Favours to Frenchmen — Permission granted to few Englishmen — Many applicants refused — Russia's imitation of the ostrich in the Transcaspian Sands — li 2 J^7issms Raiki^ay Advance. What she is probably afraid of — Asiatic suspicion of character— Russia conquers in Asia by affinity of character as well as by force of arms — Author's ap- plication for permission — Necessity for approval of the Governor - General of Turkistan — His semi- independent jurisdiction — Stranj^e multiplicity of authorities concerned in granting permission— Tele- gram to General Roscnbach — Starting without per- mission — The most direct routes to the Transcaspian — Projected railways to the Caspian and Persian frontier. Shortly before the fifth anniversary of the coronation of the present Tsar, the 27th of May, 1888, General Annenkoff determined, with his characteristic energy, that the final section of the Central Asian Railway to Samarkand should be rapidly completed, and officially opened for traffic on that auspicious day. It seemed hardly possible to finish all the remaining work by so early a date, but the " Russian Lesseps " was equal to the task, and the last verst or two of rails w^ere laid down with such headlong pre- cipitancy, that there was not enough time to secure all the bolts and fastenings before the whistle of the first locomotive was heard by the astonished natives, echoing through the crumbling ruins of Samarkand. In the mean- time the indefatigable constructor issued a number of invitations to attend the fetes in cele- Introductory. 3 bration of this great achievement, which was to unite the world of Western Europe with the very heart of Central Asia. It was no ordinary feat to have forged this iron link through hitherto all but impassable deserts between the silence and conservatism of the venerable city and tomb of the great Asiatic Conqueror, and the restlessness and resistless advance of modern European life and civilization. There could scarcely have been a more fitting climax to that tide of conquest, which, after the lapse of many generations had reversed its direction, and flowing back from West to East, had reached, a little more than twenty years before, the ancient capital of Sogdiana. The civilization of the W^st was now to set its seal upon that which had been secured to it by force of arms, and that promoter and carrier of civilization — the rail- way — was to render easy of access one of the most renowned cities of the ancient world. In achieving this important result. General Anneii- koff had triumphed not only over natural obstacles, but also over Russian inertia and official opposition ; and his success had been so signal and instructive that, in the opinion of a French traveller, expressed before the B 2 4 Jv7!ssias Railway Advance. Geographical Society of Paris, the construction of a similar railway through the Great Sahara was now only a question of time. As soon as it became known that General Annenkofif intended to give to the inauguration of the railway the character of an international, and not exclusively Russian event, I felt an ardent desire to join the fortunate party of foreign tourists, who had been invited to make this fascinating trip, and if possible to be one of the first Englishmen to travel by railway to Samarkand. I had long entertained a wish to make a closer acquaintance with the remarkable enterprise by which Russia, in spite of her back- wardness in general, and the proverbial slowness and unprofitableness of her railway construction, had at last succeeded in surprising and interest- ing the world ; and here was a splendid oppor- tunity of judging for myself how far the adverse criticisms of the work had been justified by the facts. In my eagerness to make this excursion 1 must, I fear, confess to having been animated with a somewhat similar spirit to that which must have possessed the eccentric Briton who is reported to have offered a large sum of money for the privilege of being the first passenger through the new St. Gothard tunnel ; but there Introductory. 5 was no necessity for offering any premium in this case, as General Annenkoff, with an excus- able pride in the offspring of his energy and perseverance, was only too willing to convey the first foreign visitors without even payment of the ordinary fare. Eventually, after some little difficulty, I was successful in performing the journey, and subsequently I learned from General Annenkoff that I had been the first Englishman to traverse the whole extent of the railway. Several fellow-countrymen had previously passed over parts of the unfinished line, but none be- fore me had accomplished the entire railway journey to Samarkand. The first question that arose was, should I be permitted to go .'* As an Englishman, and a keen observer of Russia's movements towards India, I was not without certain misgivings that political suspicion might be roused in the mind of some bureaucrat whose consent was neces- sary, and that difficulties would then be thrown in my way. The railway was a military one and under the control of the Minister for War ; and although it was now to be opened to the public, this did not necessarily mean that unre- stricted freedom of travelling over it was to be enjoyed by Englishmen and other foreigners in- 6 Rjissias Raihvay Advance. discriminately. • Even General Annenkoff's in- xitations were not all approved of in St. Peters- burg, and I believe that the General is still at variance with the Diplomatic authorities on this point. He has always been most anxious to advertise his raihvay, and attract every possible kind of passenger, irrespective of nationality ; for he fully appreciates the value of the receipts to be derived from foreign travellers, as well as from European and Asiatic commerce ; but the Foreign Office and the Ministry of War, as might be expected, regard the matter from quite a dififerent point of view. One of General Annenkoff's invitations w^as intended for Professor Vambery, the " false Dervish," who worked his dangerous and tedious way through the deserts now conquered by the railway, at a time when the bare idea of such an undertaking would have been scouted with de- rision. Nobody could have appreciated better than the celebrated Hungarian Orientalist the wonderful transformation which the Russians have already produced, and are still effecting, in those inhospitable regions ; and had General Annenkoff been permitted to extend his hospi- tality to the learned Professor, the latter might perhaps have been induced to modify his well- IntJ^odiictory. 7 known bias against Russia. A generous en- dorsement of the invitation by the Russian diplomatists might have helped to turn a bitter foe into a useful friend, but the St. Petersburg Foreign Office thought differently, and would not agree to the proposal. Nothing perhaps could better demonstrate the uncertainty and instability of affairs on the new frontier delimited by Colonels Ridgway and Kulberg, from the Russian point of view, than the jealousy with which the Transcaspian region is still guarded from the " evil eye " of English- men, and from the scrutiny of all foreigners who are suspected of not being the friends and admirers of Russia. Even foreigners, who are known to be friendly to Russia, are not expected to abuse their privilege of travelling over the Transcaspian railway by visiting any parts of the Afghan or Persian frontiers from the Russian side. This, at least, must be inferred from the report, that a reprimand had been administered to Colonel Alikhanoff for having assisted several Frenchmen to visit Penjdeh and Zulficar. In my case the authorities seemed anxious that I should ]iot stray too far from any of the places along the line of railway ; and some months later another Englishman, who started to cross the 8 Kiissias Railiuay Advance. Persian frontier in the direction of Meshed, was peremptorily requested to return to Askabad.* As soon as there is the least danger or spurt of revolt by some Asiatic adventurer or pretender, or the slightest movement of Afghan or Turko- man tribes near the border, the presence of Eng- lishmen is sure to be unconditionally prohibited, as was shown in the case of a person highly recommended from London, whose request was refused on account of the commotion which fol- lowed the flight of Ishak Khan into Bokhara, and the appearance ofAbdurahman Khan at ]\Iazar-i-Sherif. Now that this perturbation among the frontier population has rubsided. General Anncnkoff maintains that everybody can go over the railway without any difficult)-, though I doubt very much that tlie special permission hitherto required by the General's superiors could be dispensed with. This authori- zation will, no doubt, always depend to a great extent on circumstances and persons ; but I am inclined to think that the restriction on foreign intrusion will be scverel}- enforced from time to time, until that happy period when the Afghan Buffer shall be superseded by contiguous fron- * One or two Encjlishmcn have since been permitted, as a favour, logo this way to Meshed. Introductory. 9 tiers, and the railways on both sides brought into junction. The grounds on which permission to visit the railway is granted or refused, and the particular authorities who are entitled to decide tlie ques- tion, are very difficult to define. Matters of this kind are often likely to be decided more by the momentary influences of persons in power, than by any settled rules or regulations. In Russia there is little solidarity among Ministers and officials, and when a question has to be sub- mitted to the decision of several of these " High Excellencies," an applicant may often have to relinquish all hope of obtaining a decided answer one way or the other. The authorities, whose concurrent approval appears to be neces- sary at present, are the Minister for War, the Governors- General of Turkistan and Trans- caspia, M. de Giers, and the head of the Asiatic department, M. Zinovieff, but other dignitaries might at any moment claim to have a say in the matter. Hitherto Frenchmen have been the most favoured guests over this railway, and the number of books in which they have recorded their impressions seemed to call for some inde- pendent English description, such as I hope to lo Ritssids Railway Advance. be able to give in the following pages. Common hatred of Germany, and sentimental coquetry between the two nations, have brought our Parisian friends into such fashionable repute among the Russians, that this in itself is almost enough to enable them to go where others are not admitted, or, if admitted at all, not alto- gether without reluctance. It happens also that General Annenkoff is connected by marriage with a well-known French family, and this will further explain why the guests at the festivities at Samarkand were mostly all P'renchmen. General Annenkoff is, in fact, the most popu- lar Russian in France. A few Englishmen before and since have been permitted to visit the railway and its districts, but many appli- cants have met with refusal. Considering the number of French books, already referred to, in which the railway has been fully described, it seems unaccountable that the Russians should continue to screen this consummation of their conquest with an exclu- siveness almost Chinese. Besides published accounts, several Ih^tisli and Indian military and diplomatic officers have passed over the railway, and have, of course, reported on the subject to their respcctix'c departments ; so Introductory. 1 1 that everything about it must be known in the only quarters where the Russians might reasonably fear the consequences of such know- ledge ; in spite of which they seem to cherish the notion that their new territory is still a ta'va incognita to everybody but themselves, and act as if the allegiance of their new Turkoman sub- jects were liable to be undermined by the British tourist. There is perhaps just a clash of reason in their possible fear that a second Captain Burnaby, or another O'Donovan, pos- sibly a British Ashinoff, might strike off from the railway to some vulnerable or disaffected corner of the Afghan or Persian frontiers, and, in certain propitious circumstances, excite the natives against Russian rule. I remember that when the Russian army stood round Constanti- nople in 1878, and the threatening British Fleet was lying anchored off the Princes' Islands, it was reported, rightly or wrongly, in the society of Pera, that some adventurous spirit among the temporary Turkophile colony of British subjects had suddenly disappeared into the Rhodope Mountains, and that the outbreak in the Russian rear was greatly assisted by this individual's en- couragement. Perhaps the Russians are afraid of something similar occurring on their Trans- 1 2 Russia s Raihuay Advance. Caspian frontier. I am persuaded, howev^er, that there is also a more general reason for this Russian imitation of the ostrich in the sands of the Transcaspian, and that is the natural distrustfulness of the Russian character — an element which seems to be ingrained by polit- ical education, or rather political suppression, which in Russia almost amounts to the same thing. The Russians naturally are only some- what less suspicious of strangers than the Asiatics, whom they so easily conquer and assimilate. This is no imputation on the Rus- sian character, as we hnd many eminent Russians, who have turned their attention towards the East, openly declaring that the similarity between the Russian and the Oriental constitutes one of their greatest natural advan- tages. In real it}', Russia triumphs in her Asiatic jM-ovinccs quite as much by affmity of character as by force of arms, and no one can properly understand Russia in Europe until he has seen Russia in Asia. Regarding my own case in obtaining permis- sion to visit Merv and Samarkand, I must observe that several months previously, when I wished to go over the new railway as far as it was then read)', General ;\nnenkoff felt so sure Introductory. 1 3 of my being met with a refusal, that he strongly advised me not to think of making an appli- cation ; besides which, I received other verbal testimony of the feeling that then existed against allowing me to inspect the movements of Russia beyond the Caspian. Notwithstanding these ill-omened prophecies and dissuasions, I was determined to try my luck with the select few who had been invited to assist at the inauguration of the Bokharan branch of the Transcaspian railway, or, at least, to follow closely on their heels. There was this much in my favour, that I was well known to the Russian authorities, whose record of me was, so to speak, a fairly clean one, ex- tending over many years of residence in Russia as the representative of a great English news- paper, which nevertheless did not exempt me from what, I was told, were the usual formalities. These began with the intercession of the British Embassy, in the form of a prompt note from Sir Robert Morier to M. de Giers, which at once elicited the kind offices of M. Zinovieff at the head of the Asiatic Departm.ent, and that gentleman took the next step by submitting my name to the Minister for War. The War Minister in his turn then declared that he must 14 7\?issicis Raihuay Advance. first communicate with General Rosenbach at Tashkent or Samarkand. It struck me as very strange tliat the War Minister should have to telegraph to his sub- ordinate, the Governor-General of Turkistan, General Rosenbach, in order to procure the latter's consent to my journey through the much guarded Transcaspian, which is not even within the bounds of his jurisdiction.* Yet the ap- proval of General Rosenbach was represented to me as absolutely necessary. In vain I observed that it was the Transcaspian that had hitherto been so jealously closed against foreigners, and not Turkistan, which includes Samarkand. Therefore, if General Rosenbach's consent was necessary for my visit to Samarkand, why was General Komaroff not also applied to for per- mission to visit Askabad and Merv ? Apart from this, I was well aware that General- * The question has since been seriously raised in St. Petersburg of detaching the Transcaspian province from the administration of the Caucasus under Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff, and of uniting it with the Govern- ment of Turkistan ; but this change has not yet been effected, and there was no thought of it at the time I refer to, especially as a commission on this very subject had just decided that the province should either remain as it was, subject to the Caucasus, or be separated into an independent province under General Komaroff alone. Introductory. 1 5 Adjutant Rosenbach was the chief in authority over the last section of the railway between the Amu-Daria and the Zerafshan, as this part of the line runs through the territory of Bokhara, which has always been politically under the con- trol of the Governor-General at Tashkent. But I had previously been under the impression that the exclusively military rule and semi-indepen- dence of the Turkistan General-Governorship, which in the earlier times of Russian extension in Central Asia had been brought forward to excuse the unexpected movements of Kaufmann and others, had been all but abolished by the new civil organization of that province, after it had been superseded by the Transcaspian place of arms. By this reform, as I had understood it, the Turkistan province Avas considered to have completed the work of its almost irrespon- sible Governors-General in pushing forward frontiers so vainly imagined by England to be stationary or impassable, and while ceding this onerous function to its younger and more vigor- ous neighbour, the Transcaspian province under General Komaroff, it was gradually to fail into the ranks of the other Imperial provinces and become more dependent upon the central autho- rities in St. Petersburi^^. I had also formed the 1 6 R^issias Raihvay Advance. idea, that ev^en tlie political supervision of Bok- hara by the Governor-General of Turkistan, had now been changed by the appointment of a Diplomatic resident at the Ameer's capital, under the immediate direction of the Foreign Office on the Neva. The natural deduction from all this was, that the permission of the powers in St. Petersburg would be quite sufficient for m}- journey, unless it were a question of referring to General Komaroff of the Transcaspian, whose name, however, was not even mentioned. I soon found that I was altogether mistaken. Here was evidently another case of that complicated multi- plicity of authorities, often in conflict with each other, which is a characteristic feature in the bureaucratic system of Russia. It was very clear that there had been no real introduction of the changes which I had heard so much about, and General Rosenbach seemed to be as inde- pendently powerful under the Emperor as ever had been any of his predecessors. Now that a Russian military railway cuts off the wedge formed by Bokhara between Turkistan and Transcaspia, he is more than ever the Yarim Padshah (half Emperor) or viceroy of the Ameer's country. Hence his consent was indis- pensable, although, as I was at once informed, Introductory. 1 7 the higher authorities in St. Petersburg had not the least objection. Accordingly a telegram was sent to General Rosenbach, and I had to wait for a reply. After waiting several days for the answer, I got tired of delay ; and as time was getting short, I took the bull by the horns, and started off without any permission at all. There could be no doubt, I was assured, that it would eventually be granted, but the form had to be gone through all the same. This may appear to have been a bold and rather rash proceeding on my part ; but while I could plainly see that there was no intention of forbidding me outright, there seemed to be a very strong desire that I should not go. I therefore started by the night train from Petersburg to Moscow without any kind of pass or document, and only armed with a verbal promise from the Asiatic Department, which was faithfully kept, that my permission should be telegraphed to me on the way as soon as it arrived. The necessity, as long as it exists, of obtaining this authorization is the only reason that need take the traveller through St. Petersburg and Moscow on his way to Central Asia, unless he wishes to visit these places en route. The most C iS Russia's Raikvay Advance. direct road from London to the Transcaspian lies through Berhn, Odessa, Eatoum, Tiflis, and Baku. Another way, which is presumably much longer, may be chosen via Constantinople, either by sea, or overland by the new Oriental express train from Paris. From St. Petersburg there are several ways of reaching the Caspian, all passing through the most interesting and picturesque parts of European Russia. One is by boat down the Volga, from Nijni Novgorod or Tsaritsin to Astrakhan, and thence into the Caspian ; a second by railway to Baku, with a break in the railway communication of 135 miles over the Dariel Pass of the Caucasus be- tween Vladikavkaz and Tiflis, which has to be traversed with post-horses ; and a third by rail through the Crimea to Sevastopol, and thence by sea to either Novorosisk or Batoum. I selected the second route, as appearing, accord- ing to Russian maps, to be the most direct of the three. The Crimean route seemed one of the longest, and I naturally considered that quicker means of locomotion must necessarily be offered by the direct raihvaj's than by the steamboats on the Volga or the Black Sea. It seems, however, that a quicker passage can often be made on the river, in spite of triple the dis- Introdjidory. 1 9 tance by water, as compared with the short voyage across the Caspian from the railway terminus at Baku. This does not say very much for the speed of Russian railways ; but apart from the snail's pace of the trains beyond Moscow, the advantage in point of time of the water way from the railway terminus on the Volga down stream into the Caspian, is probably due to the unfortunate break between the Cis- and Trans-Caucasian railways. The mountain road between these two rail- ways can be traversed at the quickest in twenty hours, without stopping, except for a few minutes at each post station for change of horses. General Annenkofif, who does every- thing faster than anybody else in Russia, has done it in eighteen hours ; but "His Energy" (Energeetchestvo), as he is called, instead of " His Excellency," travels with an escort of Cossacks like a Grand Duke, and brooks no delay. Ordinary mortals are often delayed here in the winter by the snow in the Pass, when navigation on the ice-bound Volga is impossible. On the other hand, the Volga route is available in spring, when the mountain road between the two railways is often rendered impassable for days together by the swollen torrents and floods. C 2 20 Riissias Railway Advance. Russia's communications in these parts will never be complete until the great Caucasian range is pierced by railway to Tiflis, or turned by a flank movement in railway construction from' Vladikavkaz to the port of Petrofsk. The continuation of the Vladikavkaz line by i6o miles to the Caspian port of Petrofsk could be easily extended along the shore to Baku, another 227 miles, and so on to the Persian frontier, thus avoiding the mountains alto- gether. The inhabitants of Tiflis, who feel themselves isolated by the main range of the Caucasus from the great centres and railway routes of Central Russia, are very anxious to have a rail- way through the mountains direct from Vladi- kavkaz; but as such a gigantic piece of work would cost at least forty millions of roubles, and necessitate the construction of sixty miles of railroad at a height of 3,000 feet, it is not likely to be undertaken for some time to come. P^or these reasons the flank movement has already been decided upon, and the Vladikav- kaz and Petrofsk line will probably be the next important railway built in Russia. This will be easily continued round the Caspian to Derbcnt, Baku, and the Persian frontier, as the Caspian Introductory. 2 1 littoral is not so steep and rugged as the coast of the Black Sea at the other end of the Cau- casian range. Another and more direct line is also being discussed, which would run from Tsaritsin on the Volga straight to Petrofsk, without touch- ing the line from Rostoff to Vladikavkaz, thus providing a much shorter route from Moscow to the Caspian than the prolongation of the Vladi- kavkaz line. Either of these two lines would greatly shorten communication between the Russian central provinces and the Transcas- pian, and would be of enormous commercial importance, not only for trade Vv'ith Central Asia, but also with Persia. The approach of the Vladikavkaz-Petrofsk, or Tsaritsin-Petrofsk railway to the Persian frontier will, it is con- sidered, increase the necessity of a Persian rail" v/ay through Resht to Teheran ; and when uninterrupted railway communication is once established between Moscow and the Persian capital, the Muscovite merchants and manu- facturers hope to compete still more successfully than ever with their British rivals. They are quite aware that their railway advance on Persia would probably force on the realization of the projected English railway from the Persian Gulf 22 Russia s Railway Advance. to Ispahan, or the proposed German h'ne through Asia Minor; but, according to their computation, which I have never been able to verify, because they omit to mention the starting point of the calculation, even in that case the lines referred to would give them the advantage of less railway communication by 400 miles as compared with their British and German competitors, irrespec- tive of the sea voyage from London to Bender Bushir, and from Hamburg to Scutari. In any case, the necessity of linking the Transcaucasus and the Caspian to the rest of Russia by the construction of one or more of the railways described, has now become a matter of vital importance. Until this is done, the Transcas- pian railway will remain isolated, and incapable of developing the full measure of its capacities. 73 Centra/ As/an Sc S/berian /^ai/ways. Map showing Existing and Projected Railways between Europe & Asia. Sca/e I Jo OOO 000 Af3in Lines of Extsfin^ fiathvay . /Yo/ecfed ■ through Sider/a Seconc^ry or loop luie pro/echd detmen Centraf ^s/an & Siberian ffai/ways r 2-1 CHAPTER II, MOSCOW AND INDIA. Railway travelling beyond Moscow — Finger-posts point- ing to the East — Moscow's connection with the object of my journey — Comparisons between St. Petersburg and Moscow — Nondescript character of Moscow— Its commercial influence — It sets the business fashion — St. Petersburg : Russia's Euro- pean disguise — Moscow : the heart of Russia, and the mainstay of relations with the East and the Central Asian Railway — Prominent commercial im- portance now given to the Russian railway advance — Englishmen first endeavour to reach India over- land through Moscow — Voyage of Richard Chancellor — Journey of Anthony Jenkinson — Sir John Merrick's negotiations for a transit through Muscovy to India — We incite the Muscovites to independent efforts towards India — Peter the Great — Jonas Hanway — Napoleon— England's abortive attempts to arrest Russia's movements — More reasonable policy — Use- less criticism of new Afghan Boundary — The danger lies in the inherent faults of Asiatic rule in Afghan- istan — Russia's complaints of Abdurahman Khan misconstrued — England has no control over Afghan Ameer — Baron Jomini's suggestion of a permanent 24 Jviissiiis Railiuay Advance. frontier Commission — Would not the Russians step into Afghan Turkistan as they walked into Kuldja ? — Justifiable opinion that England will never fight over Afghanistan — Dangers and uncertainties of North-Eastern frontier — Probable repetition of troubles of 1885 if this part neglected — Russian explorers already at work. Although I started from St. Petersburg, I felt that my long journey througli Russia was really to begin at Moscow, where I expected to receive the necessary permission to proceed ; besides which, the night express to IMoscow is so much superior in speed to most of the trains beyond, that as a rule the failings of real Russian travel- ling begin to impress one onl}' after leaving the old capital. The 403 miles to Moscow are tra- versed in fifteen hours, at the rate of about thirty miles an hour ; whereas when I subsequently calculated the rate of progress over 1,652 miles from St. Petersburg to the foot of the Caucasus, including the comparatively rapid train to Mos- cow, and going as fast as all the other trains would convey me, I foimd that the average speed altogetherhad barel}'exceeded fifteen miles an hour. This slow locomotion is aggravated by the long and frequent stoppages, ostensibly for refreshment, which literally cat tip the time on Russian railways ; and although perhaps AJcscczu and India. 25 necessary in a country of such \'ast and dreary distances, are none the less annoying to the traveller in a hurry to reach his destination. It is not my intention, however, to hurry on towards the Transcaspian in this description without pausing occasionally on the way to read the more prominent finger-posts pointing to the East, and to notice the principal factors in Russia's advances into Central Asia, as they present themselves along the route. These, after leaving Moscow, are the Cossacks and the Caucasus ; the first having been the principal pioneers and leaders, and the second the chief basis of Russia's Eastward march ; but first and foremost in interest connecting it with the object of my journey naturally comes Moscow. The foreign visitor to the metropolis on the Neva is generally told that in order to see Russia proper he must leave polyglot and cos- mopolitan St. Petersburg, and go on to Moscow; and certainly, if he cares to see the Eastern face of this Janus-like Empire, he cannot do better than follow this advice. The city of St. Peters- burg, which is the Westward face of the Russian two-headed eagle, and which has been aptly designated by a native writer as one huge department for the transaction of the official 2 6 Rnssias Raihvay Advance. business of the Empire, has nothing about it distinctively and exclusively Russian ; whereas Moscow exhibits just as much of Asia as enters into the very blood and fibre of the Russian people. To put it broadly, the one has always been genuinely Russian, while the other was originally made to be something of a sham, to suit the taste and impress the minds of Western Europe. Moscow has probably been described oftener than St. Petersburg, though never to the extent which its importance and originality deserve. Field-Marshal von Moltke, in his letters, said that it reminded him of such incongruous places as Bagdad, Buda-Pest, and Palermo. Nearly everything in it suggests the East, and yet not the real East. This peculiar nondescript character of the city no doubt startles the stranger from the East, almost as much as it does the European from the West. If the latter is astonished by the unique and grotesque architecture in and around the Kremlin, the other must experience a shock to his Oriental instinct for beauty of form and harmony of colour when he beholds the lack of symmetry and ugly combinations of glaring colours of the old Muscovite stronghold. Most accounts of Moscow tell us of its Moscozv and India. 27 marvellous old Kremlin, or citadel, its multitude of churches, and its semi-oriental character ; but little if anything has ever been said of its great commercial importance, and the general influ- ence which it exercises throughout the country. It exhibits far more of the real stir and bustle of commercial life than St. Petersburg ; and the Eastern merchants, who constantly appear upon its Bourse, are never seen among the crowd of Germans, interspersed with a few Russians, and still fewer English, upon the Exchange on the banks of the Neva. Moscow, with a million more inhabitants in its province than is con- tained in the larger government of St. Peters- burg, is, without doubt, the great commercial centre and the heart of Russia, where all national movements, including the invasions of the I£ast, have been chiefly inspired and nourished. East, west and south of it, lie stretched out in pro- fusion nearly all the natural, and unfortunately much neglected, riches of the country ; and if any proof be wanting of the commercial advan- tage of Moscow over St. Petersburg, even in the trade between the Baltic and the central pro- vinces, it will be found in the fact that St. Petersburg is now being discarded in favour of the more direct and convenient routes between 2 8 Russia s Railway Advance. Moscow and Libau, Riga and other Western ports.* Moscow also sets the fashion in business manners and methods for the whole of the Rus- sian interior, leaving European ways of business to those who prefer them at the ports of the Neva, Baltic, and Black Sea, where foreigners predominate. The old IMuscovite merchant, with long hair and top boots, who opens negotiations with his " all lowest salaam " or " very special bow," still holds his own round the Kremlin ; and although many of the younger generation are clad in European tailoring, and strike their bargains over champagne instead of tea, they are by no means radically changed by these adoptions. Moscow, and especially com- mercial and manufacturing Moscow, is a real power in the State. Its merchant princes, led by the late M. Katkofif, gained for the present Minister of Finance his appointment from the * Novve \"rcmya says, that for the last ten years, thanks to the competition of railways with the Volga, a great part of the cereals which ouglit to be exported through St. Petersburg arc now sent direct to the ports of the Baltic, where the export trade has made enor- mous progress ; while the grain trade of St. Petersburg, although not materially diminished, has not increased for many years past. Moscow and India. 29 Tsar ; and they now exert a powerful and often decisive voice in the commercial policy of the Empire. Nor have the political pretensions of the ancient capital been ignored in the " Mus- covite policy " of the present reign. The Nicholas railway to Moscow is the only one of the railways radiating from St. Petersburg which leads directly into genuine, Slavonic, and " holy " Russia. All the other lines run into those annexed provinces of the Baltic, Finland, and Poland, inhabited by foreign-bred and heterodox peoples, whose Russification is being carried out at the present moment with greater severity than at any previous time. The northern city of barracks and palaces, stand- ing guard, as it were, over these heterogeneous elements, is the purely European disguise which Peter the Great forced Russia to assume for the purpose of imposing the power of his enormous Empire upon the Western nations, and of serv- ing as an inlet for as much of European culture as Russia required for her civilizing mission in the East ; and these are services which the Mus- covite Chauvinists might make some allowance for in their unmitigated condemnation of the " Palmyra of the North." But Moscow, " the city of churches, the golden-domed, myriad- 30 Rtissias Railway Advance, belled, white-stoned, emerald-roofed, and thou- sand-towered," has always been, and still re- mains, the typical picture and centre of Russia, and the mainstay of those relations with the East, which have thus far culminated in the railway to Samarkand. The relation between the Central Asian Rail- way and the Moscow district is now far more important than that which existed between the caravans and the Moscow merchants, when their only means of transport were the camels of the nomad of the desert. In and around Moscow are still to be found the principal men who maintain the trade with Central Asia, and con- tribute most to the commercial employment of the Central Asian Railway. All questions of throuf^h tariffs, freights, and facilities pertaining to railway traffic with Central Asia, hav^e a direct bearing upon Moscow as the centre of the Em- pire, while St. Petersburg in this connection is almost completely ignored. The new railway has thus already become closely associated in Russia with the develop- ment of Central Asian trade, and nothing more is now heard, at least not in public, of the mili- tary purposes for which it was originally begun. In fact, the importance attached to its com- Moscow and India. 31 mercial prospects almost causes one to forget that the strategical demands, which are appar- ently satisfied for the present, and not the com- mercial considerations from which so much is now expected, Avere the primary reasons for its rapid construction. The commercial significance of the line came into prominence only when, contrary to expectation, its extension was carried north-east through Merv into rich and flourishing Bokhara, instead of being turned off south near Sarakhs in a purely strategical and unprofitable deflection towards Herat. This proposed branch in the direction of the so-called " Key of India," the Russians have told us, could be made in a couple of months, whenever rendered necessary by the approach of another crisis like the fight on the Koushk. Had the work of frontier delimitation gone on smoothly, the railway would probably not have reached the Oxus down to tlie present day ; for it cer- •tainly is a fact that in consequence of the " woeful incident " at Dash-Kepri, the main line was extended to the Amu-Daria with extra- ordinary celerity ; and there can be little doubt that any further serious misunderstanding be- tween England and Russia about Afghanistan would set General Annenkoff's railway battalions 32 Russia s Railicay Advance. at work again on the American system with re- doubled energy. In happy default of this con- tingency, the Russians, with General Annenkofif and his friends, have decided to regard the rail- way solely as an instrument for increased com- mercial activity between Russia and Central Asia. From this point of view they will cv^en argue that their advance into Central Asia, whether by railway or otherwise, has never been dictated by any unworthier motives than those of commerical cupidity and security for com- mercial relations, such as those which first led England to India. This, it may be admitted, is fairly true as far as it applies to the time before Peter the Great ; but we know well enough that another and powerful incentive has since actuated Russia in planning expeditions against India, and that is the desire of revenge for English opposition in Europe, and especially at Constantinople. " Be our friends in Europe," say the Russians, in effect, " and leave Turkey to us ; otherwise we will worry and attack you in India whenever we get the opportunity." It is a curious and noteworthy fact in regard to Russia's improvement of her advance towards India, by means of the Central Asian Railway, that England endeavoured to contract com- Moscozv and India. 33 mercial relations with India in much the same direction, via Moscow, and with the aid of the Muscovites, long before her commercial inter- course had been established with the East Indies by the sea route round the Cape. As will be seen, it was not the apocryphal testament of Peter the Great that gave the first impulse to the Russian hankering after India. The commencement of commercial dealings with Moscow through Archangel, effected by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor in 1554, some fifty years before the establishment of the first British factory at Ahmednuggur, was no doubt made in the hope of eventually getting overland as far as India. This much is clearly indicated by Russian authors, who state that the English merchants then settled in old IMuscovy were not satisfied with Russian markets, and the exclusive privileges granted to them by the Tsar, but were always talking of the wealth of India, and bewitching the Russian imagination with prospects of the gain that would accrue to both parties if the Muscovites would only assist the English in getting there through Central Asia. At last, in 1558, Anthony Jenkinson ob- tained special passports from the " Great Lord Tsar of Muscovy," enabling him to penetrate D 34 Rtissias Railway Advance. into Central Asia, and after great difficulties and dangers he got as far as Bokhara. The idea of a transit trade to India ■:'/« Moscovy was not, how- ever, abandoned ; and finally, in 1614, official ne- gotiations were opened on the subject by Sir John Merrick; a commercial ambassador from King James to the Tsar Michael Feodorovitch, the first of the Romanoffs. Sir John JMerrick's pro- posal was to find new trade routes to India and Persia by way of the Volga and the Obi ; in realizing which scheme, the Russians were to give their authority and assistance in return for England's mediation between the Tsar and the King of Sweden, and the payment of ^20,000 into the Tsar's exhausted exchequer. This proposal, which was several times renewed down to 1620, failed to elicit the least favour from the conservative Boyars and merchants of Moscow, who, in spite of the allurements held out by Merrick as to the golden results of a joint trade with India, were persistent and successful in persuading the Tsar to withhold his consent. " The English," said the Muscovite opposi- tionists, "are a strong and rich people, and our Russians can never get on with them in anything." Irrespective of this particular project of Moscow and India. 35 Anglo-Russian trade with India, the privileges then accorded to British commerce in Russia were strongly opposed by the Moscow mer- chants, until at last, when a pretext arose in the establishment of the English Common- wealth, and -the decapitation of Charles the First, — events which greatly disgusted the Mus- covite autocrat, — this commercial grievance was quickly remedied by the Tsar's abolition of all privileges to foreigners, and the expulsion of the British traders from every part of Muscovy except the part of Archangel.* As soon as the English merchants of the seventeenth century had gone from Moscow, the Russians made several attempts to form a con- nection with India on their own account. Not that this was by any means the commencement of their efforts in that direction ; for the first Russian ambassador to India, a merchant named Nikitin, was sent from Moscow in the fifteenth century, just two hundred years earlier ; but the * The mercantile community of Moscow at the pre- sent day are closely imitating their ancestors of two-and- a-half centuries ago by protesting against the temporary immunities recently granted to Captain Wiggins and the "Phoenix Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-on-Tyne," in their attempts to trade with Siberia through the mouths of the rivers Obi and Yenissci. D 2 o 6 Russia's Railivay Advance. Tsar Alexis IMichailovitch, who expelled the British merchants from Moscow, had learnt so much from them about the riches of India that he was afterwards induced to despatch four separate embassies to the Great Mogul in the course of a few years. When Peter the Great arrived on the scene, that illustrious pioneer of Russian development was also led to interest himself in the matter by what he heard about India during his stay in England and Holland and on returning to Russia he naturally initiated fresh efforts to reach the tempting goal. Some years later, in the reign of George the Second, there was another spurt of English commercial enterprise into Central Asia towards India via the Caspian Sea, which was the subject of some diplomatic discussion with the Russian Government. The principal personage in this revival was Jonas Ilanway, ■\vhosc celebrated journey, like the former expe- dition of Anthony Jcnkinson, seems to have led to no practical or lasting result ; and thence- forward England found it more convenient to confine the development of her means of com- munication with India to the element on which she reigned supreme. The last foreigner who entertained the Moscoio and India. 2)7 notion of reaching India through IMoscow (not as a merchant, but as a conqueror) was Napoleon the First ; and his direct march upon the old Russian capital shows that he was fully aware of the greater importance of that city for the object of his invasion, as compared with the new residence of the Tsars on the Neva. After the encouragement and incitement thus unconsciously given to the Russians in their aspirations towards India, it is not surprising that they soon began to make giant strides in the direction of the coveted land ; and the consequence of these movements was that we subsequently entered upon a long period of abortive attempts to keep Russia at a respectful distance from our Indian frontiers by periodical and useless alarms and protests, often thereby exposing our own weakness, which unfortunately also tended to stimulate the advance of our rival rather than to check it. This unreasonable policy has now been happily superseded by a more rational and practical view of the whole question. If we once helped to lure the Russians on towards India, and then provoked them to advance by frequent fits of " Mervousness," they have now 38 Russia s Railway Advance. roused us in our turn to do something more than make verbal protests and empty threats. We have at last set about organizing our own " scientific frontier," and the buffer frontier of Russia and Afghanistan has been conjointly defined on the North-West. And yet we are told by the critics that this part of the Russo-Afghan frontier, for various reasons, cannot be regarded as permanently established. Russia, they say, as well as Eng- land, seeks a scientific frontier ; and as the delimited boundary, according to Sir West Ridgeway, runs for the most part through a sandy, treeless, and waterless desert, it cannot be considered by Russia as a satisfactory or durable line of demarcation. No one can deny that the frontier, like most things, has its in- herent defects ; but in depreciating or con- demning it, arc we not inviting Russia to seek a better one for herself, and a worse one for us .'' Are we not encouraging her to advance still nearer towards India "^ 7\lthough perhaps a bad frontier, it suits us well enough as long as Russia continues to respect it. All we have to do is to prepare to protect it with something more than mere words and threats in the event of Russia being led to violate her engage- Map showing Central Asian Railway IN RELATION TO THE AFGHAN FRONTIER AS FINALLY DELIMITED IN 1885 # Moscozu and India. 39 ments ; and there is certainly no necessity for us, of all people in the world, to lead her on to do so. It is not, however, the imperfections of this part of the frontier which need give any cause of fear that the Russians will ever wish to overstep it ; the source of possible trouble is rather to be found in the inseparable faults of Asiatic rule on the opposite side. During the recent suppres- sion of rebellion in Afghan Turkistan, and the subsequent " Bloody Assizes " held in that region by Abdurahman Khan for the purpose of punishing the accomplices of Ishaak Khan, and while the Russians were raising something like an alarm in consequence, most English writers and speakers on the subject seemed to think that every possible cause of complaint on the part of the Russians was removed by the authentic contradiction of the alleged hostile intentions of Abdurahman against Russia. This was simply begging the question, as nobody in Russia seriously believed for a moment in the hostile intentions or pro- ceedings which rumour attributed to Abdurah- man Khan, To have done so would have been to convict the Ameer of sheer madness. What many competent Russians feared (and this fear 40 Rnssias Railway Advance. was shared at one moment by Englishmen ofificially interested in the matter), was that the effects of the Ameer's punitive expedition, so close to the Russian borders, were liable to prove dangerous to the peace and tranquillity of the Bokharan Uzbegs and others, whose rela- tives by blood and race were being tortured and executed by hundreds on the opposite side of the Oxus. The extent of the panic on the frontiers may be estimated by the fact that no less than 3,000 families of these Afghan Uzbegs, including the Khan of Kunduz, fled across the river into Bokhara, besides which another crowd of refugees accompanied Ishaak Khan over the Russian part of the frontier. Trade, too, was completely suspended. This abnormal state of things was the true cause of alarm ; but whether it was justifiable or not is a question that can be argued ad iufiiiitmii. One might say that the Russian Government ought to have been more thankful than alarmed at the acqui- sition of so many new subjects and vassal pro- tegees. Of course the mere movement of Afghan troops towards the frontiers would induce the Russians to take extra precautions on their side, just as they have so often done to the alarm of Europe, for the same reason, on the frontiers of Moscow and India. 41 Austria and Germany. Consequently General Krestiane's battalion at Kerki was reinforced on this occasion by three others. Another dis- quieting symptom at the time was the Russian belief, which had been confirmed, to a great extent, by English opinion, and very much strengthened by the refusal of the Ameer to receive the Durand mission, that the li^nglish in India had no influence or control whatever over the Afghan Ameer and his doings, — that in fact he had become far too strong for us. It was of no use therefore, argued the Russians, to rely upon the power of the English to prevent the possible occurrence of serious difficulties and annoyances on the frontier. England, it is plain, has no direct control over Abdurahman Khan, and knowing this well enough, the Russians will not put up with anything on his part which they may consider injurious or troublesome to them- selves simply out of regard for English assurances that he, the Ameer, has no hostile intentions. When we see how Russia preserves her own frontier interests by watching over them on the spot, it is difficult to appreciate the British protectorate over the Afghan frontier without a similar practical kind of control. The late Baron Jomini remarked to me, soon after the unfortu- 42 Russia s Railway Advance. nate incidents of 18S5, that England's old plan of carrying on frontier affairs in Central Asia would no longer work ; that England and Russia could not continue as before to keep apart and insist upon having no direct frontier relations. There must, he observ^ed, be frequent border difficulties in the future ; and the best way to prevent them from becoming acute and endangering the friendliness between the two nations would be to keep permanent com- missioners on, or near, the Afghan frontier itself. England had joined with the Powers in estab- lishing an International Commission for regu- lating the Danube. Why could she not help to maintain a Commission to superintend the frontier affairs of Afghanistan .'' This would be the only way to obviate the ever-recurring scares and anxieties, which are always liable to end in some hasty action of the Russian military authorities before diplomacy in London, St. Petersburg or Calcutta can interfere. It is certainly very fortunate that Abdurah- man was able to quell the insurrection, and to purge the disaffected districts as promptly and as well as he seems to have done it, though his success, it appears, was due more to good luck than to superiority. And there is no Moscow and India. 43 doubt that the despatch of General Rosenbach, Governor-General of Turkistan, with the Tsar's special orders from St. Petersburg, where he happened to be staying on leave, was sufficient to arrest any little adventure by which General Komaroff or Colonel Alikhanoff may have con- templated taking advantage of the situation. Let us, however, suppose that the Ameer, Abdurahman, had not been able to pacify his Turkistan province, or that any of the mortal diseases from which he suffers had proved fatal in the midst of the work, and the country had been thrown into a protracted state of anarchy, with perhaps more than one pretender struggling for the throne. What would the Russians be likely to do in such a case, if their side of the frontier were seriously disturbed, or, to follow the reasoning of the Russophobe, if they chose to consider it to be so, merely for the purpose of a pretext, and the English arbiters of the fate of Afghanistan were power- less and conspicuous by their absence ? Is it not well within the bounds of probability, nay even of certainty, that they would then feel themselves called upon to step into Afghan Turkistan to restore order, as they entered under similar circumstances into Chinese Kuldja .' All 44 Russia s Raikuay Advance. the Chinese power did not suffice to keep the Kuldja frontier quiet enough to satisfy the Russians, who at last walked into the province, and took the work of pacification into their own hands. This h}'pothesis may be easily dis- missed on the assumption that any such action would be an immediate casus belli with England ; but we cannot be surprised if the Russians should think the contrary when they learn from English politicians that in pledging ourselves to the present Ameer of Afghanistan to defend the integrity of his dominions we added the important qualification : " to such extent, and in such manner as may appear to the British Government necessary." This important reser- vation naturally leads to the interpretation that, while not being in a position to take Afghan- istan herself, England is determined to keep Russia out of it by all means in her power, short, however, of going to war ; and when once convinced that England will never go to this length for the sake of territory north of the Hindu Kush, Russia is not likely to fear the consequences of any possible action on her part such as I have imagined. But the North-Western Boundary defined by the Anglo-Russian Commission, and referred to Moscow and India. 45 in the above remarks, is not the whole of the Russo-Afghan frontier. There are still the Northern and North -Eastern confines of Afghanistan verging upon Chinese Kashgar, comprising several petty Khanates semi-inde- pendent, or loosely connected with Afghanis- tan, or Bokhara, where no Boundary Com- mission has ever been at work, and where no exact information has yet been gathered by either Government. Although Russia may have tacitly acquiesced in some of the acts by which Abdurahman has already made good his pretensions on these parts of his frontiers, she might at any time declare that she never agreed to them officially, as long as they have not been made the subject of a formal under- standing. For the benefit of those who may not be versed in Afghan frontier intricacies, I may mention that the part of the undefined Russo-Afghan frontier to which I am now refer- ring is bordered by the disputed main stream or streams of the Upper Oxus, and the contested Khanates of Shugnan, Vakhan, Sic. The mis- understanding arose through the utter ignorance of the country upon which the first Anglo-Rus- sian agreement of 1873 as to this region of the frontier was based, and wliich is a clear proof 46 R?issias Railway Advance. that no lasting confidence in that part of the Ameer's boundaries with Russia can be felt until a joint Commission has gained the necessary knowledge on the spot for the conclusion of an agreement, that cannot afterwards be re- pudiated on the plea of ignorance. Several years ago Russia protested against the Afghan occupation of Shugnan, one of the small Khanates above alluded to ; and if the protest was not pressed home, nor the affair treated like the Afghan trespass on the left bank of the Koushk, it was only because the Russians were not near enough to the spot, and not prepared to back up their contention. This, I believe, is the only time Russia has followed the example of England, and made a protest in Central Asian affairs without being able to take action in support of it. If we wait to define the rest of the boundary until the Central Asian Railway has perhaps been pushed forward in other directions as well as towards Tashkent, and the Russians have crept up to the Northern parts of the Afghan frontier as close as they now arc on the boundary of the North-West, we may easily have a repetition of tiic disagreeable experiences of 1885. Russian politico-scientific explorers like Prejevalsky are Moscozu and India. 47 already busy in that region. It will be remem- bered that the year before last the well-known traveller, Grombtchefsky, with his escort of Cossacks, boasted of having taken prisoners two Afghan sentinels in order to elude the Afghan troops sent to intercept his progress towards Kundjut. This traveller was recently again on Afghan territory, making his way through districts where Abdurahman Khan is at present, or was very lately, making war on the semi-independent rulers of one of the above-mentioned Northern Khanates. And last year another Russian explorer, Captain Pokotilo, asserted that the Eastern frontier of Bokhara extended beyond the stream of the Upper Amu Daria or Pianja, which, I believe, is not the opinion of political geographers in England or India. 48 CHAPTER III. THE COSSACKS. The most remarkable phenomenon of the Slavonic race - — Numbers and territories of the Cossacks — Dress and equipment — Railways through the Cossack pro- vinces — Historical interest and character of the Cossack steppes — Cossack aversion to trees — Reaf- forestation — Herodotus on the absence of wood — Coal-fields of the Don — Their output — Successful competition of English coal — Coal, wood, and petro- leum, fuel on Russian railways — Novotcherkask, the modern Cossack capital — Starotcherkask, the ancient capital — Cossack regalia and charters — English sword of honour presented to a Cossack Ataman — The Cossack in Europe — Cossack colonizers abroad — The Cossack in Asia — Cossacks selected to attack India — Important extension of Cossack territory — Cossack dislike to trade— Cossack administration — Cossack organization on the Don out of date — In- effectual attempts to level the Cossacks with the Russians — Turkoman Cossacks — Cossacks of the Kooban and Terek — Resemblances between Cossacks and Circassians — Russia glides imperceptibly into Asia — No sharp distinctions — A Russian on his ex- periences in Central Asia — Easy fraternization be- tween Russians and Asiatics — The Cossack an in- TJie Cossacks. 49 sti'umcnt of rapprochoiicnt — Cossacks and Circas- sians merge into Turkomans — Colonel Alikhanoft', remarkable specimen of Russian and Asiatic com- bined — Absorption of Kalmucks and Kirghiz by- Cossack cavalry — Russia's power of assimilation and coalescence — Carlyle's opinion — Vladikavkaz — Pre- tentiousness of Russian names — Amiability of Russian railway travellers — Annenkoff's invitations and guests. Having thus briefly traced some of the more sahent points in our relations with Russia con- cerning India, I now pass on to notice another potent factor in Russia's Eastward progress, which appeared about half way on my journey between Moscow and the Caucasus. I refer to the Cossacks of the Don, the Kooban, and the Terek, named after the three rivers which run through their respective settlements. The military territories of these descendents of that strange confraternity which Baron Hax- thausen called the most remarkable phenomenon of the whole Slav race, now cover about 3,000 square miles of steppe land on the Don, between Voroneje and the Sea of Azofif, 1,700 more on the Kooban, between that Sea and the North- western Caucasus, and another 1,100 square miles on the Terek and Sunja, towards the North-Eastern slopes of the mountains. E 50 R7issias Raikvay Advance. These three divisions of Cossack militia, al- though forming separate administrative units, are subject to the same kind of organization, and only differ in the minor details of dress and equipment. The principal weapon, for instance, of the Cossacks of the Don is the pennonless lance, which is never carried either by those of the Kooban or the Terek, whilst both the latter have adopted the long- skirted uniform and large piercing dagger of the neighbouring Circassian. There are nine other Cossack fraternities and colonies guarding the extensive frontiers of Asiatic Russia from Kam- chatka and the Pacific Ocean to the Caucasus and the Black Sea, but none of them are as im- portant, or as strong in numbers, as the three sections through which my journey led me on this occasion. In fact, these three large bodies of Cossack horsemen, next to the extinct Re- public of the Zaporagians of the Dnieper, destroyed by Catherine the Second, may claim to have been the progenitors of all the other communities of these famous troops. The Cossacks of the Don, who now supply the largest force of Russian irregular troops, constitute a third of the whole Cossack popu- lation, and the latter is estimated at about The Cossacks. 51 one forty-fourth of the entire population of the Empire. The continuous line of railway from Moscow, which runs for 1,240 miles to the foot of the Caucasus, and passes through these three mili- tary provinces, belongs to four different com- panies, called after their principal stations. These are Moscow-Riazan, Riazan-Kozloff, Koz- loff-Voroneje-Rostoff, and Rostofif- Vladikavkaz ; and there are only two changes of trains, one at Voroneje and the other at Rostofif, along the whole of this distance. At Voroneje I was fortu- nate in receiving at last my passport for the Transcaspian from the Director of the Asiatic Department of the Foreign Office, Privy Coun- cillor Zinovieff, who had kindly sent a telegram on the subject to the care of the station-master. A few hours after leaving this town, I entered the boundaries of the Cossacks of the Don at the small station of Chertkova, named after a former Ataman-in-Chief Here begin those vast and treeless plains, the southern counterparts of the great northern tundras, and once the camping ground of many races of men from the depths of Asia, whose traces are still visible in the innumerable Kiir- gani — those sepulchral monuments, " where urns E 2 52 Russia s Raihuay Advance. of mighty chiefs He hid," which break the mono- tony of the landscape in all directions. Of late years these ancient tumuli have yielded many valuable additions to the relics of the past ; though in some of them the modern archaeolo- gist has found himself forestalled by previous visitors, who, like tlie dead they seem to have plundered, have long since mingled their bones with the dust. Quite recently, for instance, a Russian antiquarian, while excavating an en- trance into one of these barrows, discovered the remains of a human skeleton, with its arms still hugging a large vase, which was evidently being carried off when the robber must have been suddenly buried alive. Nor are the remains of antiquity in this district all of the sepulchral kind, for those who care to search below the sur- face. The late Mr. John Hughes, the founder of the immense iron and steel works of the New Russia Company, on the southern part of these wavy steppes, used to be able to trace the passage of the first workers in metals over this country right away from the Caucasus, and finally through Spain into Wales and Cornwall. Eventually succeeding to the nomadic hordes, migratory tribes, and ancient colonists, who once trod this historical ground, came those The Cossacks. 53 bands of outlaws and freebooters, flying from Muscovite as well as Tartar tyranny, who, after serving as moss-troopers and borderers between Russia and Tartardom, gradually settled down into the Cossacks of to-da}'. The broad steppes now inhabited by this singular population of born soldiers, are not all as desolate or as unlovely as many persons may imagine. The preconceived idea, which is often entertained of their flat and barren character, is not confirmed on actual acquaintance, at least not as far as regards the country of the Don, which takes the form of undulating downs, covered in spring, before the sun has scorched the ground, with the richest and most luxuriant vegetation. Tall and feathery grasses wave in the breeze, and fragrant herbs scent the air ; while the lark revels in this turfy paradise in such large numbers that his loud and ceaseless song has well been called the music of the Rus- sian steppes. The scenery, it is true, is almost destitute of tree or bush, and the heat is often most intense. Only the moving shadow of a passing cloud can give relief from tlie powerful glare of the midsummer sun. Such is the favourite home of the freedom-loving Cossack, who has always had a strange aversion to trees, 54 Rnssias Railway Advance. because they obstruct his wide view across the open country. When constant watch had to be kept against the stealthy approach of the J^flongol enemy, and no intercepting object was safely to be tolerated, the absence of forest, which is now so much deplored, was then, no doubt, a considerable advantage ; whereas at the present day this want of timber is felt to be a serious and ever-increasing inconvenience. A beginning has, therefore, been made at re- afforestation, if such a term can be properly used in relation to a region which, although a matter of some dispute, is described by Hero- dotus as unwooded even in his time. Young plantations are now flourishing at many places along the railway, thus screening it from the drifting snow ; but the greater part of the track IS still so much exposed, that large numbers of wooden battens have to be spread out in winter against the terrific snowstorms which sweep across these unsheltered plains. At the station of Alexander-Grooshevsk, the only town in the military territory of the Don possessing municipal government, the traveller gets a good glimpse at the anthracite coal-fields, with their numerous pits, producing some half a million tons of coal a year. Altogether the The Cossacks, 55 annual out-put of the Don and Donets coal mines, which has increased far beyond the carry- ing capacity of the railways, and would further increase with a better demand, is about a million and a half of tons, including bituminous and anthracite ; in spite of which, and the proximity of the Black and Azoff Seas, English sea- freighted coal is still able to compete success- fully with Russian coal at all the South Russian ports. A great deal of the local coal is used on the railways between Kozloff and the Caucasus, this being the coal-burning section of the Russian lines. To the north of the Kozloff locomotives are still fed with wood, the blazing sparks of which, issuing in showers from the wide-mouthed funnels, are very liable to set fire to the dry wooden cabins of the peasantry ; while on the lines of the Transcaucasus and Transcaspian the residue of petroleum is now the only fuel in use. About twenty miles farther on, the train stops at Novocherkask, the modern military capital of the Cossacks of the Don. This is a neat and clean-looking town, situated on a considerable elevation or ridge, which was selected as its site by a former Ataman, Count Platoff, whose monu- ment, surrounded by Turkish cannon, now adorns the principal square. Another monument will 56 J\iissias Railzuay Advance. shortly be erected here to the great Cossack chieftain, Yerinak Timofaivitch, the conqueror of Siberia. At the foot of this city-crowned ridge, and bordering the railway line, flows a tributary of the Don, called the Aksai, which at once reminds one of Asia, for the name is, no doubt, a modifi- cation of the Turko-Tartar Ak-soo, or white water, so frequently repeated in the names of rivers and localities all through Central Asia. From the height of Novo or New Cherkask, one can discern the old capital of the Cossacks, or Stary-Cherkask, now little more than a village, far off over the plain, which here begins to de- velop its absolute flatness. The situation of the old town is as low and unhealthy as that of the new one is high and salubrious. In spring the entire plain between the two towns is generally inundated by the overflow of the river ; when the ancient town is half-submerged, and looks in the distance like a sea-girt island. This spring- tide flood once deceived a careless French author to such an extent that he wrote of Novo- cherkask as a town on the borders of the Azoff Sea, There is nothing of interest at Stary- cherkask, except the chains and fetters that once shackled the limbs of the Cossack rebel The Cossacks. 57 Stenka-Razin, Everything that remains of Ccs- sack autonomy and all that pertains to the separate military corporation of the Cossacks under the Minister for War, has been transferred to New Cherkask, where may be seen the empty symbols of their former independence, pompously styled the Cossack regalia, as well as the written evidences of their present subjection. The chief insignia of authority are a gilt truncheon, or baton, from the Empress Catherine, a long wooden staff, metal-tipped at both ends, from Peter the Great, and the principal mace — half sceptre and half war-club — called the Boolava, presented by the same monarch, and always handed to each successive Heir- Apparent on his assumption of the Chief Atamanship of all the Cossacks. These baubles, together with the sword of Alexander the First, the Cossack uni- form of Alexander the Second, and a number of standards and Tartar horse-tails, are always re- ligiously carried in procession on all great occa- sions. In the room where most of these relics and trophies are displayed, are also exhibited in glass cases fourteen charters, in which all the later Tsars have repeatedly confirmed the attenuated rights and privileges of the Cossacks, and in so doing have expressed their sentiments 58 Russia's Railzvay Advance. in curious variations of tone and language, according as the gallant Cossacks have been in favour, or under a cloud. The most complimen- tary and generous of these documents is signed by Alexander the First, and was given on the conclusion of the patriotic war for the expulsion of the French. This is beautifully engrossed upon vellum, and ornamented with excellent miniature paintings of Cossack warfare. The coldest and curtest of the whole series is from the imperious and haughty Nicholas, written upon a sheet of common ministerial note-paper. To an Englishman, the most interesting object in this collection is a handsome English sword of honour, from which the jewels it once con- tained have been extracted by the family of the late recipient. The following inscription on the blade explains its presence in this out-of-the-way spot : — " A Common Council, holden in the chambers of the Guildhall of the City of London on Wednesday, the eighth day of June, 1814, resolved unanimously that a sword of the value of 200 guineas be presented to the Hetman* * It is strange that Englishmen continue to write Hetman instead of Ataman. The two words may be of the same Scandinavian origin and meaning; but llctman was the title of the elected chief, or headman of the Tlie Cossacks. 59 Count Platoff, in testimony of the high sense this Court entertains of the consummate skill, brilliant talents, and undaunted bravery dis- played by him during the protracted conflicts in which he has been engaged for securing the liberties, the repose, and the happiness of Europe." At the time this sword was presented, just after the Cossacks had made their first appear- ance on the boulevards of Paris, and before their place in popular imagination had been usurped by the Uhlans of Prussia, the v.'ild-looking denizens of the Don were almost as much feared on the continent of Europe as they have always been in Russian Asia down to the present day. Since that time Europe has scarcely increased its knowledge of these peculiar troops ; and the recent disastrous escapade of the Cossack ad- venturer Ashinoff, whose colonizing bubble on the coast of the Red Sea was ignominiously burst by the guns of the French Admiral Olry, did not exhibit the best traits of the Cossack character. It is a curious fact in this connection, Little Russian and Ukraine Cossacks under the Poles, and has not been used in Russia since the time of Mazeppa, or rather, of Count Razoumofsky, the favourite of the Empress Elizabeth. 6o Riissias Railway Advance. that the only other Russian who ever attempted to estabhsh a Russian colony abroad, the late Mr. IMiklukho Maclay, was of mixed Cossack and Scotch descent. But if Europe has in any way forgotten the exploits of the Cossacks, all parts of Russian Asia, on the contrary, and some parts that are not yet Russian, are constantly making their closer acquaintance. The Cossack has been appropriately chosen to typify the Russian ad- vance into Central Asia, and is often referred to as destined to confront the Sepoy on the heights of the Hindoo Rush. It must be remembered that in the old days the Cossacks were more than once selected to attack or threaten India. When the arrangement with Napoleon for a joint raid across the Indus fell through, and the Cossacks were ordered to make the campaign alone, the eccentric Emperor Paul wrote to their Ataman, Count Orloff: — "All the riches of India shall be yours for this expedition " ; but happily a violent change of reign nipped this ambitious scheme in the bud. My journey through the Cossack country happened to coincide with an important exten- sion of the Cossack military rule over certain neighbouring territory at the mouth of the The Cossacks. 6i " silent Don " and round the shores of the Azoff Sea, about which there was much discussion and disagreement among my fellow-passengers in the train. This territorial aggrandizement of the Cossacks of the Don entailed the inclusion of the two important commercial towns of Rostoff and Taganrog, which had hitherto re- mained outside the Cossack jurisdiction. The change had been decided upon by a special commission, under the presidency of the Governor of Koursk, after the visit of the Tsar and the Heir-Apparent as the new Ataman-in- Chief in 1887 ; but it did not appear to please either the Cossacks, or the trading populations of the towns newly annexed. The Cossacks were afraid that the secret design of the Government was to weaken their separate organization by mixing them up with a population used to other methods of administra- tion, which, to a certain extent, the latter were still permitted to retain, while the large business communities of Rostoff and Taganrog considered that the Cossack regime would be a serious check upon the progress of their rapidly-increasing trade and the satisfactory working of their civil institutions. The Cossacks have always been averse to 62 Rnssias Railway Advance. trade from the earliest times, when their mihtary commonwealth recognized no other occupation than war and plunder. Every Cossack being born to arms, he is only likely to attain the object of his ambition, as embodied in the proverb that " the Cossack who knows how to wait becomes an Ataman," if he devotes him- self entirely to the traditional calling of his caste. The small extent, therefore, to which these inveterate warriors are interested in trade may be seen by the fact that although the province of the Don alone maintains about 58,000 fighting men, and can muster as many as 128,000 on an emergency, it can only show 440 Cossacks engaged in business, as compared with 1 1,000 other traders not belonging to the Cossack community. The administration of the Don province is still a purely military one, with its own police and body of local Atamen ; the whole being controlled by the locum icnens of the Imperial Ataman-in-Chief, assisted by a military council, and subject to the Minister for War. Such an organization, it is admitted even by Cossacks themselves, is altogether out of date in its present situation. The Cossacks have always been the pioneers of Russian power, and the The Cossacks. 63 guardians and extenders of Russia's Eastern frontiers. In this capacity their proper place has always been on or near these frontiers, and when the frontiers are moved forward the Cossacks should all be moved forward with them. Now that Russia's limits have widened out hundreds of miles farther I'Last, this anti- quated system of military colonies on the Don has no longer any raison cfctrc. Its only utility seems to be in the advantages which it affords as a depot for the supply of a comparatively inexpensive light cavalry to the armies of the West, as well as of the Eastern confines of the ICmpire. But this does not compensate for the detrimental influence which the sole rule of the Ataman and Minister of War is calculated to exercise on the development of a region peculiarly destined for material progress. The Government has more than once tried the thin edge of the wedge against Cossack separatism by attempting to establish the ordinary civil institutions of the rest of the Empire, beginning with the Zemstvo, but the gallant spearmen of the Don have always strenuousl)' opposed its introduction. They simply abstained from electing any members to form these territorial assemblies, and continued to discuss all local 64 Rjissias Railway Adva^ice. affairs in their ancient krong or circles. It is, therefore, not at all unlikely that their suspicions may have some foundation in regard to the cunning way in which they are now to be gradually assimilated administratively to the rest of the population around them by an apparently flattering extension of territory. Out of a population of a million and three- quarters, before this extension, there were already some 700,000 non-Cossack colonists and Little Russian peasants ; so that with the additions now made the extraneous population of the province will probably equal that of the Cossacks. The municipal councils and mayor- alty of the newly-incorporated towns are con- tinued under the INIinister for War instead of the Home Office, but the Zemstvo assemblies have been temporarily suspended. There are several other alleged reasons which may have induced the Government to make this change, such, for instance, as the isolated position of Rostoff and Taganrog in relation to their former administrative centre at Ekatcrinoslav, in which province they were reckoned, and the supposed appearance of a large number of pernicious and dangerous persons, who could be better dealt with under the Cossack Government. The Cossacks. 65 But this last consideration is not worth much in view of the fact that the Cossack region, which originally recruited its population among the malcontents of Russia, is still a notorious refuge for passportless vagrants and Siberian runaways. Even Nihilists have issued from the Cossack ranks during the last three years. *f The central Government, however, has now established an office of gendarmerie at Novocherkask, and this branch of the political police will no doubt soon see into the matter. In any case, the change above described has been made in spite of Cossack obstinacy and commercial dis- satisfaction, and both Cossacks and those with whom they are now mixed up wall have to be content to be gradually amalgamated into the shape required by the supreme Government in St. Petersburg. The same manipulation and treatment undoubtedly awaits the Cossack Turkomans of the Transcaspian, who are simply a reproduction in the main of the Cossacks of the Don and the Dnieper. Transformation and Russification are the resistless fate of all the * The fact of the minor state of siege having been proclaimed this year (1890) in the Don Cossack village of Kasperofka, shows that something is still seriously wrong. -1 66 Ritssias Railway Advance. heterogeneous tribes and races whom Russia folds in her wide embrace. Soon after passing the busy town of Rostofif and crossing the ancient Tanais, the railway leaves the Cossack territory of the Don, and enters that of the Kooban and the Terek. Here the steppe assumes its proper appearance, and becomes a perfectly level prairie, extending 2,800 square miles between the Caspian and ]31ack Seas, right away to the mountains of the Caucasus. It supports a population of 650,000 Cossacks, and 160,000 other persons, who are not of the Cossack fraternity. The greater part of the land appeared to be waste or pasture, but there were unmistakable evidences of cultivation, as well as of inadequate means of railway transport in the enormous quantities of grain piled up in sacks on all the goods platforms, and spoiling from the effects of rain, and the want of proper shelter. The orthodox Cossacks of the Kooban and Terek are often confounded with the ]\Ioham- medan Circassians of the Caucasus, owing to identity of dress and other resemblances, in which, contrary to the general rule, the con- querors have imitated the conquered. A couple of squadrons of the Kooban Cossacks, who The Cossacks. h'j always serve as the Tsar's body guard at St. Petersburg, and ride at the head of all pro- cessions, are frequently miscalled Circassians. Generations of close contact, and a certain amount of admixture with the Circassian mountaineers, have fully exercised the Russian talent of imitating their next-door neighbours. It is indeed difficult, in this Empire of the Tsars, to say exactly in every case where the European Russians end and the Russian Asiatics begin. There are no sharp distinctions : no absolute ethnological boundaries. In the Russian provinces of the Baltic and the Vistula, among populations long subject to the higher civilization of Western Europe, there are deep- rooted differences of race as well as religion, which can never be obliterated by the severest measures of official Russification ; but in the Eastern provinces of her Empire, Russia glides gradually and imperceptibly into Asia, and there finds a much readier acceptance of her influence and culture. The Russian takes as kindly to the manners and customs of Central Asia as the Asiatic in Russian uniform quickly feels himself at home in Russian society. A well- known Russian, who once held an important office in Turkistan, has publicly described how F 2 68 Russia's Raihvay Advance. congenially he passed his time among the natives, often wearing their costume, and squat- ting all day long in their fruit gardens and orchards, cloying himself with the inevitable sweetmeats, and talking gossip. He felt, as he says, that the time thus spent, although wasted from the European point of view, was in perfect harmony with his Russian nature, and he was often constrained to ask himself whether he was not an Asiatic as well as a Russian. The subject races of Russia in the East are not kept at arm's-length. As soon as they become the subjects of the great White Tsar, after undergoing once for all the customary process of merciless castigation, recommended by Skobelefif, whose policy was simply cruel only to be kind, the Russians readily fraternize with them, and both parties soon arrive at a mutual understanding. In this rapprocJicment the Cossacks undoubtedly play a very important part. They may be said to merge imperceptibly into the Circassians of the Caucasus, just as the Caucasian tribes merge into the Turkomans round and across the Caspian Sea. The latter have only to tack the cartridge cases on to the breasts of their long-skirted tunics, and they are The Cossacks. 69 at once as much Cossacks as any of the latter who have been for generations under Russian rule. The Turkoman Khans, under their Russo- Caucasian chief, Colonel Alikhanoff, who is himself a remarkable specimen of the com- bination of Russian and Asiatic, have already adopted quite naturally the Cossack-Circassian uniform, and in these days of " clothes- philosophy " this is not an unimportant detail. Their style of riding, high saddles, short stirrups and restive steeds, are also much the same as we see on the Don or in the Caucasus, and if they were mixed up with Kooban Cos- sacks and Caucasian miHtia, it would not be easy to pick them out from among the rest. Even the broad-visaged and bandy-legged Calmuck and Kirghiz are beginning to lose their distinc- tiveness in the all-absorbing Cossack cavalry. Such is Russia's power of assimilation and co- alescence in the East. Thus, with the aid of this faculty, and not alone by force of arms, " are the Russians drilling under much obloquy," as Carlyle puts it, "an immense semi-barbarous half-world from Finland to Kamchatka into rule, subordination, civilization, really in an old Roman fashion, speaking no word about 70 Riissias Railway Advance. it, and quietly hearing all manner of vituper- ative able editors speak."* I reached the end of my unbroken railway journey of four days and nights at Vladikavkaz, the head-quarters of the Terek Ataman, and a military Cossack settlement established at the entrance to the Dariel Pass, for the purpose, as its name implies, of controlling the communica- tions through the Caucasus. The appellation of this place was continually getting mixed up in my mind with another similarly-sounding name of the chief Russian port on the Pacific coast ; and this led me to reflect upon the remarkable pretentiousness of certain Russian names. We have a notable triplet of them in Vladikavkaz, Vladivostok, and Vladimir, meaning respectively * Asiatic nations are fast adopting the Russian system of Cossack troops. Persia has for some time had her own Cossacks, such as they are ; and Japan is about to act upon the advice of a commission of officers lately sent to investigate the military organization on the Don, and to introduce Japanese Cossacks at Yeddo. In 1880 the entire Cossack population of Russia of both sexes, exclusive of non-military colonists and the clergy, num- bered 2,150,837. At present it must be quite 2,500,000, Out of this number 160,000 are standing troops. Their territorial divisions are the Don, Kooban, Terek, Astra- khan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian, Semiretchinsk, Trans- baikal, and Amoor Cossacks. The Cossacks. 71 command of the Caucasus, mastery over the East, and ruler of the world. The two last seem to breathe that lust of universal Empire which fills the dreams of Russian soldiers and poli- ticians, Vladikavkaz was legitimately and ap- propriately so named after Russia had conquered the Caucasus, and thus secured for herself an in- dispensable base of future advances in Central Asia ; but in naming Vladivostok she has gone far ahead of the consummation towards v/hich her aspirations and subtle policy are always supposed to tend. As for Vladimir, which is now a common Christian name, and the title of a Russian province, it contains the prophecy of what many Russians modestly consider the ulti- mate destiny of their country. As far as Vladikavkaz I had been ninety-two hours in trains,and I nowhad before mea journey of 132 miles byroad across the mountains in order to reach the railway of the Transcaucasus, The tedium of this long railway journey had thus far been greatly relieved by the conversation and information of many interesting fellow-pas- sengers, for the Russians, as a rule, are very sociable travellers. It would, indeed, be strange in a country of such vast distances, where rail- way travellers are often thrown together in one 72 Rjissias Raihuay Advance. compartment for three or four days at a stretchy if they all hid themselves behind newspapers and never uttered a word to each other. In fact, it would be difficult to find a newspaper in the provinces beyond Moscow capable of en- grossing attention to this extent.* The Russian traveller prefers to talk, and is quite uneasy and miserable until he finds somebody who will re- ciprocate. He has no craving for railway litera- ture, even on the longest journeys. His favourite pastimes are talking and smoking, or card-play- ing. Nothing is more rare in Russian trains than the reading of books or newspapers, but a provoking inquisitiveness takes its place, and induces the Russian to seize upon every oppor- tunity of plying his fellow- passengers with ques- tions until he has perfectly satisfied himself as to their business and destination. In my case the first example of this characteristic trait was afforded by a Moscow merchant, who was the first to inform me, rather to my surprise, how little personal interest was being taken among the class to which he belonged in the important * There are only 668 newspapers and periodical pub- lications in the whole Russian Empire in Europe and Asia, less than a sixth of the numl^er published in the United Kingdom. The Cossacks. 'J2) railway event on the other side of the Caspian. Jn spite of the emphasis put upon the com- mercial importance and prospects of Russia's first great railway in Asia, none of tlie celebrated merchants of St. Petersburg and Moscow were to be present at the fetes in Samarkand — not even those who have become famous for their ■ semi-political caravan trade with the Asiatic border countries. Certain committees of the Exchanges in the two capitals had been invited, but apparently none of the members had accepted the invitation. The idea of making merry over the opening of the railway was apparently no business whatever of the Govern- ment, and the invitations were entirely the private concern of Generals Annenkoff and Rosenbach. As it turned out, the guests who, with great difficulty, eventually found their way to the Samarkand terminus of the Transcaspian Railway formed, with one or two exceptions, a kind of family party of General Anncnkofif's. The General's two daughters, his niece, Princess Galitzin, and his brother-in-law, Comte de Vogue, a well-known French writer on Russia, with half a dozen friends from Paris — these, with the Vice-President of the Imperial Geographical Society and the Mayor of Baku, comprised the 74 RiLssids Raihvay Advance. distinguished visitors from Russia and abroad. This company also inckided a couple of repre- sentatives of the French Press, one of whom was also a delegate of the French Ministry of Com- merce. In pursuit of this interesting party I hurried on throucfh the Caucasus to Baku. 75 CHAPTER IV. THROUGH THE CAUCASUS TO THE CASPIAN. Sharp interchanges of climate and temperature — Snow- shps and accidents — Rapid posting with a Russian Consul — Lermontoff's dispute between Elburz and Kazbek — False alarm — The Georgian military road — The gorge and pass of Dariel — The Terek — Part- ing of the waters — Desolate scenery of the northern slopes — Primitive dwellings — The Ossetins — " Moun- tain of tongues " — Ruined towers and castles — Tamara, the Cleopatra of the Caucasus — Kazbek — English climbers — Descent into the valley of the Aragua — Beauty of theTranscaucasus — Boast of the Georgians — Towers of refuge — Game — The Koora — Illusory notion ef the Caucasus being a weak spot in Russia's armour — Similar idea of Armenian frontier — English and Russian influence among the Turkish Armenians — Russia's use of the religious element in conquering the Caucasus — England's contrary policy of assisting the Mohammedans — English mistake in this connection during Crimean War — Overdrawn reports of disaffection during Afghan frontier crisis — English hopes of utilizing it, and awkward habit of giving warning — Similar re- ports of English sympathies among the coast popu- lation of Finland — Simply a question of compulsory military service — How settled — Overrated separatist 76 Rttssias Railway Advance. tendencies of " Young Georgia " — The Tsar's visit — Loyalty of the Caucasus — Highway robbery and brigandage — A Circassian Dick Turpin — Circas- sians running amuck — Unbridled temper of the natives — Insignificant religious antagonism — The Russian's faculty of identifying himself with the Asiatic — Conversation with General Zelennoi — De- parture from Tiflis — Valley of the Koora — Resem- blances between the Apsheron peninsula and the Transcaspian — Russified Persians — Arrival at Baku — Taken in charge by the police — Delayed for want of a steamer — Interview with the Governor of Baku — The Transcaspian Railway flooded — Baku fair — Start for Oozoon Ada — Foreigners and English steamers on the Caspian — Poles in the Transcaspian — Their grievances — A Polish rebel. If any traveller wishes a short and sharp ex- perience of almost all the climates and tem- peratures of Europe and Asia without crossing frontiers, or enduring the vexations of Custom- house formalities, he has only to pass from European into Asiatic Russia in the early, or latter, part of the year. The Colossus of the North, its head crowned with snows, and its feet strewn with flowers, is richer in diversity of climate, as well as in race and language, than probably any other continuous Empire. Going south-cast from St. Petersburg, the tourist may encounter a variety of change in this respect that is very remarkable. He mny be confronted, Through the Caucasus to the Caspian, yj as it were, with the glow of a sun that scorches and ahnost bHstcrs his face, while a cold wintry wind blows up from behind, rendering a thick overcoat a positive necessity. He will probably pass through the opposite extremes of heat and cold more than once in the course of a few days. When I left St. Petersburg the fag-end of an unusually severe winter was still lingering on in the capital on the Neva. Not a green bud had yet appeared on the naked boughs, which had hardly yet lost their encrustation of snow, and even heavy furs were still being worn by the majority of the inhabitants. Near Moscow the verdure of spring began to make its appearance, and past Voroneje, the beginning of the steppes, quite a midsummer heat supervened. Every- thing graduated into summer as the train advanced. The heat increased by degrees as the foot of the Caucasus was approached, and, on mounting across the grand range crowned by Kazbek and Elbruz, the writer and his com- panion were again plunged into the depths of winter. It was so cold that a travelling rug over a top-coat w'as not enough to keep us warm. Closely-packed snow stood piled up in thick-set massive walls at the side of the mountain road, 78 Rttsszas Railway Advance. and showed a most dangerous inclination to topple over and descend in avalanches on the slightest thaw. In such a case the unwary pas- senger would inevitably be buried alive or hurled hundreds of feet down into the gorge below. Even the slightest movement of subsidence in these ugly snow-packs would frighten the horses and imperil the traveller's life. The fall of a loose stone or piece of rock from the overhang- ing cliffs nearly precipitated a diligence over the fatal edge a little time before ; so that when I passed along this part of the road, Cossack sentinels were stationed at the more dangerous points to prevent, if possible, the recurrence of accidents of this kind ; although even these agile troopers, who are equally at home in the moun- tains and on their native plains, are not always able to escape the peril from which they are expected to guard others. A few years ago a whole squadron were completely buried or swept off into the yawning abyss of the narrow valley beneath. One of the higher mountains bears the name of " The Major's Wife," in com- memoration of an officer's spouse, who was so completely lost by one of these terrific snow- slips, that no traces were ever .found of her remains or those of her servants. Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 79 Then came the steep zigzag descent into the lovely valley of the Transcaucasus, watered by the river Aragua. The reckless, but skilful, manner in which our yenistchik whipped his post-horses down this narrow winding pathway, carved out of the perpendicular sides of moun- tains 8,000 feet high, taking the abrupt turnings and curves with a whirl round that nearly over- balanced the carriage, was enough to take one's breath away. Ordinary tourists do not, as a rule, travel here at this pace, which I must state was entirely due to the fact that I was journey- ing in the company of the Russian Consul at Van, in Asia Minor, and that our progress was very much accelerated by the extra pressure of a special podorojnaya, or posting certificate, and the never-failing inducement of copious gifts of backsheesh. Mr. Kolyoobakin was going on a visit to his home in Tiflis, and, like myself, was anxious to lose no time. We therefore travelled all night, and did the 200 versts from Vladi- kavkaz to Tiflis in twenty hours. A pleasanter and more appropriate companion than this gentleman it would have been impossible to find. His mind was well stored with the lore and history of the Caucasus ; and when we left Vladikavkaz, in the dusk of the evening, and So Rnssias Railway Advance. were already in sight of the white-capped giants of the Russian Alps, he recited to me the beauti- ful lines of Lennontoff's poem on the great dis- pute between Elburz and Kazbek. No guide could have given me a better introduction to the Caucasus ; and as I listened to the verses wherein the snow - capped Elburz tells the hoary-headed Kazbek, guarding the decrepit and drowsy Orient, to look at the martial hosts advancing out of the northern mists, I felt that here was a poetical miniature of Russia's conquering advance into the East. Soon after we had entered the gorge of the mountains from Vladikavkaz a little scare, which turned out to be a false alarm, discovered to me that night travelling in the Caucasus, even over the well-guarded Georgian road, is not free from occasional troubles, other than snowslips and carriage accidents. Near this part there are several villages of the Ingoosh tribe, who are reputed to be all robbers to a man. Some years ago their repeated crimes induced the military Governor to hang up such a large number of them to posts along theMadikavkaz- Petrofsk road, that the ghastly operation lasted nearly three days. They have often robbed the mail, which is now strongly guarded herewith Throtigh the Caucasus to the Caspian. 8i an escort of Cossacks, and have been known to waylay solitary travellers after nightfall. As we trotted along, the horse-bells jingling, and the darkness gradually increasing with the narrow- ness of the defile, the accustomed eye of our driver discerned several men at long distances apart lurking in the rock hollows along the side of the road. Then a solitary Circassian rode by ahead of us, whereupon the yemstchik, or driver,, turned round to observe that it " looked rather queer," and then set his team agoing ventve-d~ terre. In order to be ready for any emergency^ we unpacked a shot-gun and a bulldog revolver,, but the night mail soon came galloping up behind us with half a dozen light troopers armed to the teeth, and we felt safe enough in this company until out of all danger past the next post-house.* As we descended into the valley from the cold region above, the weather again became intensely hot, and continued to get more so on the way across the Caspian until we reached the torrid heat and burning sands of Turkomania. The dominating feeling, how- * Four highwaymen are now awaiting trial at Tifiis, for an armed attack on the post team on this road near Ananoor, 8th August, 1889. They were successfully re- pulsed, and only shot dead one of the post-horses. G 82 Rtissias Railway Advance. ever, in all this rapid transformation of climate and temperature, though certainly not rapid railway travelling, was the novelty of going by rail to Bokhara, the noble and the ancient city of Tamerlane. The Georgian military road, at which I have thus taken a glance in connection with the curious interchanges of climate and weather during my journey from the fens of Finland to the sands of the Transcaspian, is a piece of work that well deserves a more extended notice. It is probably the finest Imperial highway in the whole of Russia, the next best being the Vorontzofif road in the Crimea. What it actually cost to make, and still costs to keep in repair, would be a question like that put to the Em- peror Nicholas in regard to the expense of building and renovating the Isaac Cathedral in St. Petersburg, and which that frankly- speaking monarch answered by saying, that only the Almighty and the architect could possibly tell. When the Emperor Alexander the Second went over it, he said that he had expected to see golden mile-posts erected all the way to account for the enormous expen- diture. The first part of the road runs with a gradual ascent through the gorge of Dariel, Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 83 and along the sides of the river Terek, beneath the beetling brows of the rocks and mountains that guard both sides of the defile. Several small iron bridges lead the winding road across from one side of the river to the other. The scenery is grand, but stern and wild. Bare stony cliffs, and granite rocks, suspended over the traveller's head in many places, and dull brown mountain sides with scanty vegetation, enclose and overshadow the narrow roadway and foaming river as far as Mount Kazbek, Here the valley of the Terek begins to open out, and the road ascends rapidly towards the Krestovaya mountain, as it is called, at a height of 7,698 feet above the sea. Be- tween Kazbek, through Kobi, and the highest point, where a cross marks a disused turn in the road, and gives the name of Kres- tovaya to the summit of the pass, there is a difference of 2,158 feet over a distance of about seventeen miles. The steep rise to the top of the pass from Kobi is the most dangerous part of the road. Avalanches frequently slide down the sides of the mountains in the spring, and not only fill up the deep ravine cut out by the noisy, frothy Terek, but hurl their masses of ice and snow against the opposite mountain wall, G 2 84 Russia's Railway Advance. and scoop out tons of earth and stone. A couple of road sheds, or tunnels, with slanting roofs have now been built on this part for the sheltered passage of travellers during the dangerous seasons, and an Ossetinian stone hut and refuge on the very summit of the pass, which is the highest dwelling in all the Caucasus, has been provided with a bell for giving warning when the road is to be avoided altogether. Here is the watershed of the rivers Terek and Aragua, the first flowing down the northern, and the other down the southern, side of the range. On this plateau at the parting of the waters, and before they separate to rush in headlong fury down opposite sides of the pass, the meandering streams become almost still and stagnant ; while all around among the higher mountains rise into fuller view the "silent pinnacles of aged snow." All along the northern ascent the scenery is desolate, and only imposing by the enormous masses of stratified granite and stone piled up thousands of feet on both sides of the defile. The different mountain-tribes inhabiting the district, whose wretched flat- roofed and square-built hovels of loose stones, with open fronts, are seen perched up on the topmost crags, among the eagles and vultures, Through the Cmicasus to the Caspian. 85 are still as primitive and uncivilized as when they were first driven up into these lonely- heights thousands of years ago, by the Mongolian nomads, who took possession of the lower regions and plains. North of the pass the road leads through Ossetia, or the country of the Ossetins, whose language has been con- sidered by some philologists as possessing an affinity with the German. But the bewildering babel of languages in the Caucasus, or " Moun- tain of tongues," as it was anciently called, is still a baffling study for European professors. It was once reckoned by Arabian writers that, with the dialects and divisions of the various distinct languages, they numbered some 300 or more. Pliny speaks of 130 interpreters having been necessary to transact business with these numerous linguistical groups at Dioscura, the present region of Abkhazia. Even at the present day a goodly number would be necessary to communicate properly with the more isolated mountaineers away from the main thoroughfares, where Russian is not yet the common medium of intercourse. A number of ruined castles and towers are passed all along the road as far as Tiflis, and most of them have their legendary history. 86 Rtissias Railway Advance. They are nearly all situated at great heights above the valley, and their dilapidated walls and round towers are scarcely distinguishable from the dull, dirty colour of the surrounding moun- tains. After passing the Dariel fort, a square piece of loop-holed walling, buttressed with projecting towers at the corners, which formerly commanded the defile, but is now used as a barracks, the first object of interest is the so- called castle of Tamara, the celebrated Queen of Georgia. In Lermontoff's poem and Ruben- stein's opera of " The Demon" there is a Princess Tamara, who resists all the temptations and blan- dishments of Satan ; but the historical Tamara, as described by local tradition, was herself a kind of female demon. " Beautiful as an angel, and deceitful and cruel as the devil," this Cleopatra of the Caucasus appears to have been in the habit of enticing every handsome man who passed through the valley into her castle, and after a night of music and revelry his mangled remains were generally found on the morrow, cast down the precipice below. It is curious how dominant over all other historical per- sonages is the name of this heroine through- out the Caucasus. Like the innumerable relics of Peter the Great in Russia, and of Alexander Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 87 of Macedon in Central Asia, everything in the Caucasus not to be otherwise accounted for is at once attributed to Tamara. On one of the rugged spurs of Mount Kazbek, and visible as well as attainable on horseback from the post station, is an ancient church and monastery of the Trinity, said to contain certain sacred objects brought from Palestine by the Holy Nina, who was the female Baptist of the Georgians. A cross made of vine stems, which she is said to have carried, is still preserved in one of the churches at Tiflis. High above all is seen the white capped Kazbek, with its eight glaciers ; and from the station at this point the start is generally made by extremely rare parties of climbers. The first to reach the top, 16,500 feet, was an Englishman named Parrot, nearly eighty years ago ; and Mr. Freshfield has lately opened a fresh phase of interest in the region by the account of his new experiences. English mountain explorers now make their appearance every year, and unfortunately two of them have already lost their lives on the Koshtan tau, a mountain 1,200 feet higher than Kazbek. If all is wild and desolate north of the pass on the Georgian road, on the southern side, as 88 Russia s Railuay Advance. the wonderful zigzag descent is made into the valley of the Aragua, the scene becomes one of striking beauty. Here all the mountain sides are thickly wooded with oak, plane, chestnut, wild fruit-trees, and, in fact, ev^ery possible variety of tree and bush. The descent is very abrupt, and cleverly contrived by a series of winding galleries cut out on the face of the steep cliffs in front of the post station of Mlet. Once down in the glen watered by the crystal stream of the Aragua, which is seen descending like a silver streak down the mountain side, the road lies pretty level through a flourishing valley as far as the station of Ananoor, where a much smaller rise of ten versts takes place over the pass of the same name by a detour away from the bed of the Aragua, which is met again past the station of Dooshet. The whole of this part of the way passes through the country of the Christian Georgians, who, unlike the other mountaineers, were never conquered by the Russians, as they proudly declare, but volun- tarily placed themselves under Russian pro- tection. Their stone-built villages are scattered all over the mountain slopes, sometimes at altitudes that seem almost inaccessible, and .^^' 'V». , V, \- '^'i^^k '^^^r^^ ■^:. - ■ -^^: ,K.;-f •'.^^.■...' GEORGIAN MILITAKY ROAD AT ANANOOR. ThroiLgh the Caucastis to the Caspian. 89 their cattle graze in the most marvellous manner over the sides of steep mountains that appear impossible places for any animal to keep its foothold. You never see a hamlet without the ruins of its tower of defence, which was an indispensable structure in the midst of or near every cluster of stone hovels before the Russians established their rule. It is probable, however, that these towers were more for refuge than defence, like those on the Turkoman plains of the Transcaspian. They rarely have doors, and were generally entered from underground. The valley here- abouts is reputed to be swarming with game of all kinds, from the wild mountain goat and the bear down to the large indigenous pheasant and the partridge ; but it is remark- able that the traveller sees hardly a sign of animal life as he passes along through this beautiful country. The birds, says Russian writers, are afraid of the mountains, and the quadrupeds are no doubt only driven down into the valley by the cold and the snow in winter. The road strikes across the Poti Batoum and Tiflis Railway at the unpro- nounceable station of Mtskhet, at the con- fluence of the Aragua with the Koora, and 90 R7tssias Railway Advance. the latter river pours its muddy stream into the clear current of the Aragua and runs through the city of Tiflis, which lies deep down between the mountains fifteen miles farther off. But the beauty of the Southern Caucasus did not make me forget that this country was not only admitted to be a great military base and depot for Russian operations in Central Asia, but was also regarded as a weak spot in Russia's armour, that could easily be turned to account by her European enemies. It has often been a favourite theme with the British Press that the alleged discontent of the inhabitants of the Caucasus was serious enough to be utilized against Russia in the event of war. A similar idea has prevailed about the Armenian frontier ; but as the Armenians are much worse treated by the Turks, and as Russia has on her side the Armenian Catolicos, and thus holds the keys of the Armenian Church, she is much more power- ful among the Turkish Armenians, when she chooses, than we can ever hope to be. We listen to their complaints, but get nothing done for them, in spite of our protectorate over Asia Minor. The religious element has always been Russia's strongest lever for either aggressive Through the Caiicasiis to the Caspian. 91 or defensive purposes. Without its help, the Caucasus would hardly have been conquered so soon and so completely as it was. Had the Georgians not been the one Christian people in the heart of the mountains who required Russia's support, or afforded her a pretext for giving it, against their Mohammedan persecutors, it would probably have made all the difference in Russia's subsequent operations. A strict attention to this matter gave Russia her first foothold in the country. England, on the contrary, in view of strengthening the allegiance of her Mahommedan subjects in India, has always refused to play on this string. Our policy has generally been to take sides with the Mussulmans against the Christians, even when we have had the chance of assisting both parties without offending either of them. Such appears to have been our blind neglect of opportunities during the Crimean war in ignoring the feelings of the most important people in the Caucasus. Had English, instead of Turkish, troops then entered the Trans- caucasus, we should have had the sympathy, and perhaps more than the sympathy, of the Christian tribes of Georgia on our side. Since that time conditions have greatly changed, and the future is not likely to offer another opportunity ; but 92 Ricssids Railway Advance. the belief that the Caucasus must always be a flaw in Russia's panoply is still entertained. At the time of the Afghan frontier crisis and the " unfortunate incident " on the Koushk, a notion was spread in London that the Caucasus had been declared to be a hotbed of sedition by the Russian authorities them- selves, and that the chance of an inevitable brush with the legions of the Tsar was a good opportunity to consider the feasibility of taking advantage of such a state of things. Of course, the very act of loudly proclaiming any such hostile intention with the customary frankness of the British Press was quite enough to turn the tables upon ourselves, and defeat our own ends from the very beginning, Russia's rapidity of advance and, to a great extent also, her success in Central Asia and the Transcaspian, has been not untruly ascribed to the open discussion of Russia's weak points by the British Press and Parliament. There is no ill wind that does not bring good to somebody ; and there can scarcely be any doubt that in the East the Russians have profited not a little by our frankly expressed fears and intentions. As it was in the Trans- caspian, so it may be in the Caucasus ; and who knows to what extent the changes already made I Thf'oygh the Caucasus to the Caspian. 93 in this mountainous region, and the reforms still contemplated in the near future, have been en- gendered or hastened on by the characteristic and straightforward British habit of giving due warning when and where we intend to strike in defence of British interests ? The same thing was attempted during the Tsar's State visit to Finland in 1885 by the report sent to a London paper, and inspired by a small section of the Swedish element, that in the event of a war about the Afghan boundary, a British fleet might depend upon the sympathy and aid of the coast population of the Finnish Gulf. The origin of the discovery of a vulnerable place in the Caucasus was a series of reports made by the different governors and military commanders of the Caucasian provinces on the subject of the introduction of the general prin- ciple of compulsory military service. These reports were merely unfavourable to the em- bodiment of the Mahommedan mountaineers as regular troops together with the Christians, and pointed out the tendency there would be to in- subordination and other evils if such a step were taken without any preliminary measures for the purpose of smoothing the way. Somehow a garbled summary of these documents, which 94 Rjissias Raihvay Advance. had been hawked about St. Petersburg as news many months before, found its way to Paris and thence to London, and . a way of checking Russia in her encroachments towards India was thought to have been found out. As a matter of fact, it was only a question of tem- porizing with the mountain-tribes, and of allow- ing the last expiring embers of Schamyl's fanati- cism to die out. At first a project of forming two separate armies, one of Christian infantry and the other of Mussulman cavalry, was put before the Government ; but eventually the Mahommedan population were exempted for several years to come from service in its obli- gatory form in return for the payment of a small tax, or enrolled as Cossack militia accord- ing to their option, while a beginning was made with the Christian natives by the successful drafting into the common army of several thousand men for the first time in 1887. While on my way over the steppe towards the Caucasus, I was accompanied a short part of the journey by an ex -governor of one of the Caucasian towns, who took occasion to talk, without any inducement on my part, about the aspirations and supposed dangerous proclivities of " Young Georgia," which, he said, were Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 95 nothing but a mild species of agitation for home rule. They had, however, been exaggerated in St. Petersburg into a revolutionary movement for the separation of the Caucasus, and even into an affinitive " circle " with the " Nihilistic " groups of the rest of the Empire, which the Moscoiv Gazette maintains are equally active in working for the independence of Siberia, Poland, and Finland, as well as of the Caucasus. My fellow-traveller explained the matter as regards the Caucasus by declaring that the so-called movement was little else than a schoolboy ebul- lition, which had been overrated by certain local officials for the purpose of justifying measures calculated to show their own zeal and ingenuity, and of attracting the attention of the central authorities in their favour. In any case, there was no greater discontent in the Caucasus than in most other parts of Russia. And certainly, if outside appearances go for anything, I should infer from the success of the Imperial State visit to the Caucasus last year, which I was able to witness on my return from Samarkand, that the Great White Tsar has no more loyal and devoted subjects in the whole of his dominions. At the same time, of course, the military and other pre- cautions which were taken on that occasion for 96 Russia s Raihuay Advance. guarding the Imperial person, are indication enough that the Caucasus was considered just as likely to be the arena of Nihilist exploits as any other part of the Empire. Of brigandage and highway robbery there is plenty on the roads less frequented, and not so well protected as the military route through Georgia. One of the most notorious brigands and outlaws, who has long been the scourge and terror of the districts near the Turkish frontier, and always manages to escape over the other side when hard pressed, is said to have been led into his present wild mode of existence by the arrest and exile of some of the members of his family. This man, Kerim by name, has become the Dick Turpin and Claude Duval of the Caucasus, and the stories of his exploits in robbing Russian travellers, always killing them on the slightest resistance, and in eluding the pursuit of the troops frequently moved against him, are already a part of the folk-lore of the country. Some time ago an entire regiment was sent to seize him in the mountains, where he had suddenly made his appearance. A cordon of several miles was gradually drawn in close around his hiding- place, and at last a storm of bullets were aimed at the supposed Kerim high up on the slope. The Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 97 bullet-riddled figure, however, turned out to be nothing but the long shaggy felt vci-a.x\\.\Q{boorka) and lambs'-wool cap of the robber chief stuck upon a pole. The owner, with his followers, had again escaped in the most marvellous manner. There is little doubt that he enjoys the sym- pathy and assistance of the natives of the border districts where he lurks, else his capture would have been effected long ago.* There are also frequent cases of Circassians running amuck among the Russians in such an extraordinary manner as might seem to indicate a strong feel- ing of hatred not yet entirely extinguished by the blessings of Russian rule. A few months ago an incident of this tragic character occurred at one of the railway stations. The mere touch of a Russian gendarme in order to prevent one of these ferocious individuals from entering a car in which he could not, for some reason or other, be admitted was enough provocation for the offended Circassian to whip out his long kinjal and stab every Russian within reach. He killed the gendarme with one thrust, and then rushed '■'•' This robber chief is now at Teheran, where the Shah's Government promises the Russians he shall be kept. He escaped some montiis ago, wounded, over the Turkish frontier, and thence fled into Persia. II 98 Rjissuzs Raihuay Advance. into the waiting-room and buffet, slashing all the time at everybody in his way. Three per- sons were killed outright, and half-a-dozen others mortally or seriously wounded. As soon as his revenge was satisfied the frenzied ruffian took to his heels ; but when he found a Cossack close at his back he turned about and fought like a madman until cut down and almost hacked to pieces. Such incidents, however, are due more to the savage instincts and unbridled temper of the people than to any serious political disaffection. So fiery and excitable are the natives, that at the club in Tiflis all scabbards have to be emptied at the doors before the mili- tary members are allowed to enter. It is true that during the last campaign in Turkey one or two regiments of Mahommedan cavalry showed signs of insubordination, owing to contact with kindred Circassians in the service of the Turks ; but this was an insignificant flicker of religious fanaticism in peculiar and exceptional circum- stances. In the long run, whatever little re- ligious antagonism may still lie dormant among the Mahommedan mountaineers, they cannot resist the remarkable faculty displayed by the Russians of identifying themselves Avith the Asiatic peoples whom they conquer. Through the Caucasus to the Caspian. 99 On arriving at Tiflis rather late in the evening, I found that General Zelennoi, the appointed Commissioner with General Lumsden on the Afghan frontier in 1884, had been apprised of my coming by telegraph from St. Petersburg, I chanced to meet the General in the supper- room of the hotel attentively conning The Times. He at present holds the post of chief over the Asiatic Department of the General Staff at Tiflis, and when good luck threw me in his way within an hour after my arrival, he was taking a little relaxation from a hard day's work of ex- amining officers in Oriental studies. Tired as I was, I could not resist the attraction of a long conversation with such an interesting personage, and we sat up and discussed the late difficulties of the Afghan frontier and things in general until far into the small hours of the morning. The old topic of the reasons why he did not meet General Lumsden on the frontier was again reviewed, and I must confess that he made out a very good case to show that his contention for a settlement of the chief frontier points before starting, was eventually admitted in the work of his successor, Colonel Kulberg, in conjunction with SirWest Ridgeway, and completely justified afterwards by the transfer of the negotiations H 2 ICO Russia s Raihuay Advance. about Khoja Saleh from the Oxus to St. Peters- burg. This, he assured nie, was the only reason why he had never started for the Afghan frontier. In any case, had he gone there to meet Sir Peter Lumsden at the proper time, the Russian fight with the Afghans at Dash Kepri, which put an end to both Generals as Afghan Boundary Commissioners, would probably never have taken place. I left Tiflis the next day by train for Baku, in order to catch a boat, which the agent of the Caucasus and Mercury Steamship Company had twice assured me was to start on the day following for Oozoon Ada. Knowing the uncertainty of Russian information in general, I took the precaution before quitting Tiflis of paying a second visit to the Com- pany's office, where I received an absolute confirmation of the assurance that a boat was to start on the day named with one of the directors on board ; so that I felt sure this time of not being delayed at Baku. The single-line railway to the city of "Eternal Fires" and spouting petroleum runs through a low, flat country, leaving the snow- clad peaks of the Caucasus far to the north, and following the valley of the river Koora, Through the Caticasus to the Caspian. loi which flows between very low banks, bordered by extensive tracts of marshy land, causing a great deal of damage to the railway at high water, and teeming with water-fowl of every description. The last bit of country traversed by the line over the Apsheron peninsula resembles in many respects the district of the railway in the Transcaspian. The same sandy flats, dried-up salt marshes destitute of all vegetation, and the same bare brown or buff-coloured hills, common to the greater part of the Caspian shores, give a dismal aspect to the landscape long before you catch sight of the tall well-derricks and iron reservoirs, the tank-cars and cistern- steamers, of the black and busy-looking petroleum region. This striking analogy be- tween the sabulous railway routes on both shores of the Caspian has, in fact, been practically illustrated by serious accidents due to the sand being blown over the rails, as in February last year, when a train of goods and petroleum ran off the track near the second station from Baku. Owing to constant com- plaints and mismanagement the Tiflis-Baku Railway has now been taken over by the Government. 102 Rttssias Railiuay Advance. The people of this district, as far as one could judge from the specimens lounging about at the railway stations, are chiefly Persians. Groups of swarthy, unkempt indi- \iduals stood about on every platform, with heav}' black sheepskin caps, and beards painted dark saffron or deep red. In Baku I was surprised to see the legs of their droshky horses dyed with the same pigment, which made me think at first that the animals belonged to a circus. At many of the rail- way stations there were natives on duty in Cossack uniforms, shouldering muskets or repeating rifles, which showed that Russia had also organized these Persians into something of a militia or police force ; while it was evident, by several oflicers met with in the train who were pure Persians, serving as chief police masters of districts, or in other positions of command, that they were not excluded from the local executive and administration. They all wore the same long Circassian dress, — that sartorial badge of the close and genial link between the Russian and the Asiatic, which is seen on the Cossacks who guard the Tsar at St. Petersburg, and on the Turkoman Khans v/ho surround Colonel Alikhanoff at Merv. Throng Jl the Caucasus to the Caspian. 103 In a country of so many intermingled types and languages, it was not easy to recognize in these men the Russihed natives of Iran. When I got out of the train at Baku I was at once taken in charge by the police. The assistant of the police master was waiting for me on the platform and calling out my name and nationality in order, as he politely stated, to acquaint me with the news, of which I was already aware, that there was no just cause or impediment to my further progress into the Transcaspian. He then recommended me to go to a certain hotel, and kindly had my luggage put into a droshky. I had some scruples, however, as to the convenience of following this police advice in the matter of hotels, and so had myself driven to quite a different hostelry. This independent line of action, it turned out, was calculated to lead to some annoyance, for I had not long been in the hotel of my own choosing when another police officer made his appearance, who seemed quite ignorant of the special orders received from St. Petersburg on my behalf, and re- quested me to hand over my passport. I lost no time in going to the Steamship Com- pany's office, and, to my utter disappointment. 104 Rnssuis Raihuay Advance. found that the steamer which the agent in Tiflis had positively assured me was to start that very afternoon, had been countermanded, and there would not be another boat for two days. This was a good example of the dependence to be placed upon any kind of information in Russia, even in matters of business. The representative at Baku blamed the agent at Tiflis for not knowing better, but officially-subsidized steamship or other com- panies in Russia are not bound to be precise with the public. Among all the five or six steamboat and shipping companies of Baku, there was not a single craft, under sail or steam, going to Oozoon Ada for forty- eight hours. After all I had heard of the great traffic and daily transports across the Caspian since the construction of the Transcaspian Railway to the Amu Darya, I was very much struck with this fact, especially on an occasion when one would have expected even more than the usual number of vessels to be running on account of the inauguration of the last branch of the railway. There were several engineers and others connected with the Transcaspian line anxious to see some- thin"- of the festivities who were forced to Through the Caiicastis to the Caspian. 105 wait like myself. Meanwhile I paid a visit to the Civil Governor of the town, and was received with the same obliging politeness which all the Russian officials showed me throughout the journey. It was only a pity that they could not curtail somewhat the delays to which I was all the time subjected from the Caspian onwards. His Excellency told me, somewhat to my dismay, that part of the Transcaspian Railway had been washed away by the floods, and that General Annen- kofifs family party, which had just got over, had been obliged to halt in the desert until the damage could be repaired. At the time I was in Baku the first annual trade fair was being held there. This new mart has been established for the purpose of co-operating with the Transcaspian Railway in inducing Asiatic merchants to send their goods here for sale in preference to the more distant fair at Nijni Novgorod. It was a very miserable beginning, and a large number of the wooden sheds of which it was com- posed outside the town were afterwards burnt down. It will be a long time probably before it attracts any considerable part of the Asiatic commerce of Nijni. io6 Russia s Railway Advance. In due time I started for Oozoon Ada in the English-built steamer Prince Bariatinsky, engined by John Penn, and commanded by a Swedish captain. Several, if not all, of the other half-dozen passenger boats of the same company were constructed in England. It is remarkable, said a Russian to me, what a number of Swedes have taken situations on this sea since the two famous Scandinavians, the Brothers Nobel, created their great petrol- eum industry at Baku. With here and there an exception, }'ou will always find foreigners in Russia the promoters and sustainers of non- official activity and enterprise. The Prince Ba7'iatinsky, named after the General who took Schamyl and conquered the Caucasus, which shipped Skobeleff and his troops to Tchikishlar in 1879, and often conveyed the late Mr. O'Donovan, might have been anything but a Russian steamer on a Russian island sea. Besides the captain, the mate was a Swede, the chief engineer was a German, and the crew were chiefly Tartars and Persians.* There were Swedes, Germans, Poles, and Tartars among * Ministerial orders have been issued that no more foreign subjects arc to be accepted by the ]]akii autho- rities as ship-captains on the Caspian. ThrougJi the Caticasiis to the Caspian. 107 the first-class passengers. The decks were occu- pied with the usual motley crowd of turbaned Orientals with their prayer carpets and covered- up wives, Persians with their rosaries, Arme- nians, and smart dealers in cheap and generally spurious turquoises. There were a couple of young Poles on board who had not long ago finished the University course at Warsaw, and were going out to Bokhara on a specula- tion for some Polish firm of manufacturers. They gave me a deplorable account of the effects of the Russian Government's present policy of strictly excluding educated Poles from all employment under the Crown in their own country, and thus compelling them to seek their fortunes in other parts of the Empire. This to a certain extent is why there are so many Polish engineers engaged on Annenkoff's railway in the Transcaspian, — a fact which has already excited the surprise of the authorities in St. Petersburg. The architect of the Amu Darya bridges, M. Belinsky, of whose work I shall have something to say hereafter, is a Pole, and so is the engi- neer charged with the great task of restoring the Sultan Bent Dam on the Murghab, and of thus irrigating the Tsar's new Transcaspian io8 Ritssias Railway Advance. estate. This gentleman, ]\Ir, Kozell-Poklefsky, is at the same time a remarkable instance of a pardoned Polish rebel. He was police master of Warsaw during the revolution, and passed several years of exile in Siberia and abroad previous to receiving a pardon from Alexander II. 109 CHAPTER V. OOZOON ADA AND KRASXOVODSK. Arrival at Oozoon Ada — Wretched aspect — Delay — Floods — Interrupted communication — Description of town — Buildings and population — Shipping lirms — Sand storms — Silting up of harbour — Inundations — No fresh water — Description of seaboard — Laby- rinth of salt lagoons — Long Island — Dardja penin- sula — Ancient channels and delta of the Amu 'Darya. — Proposed restoration of old bed of the Oxus, now practically useless except for irrigation — General Glookhofsky's project and opinion — Dangerous proximity of railway to the Persian frontier — Neces- sity of supplementary communication by water — Oozoon Ada versus Krasnovodsk — Commission on — The question shelved — Reasons for — Transference of railway terminus unnecessary- — Effect of proposed branch line to Krasnovodsk— Arrival of train from Askabad— No first-class carriages— Extent of rolling stock — Special accommodation for ^lohammedans. We reached the Bay of Oozoon Ada, the Caspian terminus of the new Asiatic Raihvay, early in the morning;, after a fair voyage of about 132 miles in nine- 1 1 o R^issias Railway Advance. teen hours. The aspect of the place was extremely wretched and melancholy,— hardly an encouraging introduction into a new country, although some amends were made for the barren and blighted character of the land- scapes by the beautiful fine weather and a cloudless sky with lOO degrees of Fahrenheit in the shade. The train was timed to start at six o'clock in the evening, which entailed another whole day's delay, and this time in such a miserable and uninteresting waste, that most of the passengers preferred to stay in the steamer until the hour of departure. Instead of six o'clock, it was nearly midnight before the train actually did leave, as the one due from the opposite direction had first to be waited for ; and there had been no communication either way for several days in consequence of the rails near Kizil Arvat and other places having been washed away by the floods. A whole day was certainly too long to inspect this bivouac on the edge of the desert ; and its description may be summed up in \'cry few words. Eighteen low, and narrow wooden piers jutting out into the water round a semi- circular and sandy bay, with one or two u Map of the Russian Central Asian Railway. DISTANCES:- from Oozoofi Ada /o Hml Arvat 162 Miles . Hizil Arvat . Asksbad /36 . Asifabad . Merv ?/^ ,_ Aferf - Cfiard/ui 0,7 . Amu Dang . Bofihara 66 . Bokhara Samarkand _I75 . Length of Railway 300 , Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 1 1 1 larger and stronger landing stages belonging to the steamship companies ; a few dozen saiHng brigs, barges, and smaller craft ; two or three steamers at anchor ; with straggling rows and clusters of flimsy wooden houses, huts and warehouses, the whole enclosed by a back- ground of bare hills and mounds of light yellow sand. Such is a picture of Oozoon Ada as I first saw it. The hurriedly built settlement had a very ephemeral and unsubstantial appearance, and in no way corresponded with the fanciful description of a Russian newspaper writer who had filled it with imaginary fine streets and squares. There was the green painted dome of the indispensable wooden church, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, or, as the Russians here, with very appropriate significance, prefer to call him, St. Michael, the Archistrategist ; and large sheds for the weekly market or bazaar had also naturally been provided. The other wooden buildings now comprise sixty houses, one bad lodging-house, a few stores, including one for the sale of ready-made Vienna clothes, and one dookJian or Caucasian wine-shop. The small busi- ness of the place, such as it is, has, of course, been taken in hand entirely by Armenians from the Caucasus. The principal shipping and mercan- T 1 2 R^tssias Railway Advance. tile firms represented are " Lebedefif," "Droojina," "Nadiejda," and Koodrin and Company; and the inhabitants number from 800 to 900 souls.* The railway station, which has a buffet, is situated nearly a quarter of a mile from the landino- place, and passengers have to trudge ankle-deep through the hot sand to get to the platform ; but the trains from the interior are run round the bay from the station to the head of the steamboat pier. During violent storms of wind the fine sand flies into one's face like spray, and nothing can prevent it from irritating the eyes and penetrating through the clothes to the skin. Sometimes ports of the bay, deep enough for all ordinary vessels, get sanded up to within five or six feet of the surface, and the floating dredger has to be set to work before the deeper draught steamers can reach their accustomed anchorage. This is precisely what happens in the Amu Darya and other Central Asian streams that are gradually disappearing under the sand. At the same time the sea occasionally floods the houses near the water's edge, and this necessi- tates the raising of some of them upon piles. ''■'■ The latest census of Oozoon Ada, made in October, 1889, gives 1,651 inhabitants, including 240 women and 130 children. Oozoon Ada and Krsanovodsk. 113 General Annenkoff is now about to construct a stone dam, or quay, on the north shore to prevent these inundations. At the time of my visit there was no fresh water supply at Oozoon Ada, as the condensing machine, which generally worked day and night, was out of order, and water had to be brought by every train in large vats, or cisterns, on wheeled platforms all the way from Kazandjik, 120 miles off. The appearance of this dismal shore was not always perhaps so overpoweringly dreary as it is at the present day. If at this point the mighty stream of the Oxus, freighted with the wares of India and the East, once found an outlet into the Caspian Sea, the aspect of the desolate seaboard has probably undergone as striking a change as that in the course of the river itself The part of the coast on which is situated the Caspian terminus of the Central Asian Railway now consists of a complicated and fantastic labyrinth of salt lagoons, the pale, green reflections from whose glassy surface con- trast agreeably with the light yellow of the sand-hills on the numerous islands and pen- insulas which they form. Oozoon Ada, or " Long Island," is an elongated strip of sand, connected with the peninsula of Dardja by a I 1 1 4 Rtissias Raihvay Advance. railway dam about a mile long. The watery labyrinth extends some fifteen miles beyond the raihvay terminus ; and the lagoons only come to an end where the train enters the desert of the interior, after passing the second station at the now disused Michael's Bay. Near the coast are also numerous desiccated watercourses, which, together with the maze of sand and water, certainly give one the impression of being the remains of a vast river delta. Some explorers consider that these traces rather indicate the former existence of a broad gulf connected with the basin of the once ex- istent Sary Kamish Lake, into which the Amu Darya emptied itself, instead of flowing directly into the Caspian Sea, But the question of the ancient channels of the Amu Darya has never yet been satisfactorily settled, and should any definite solution ever be arrived at, much of its practical value in furthering the creation of a direct waterway between Russia and Central Asia would now be lost, owing to the construction of the Central Asian Railway. On the other hand, it would be of great im- portance in facilitating the work of irrigation, and if the whole or the greater part of the Transcaspian deserts could be fertilized by Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 115 diverting the river into any of its old channels, the railway would eventually reap the benefit by running through a flourishing country in- stead of a barren wilderness. Other authorities, who have not the same tender interest in the railway that General Annenkoff has, are of a very different opinion. The chief of these is now General Glookhofsky, who explored the old courses of the river at the head of a special commission between 1879 and 1883; and he believes that the reversion of the waters of the Amu Darya to the Caspian, so as to open up an alternative and supplementary route to that of the railway, is now more urgently needed than ever it was. In fact he considers that the safety and prosperity of the railway depends very much upon the accomplishment of this pro- ject, as the proximity of the line to the Persian fonticr endangers the security of its commu- nications, and the 300 vcrsts of desert which it now runs through only increase the working expenses, whereas the proposed waterway, being farther from the frontier, would be less liable to attack, and besides fertilizing the country, would afford a much cheaper means of transport. Such are the arguments in favour of this gigantic engineering scheme, Avhich would cost some I 2 1 1 6 J^uss/ci's Railway Advance. 30,000,000 roubles, and take ten years to com- plete. A far more pressinc^ question, about which there has been a great deal of discussion, is the advisability of transferring the starting point of the Transcaspian Railwa)- from Oozoon Ada to Krasnovodsk, on account of the deeper water and better accommodation for steamers at the latter place. General Annenkofif and his friends are naturally opposed to this projected change, especially after the expensive alterations already made in the Caspian terminal of the railway. With the exception of a {q.\\ persons specially interested in Krasnovodsk, the principal or, at least the majority, of the shippers on the Caspian are reported to be of the same opinion. Krasnovodsk, which has sixteen or seventeen feet of water, was originally chosen for the starting-point of the railway ; but St. Michael's Bay was subsequently preferred, because it offered a more direct and shorter cut to the first fresh-water oasis of Akhal Tekhe. The Gulf of St. Michael, however, was too shallow to receive the larger steamers, so that they still had to proceed to Krasnovodsk, and transship their goods for the railway into other boats of lesser draught. Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 117 After the first section of the railway had been opened, this inconvenience induced General Annenkoff to look for a more suitable harbour. At first he was inclined to select the Bay of St. Xenia, named after the Emperor's eldest daughter, and even began some kind of pre- liminar}- work there ; but this point was very soon abandoned in favour of Oozoon Ada. As soon as the Oozoon Ada branch of the line was accordingly made, the General's opponents began to agitate against it. Last autumn a commission was appointed to inquire into the matter; and it appears that no definite decision was arrived at, although the majority of the members were unable to find any very weighty reasons for the retention of Oozoon Ada. It was thereupon reported that the question had been indefinitely shelved on the following prac- tical grounds : — In the first place, the anchorage of the bay at Oozoon Ada (nine to ten feet) is as deep as the port of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga, which is supposed to regulate the draught of nearly all the vessels built for service on the Cas- pian. General Annenkoft' says that boats draw- ing 9J feet can enter the bay of Oozoon Ada, while the deepest water of the port of Astra- iiS Russia s Railway Advance. khan cannot float vessels drawing over nine feet. Of all the 1,480 vessels on the Caspian, of which about 500 arc steamers, only eight or nine of the latter, with a loading line of four- teen feet, and plying between Baku and the other seaports, are unable to enter Oozoon Ada without transshipping or lightening their cargoes outside the bay, off the island of Rau ; therefore if Krasnovodsk is to be preferred to Oozoon Ada merely for the sake of these nine vessels, several more millions would have to be spent on a new railway branch 75 or 100 miles long between Krasnovodsk and Bala Tshem, or between Krasnovodsk and Molla Kari, which would increase the total length of the railway by twenty or thirty miles, and consequently augment the cost of freights. No adequate necessity can be shown to exist for such an outlay until the port of Astrakhan is deepened, or either of the projected railways between Vladikavkaz and Petrofsk, on the western shore of the Caspian, and between Vladikavkaz and Tiflis, through the mountain chain, has first been constructed. Either of these railway lines would carry goods direct from Russia into much deeper water, the one to the port of Petrofsk and the other to Baku, Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 1 1 9 both of which have a depth of twenty to twenty-five feet. A great deal of money has aheady been spent on Oozoon Ada, and no great advantage could be gained in the present circumstances by its desertion in favour of Krasnovodsk. Oozoon Ada has now more in- habitants than Krasnovodsk, which, without its garrison, would be as completely deserted as Oozoon Ada without its railway; all necessaries have to be brought to both places from Astra- khan and Baku ; both are obliged to distil their chief supply of water from the sea; and in no other respect can the one town claim any superiority over the other. These are the arguments of General Annen- kofif, who defends the existence of his pet offspring with all the courage of desperation. His opponents, however, flatly contradict many of his facts and figures. One side declares that the water-depth of Oozoon Ada is often less than seven feet ; the other asserts that it generally reaches thirteen, and is never much under ten. A correspondent of the Grajdanin newspaper, writing from the spot, states that the depth in winter is ten feet ; in summer eleven ; and that in 1889 it reached as much as thirteen feet. The puzzled looker-on at 1 20 Russia's Railway Advance. this contest between the partisans of the rival ports can onl\' come to the conclusion that there is a certain reckless disregard for accu- racy in the statements of both parties. The drift of General Annenkoff's argument seems to be, that as long as the port of Astrakhan remains in its present shallow state, there is no necessity for any better seaport for the Trans- caspian Railway ; which is an indirect admis- sion that Oozoon Ada is, in any case, only a temporary expedient until the improvement of accessory ways of communication on the western coast of the Caspian. His contention, it will be seen, is entirely based upon the connection be- tween the Volga trade and the Central Asian Railway, to the exclusion of the shipping interests of the Caspian proper, which is said to be represented by onl}- ten steamers inca- pable of entering Oozoon Ada. Another autho- rity asserts that there are as many as seventy vessels of more tlian nine feet draught, which cannot always safely enter the port. As for the assertion that most of the Caspian steamers are built to suit the river depths of Astrakhan, it is well known that most of the steamers running between Oozoon Ada and the Volga have to receive or transfer their cargoes and Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 121 passengers in the famous nine feet roadstead at the mouth of the river. There is also every reason to suppose that there will now be a tendency to build larger and deeper boats for the Caspian, in view of the imminent opening up of the deep ports of Petrofsk and Derbent by the projected railway from Vladikavkaz. Even at present the shipping trade of the Caspian is sufficiently independent of the Volga, and cannot be ignored in presence of the growing traffic on the Transcaucasian rail- ways between Baku and Batoum, and the cer- tainty of their junction, sooner or later, with the rest of the railways of European Russia. General Annenkoff himself tells me that he is now endeavouring to turn the cotton transport on to the Baku-Tiflis-Batoum lines, so as to avoid the accumulation of goods at Oozoon Ada during the long closed season of the Volga route. This, he thinks, will enable him to transport all the Central Asian cotton within the year of its growth, instead of during the following one. There are other objections to Oozoon Ada besides its shallowness of water. It is objected that the entrance to the harbour is narrow and tortuous, and that the railway station and 122 Rjissias Raihvay Advance. warehouses arc built upon a low sand bank which is constantl)- overblown by the shifting sand from the hills and dunes. This movable ground is stated to be unfit for the erection of permanent stone buildings for -workshops, rail- way depots, etc. ; and there is no accommoda- tion for large numbers of troops in case of reinforcements arriving from the Caucasus. On the other hand, Krasnovodsk is recommended because it lies in a deep gulf; is sheltered from the winds by the Balkan hills, which would have to be cut through for a railway ; and already possesses the necessary military require- ments. The opponents of Krasnovodsk state that the coast-line of the latter is narrowed and cramped by the mountains ; that there is not room enough for a first-class goods station ; that sufficient fresh water will never be found ; and that the weather in the harbour is often very boisterous and stormy ; all of which alle- gations arc positively denied by the opposite party. One point which has been alleged in favour of Krasnovodsk, namely, that the voyage thither from the Volga or the western Caspian would be shorter than the distance to Oozoon Ada, is not borne out by the facts recently given by the special correspondent of the Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 123 Grajdanin, who states that the voyage from Baku to Krasnovodsk takes four or five hours longer than from Baku direct to Oozoon Ada ; and that the proposed branch line from Kras- novodsk would entail another extra five hours on the railway journey ; so that passengers and goods via Krasnovodsk would have to travel altogether about ten hours more than at pre- sent. The late General Paucker once suggested the choice of a spot near Cape Oofra, a few miles from Krasnovodsk, in lieu of the latter, as a more suitable place for the railway port ; and others have proposed to run the railway on to the petroleum island of Tcheleken. Whatever may eventually be decided upon, the sooner some decision one way or the other is come to the better, as prolonged suspense will only stop further expenditure on improve- ments at Oozoon Ada, and hinder the develop- ment of trade. The latest phase of the question is curious and characteristic. General Annenkoff had no sooner returned to the Transcaspian last autumn, after attending the Commission in St. Peters- burg, by which the matter was supposed to have been virtually shelved, than another and different Commission followed closely on his heels in order J 24 Russia s Railway Advance. to make further inquiries, and to survey the route for the Hne to Krasnovodsk, which, it was at the same time stated, had been positively resolved upon in the Ministry of War. This new Commission appears to have been despatched at the instance of the General Staff, and was headed by General Kopieff. One of its most prominent members. Colonel Shebanoff, who formerly managed the first section of the railway to Kizil Arvat, is regarded as the bitter enemy of General Annenkofif. Colonel Shebanoff was also for a short time assistant to Annenkofif in working the line, and a violent antagonism seems to have sprung up between them. She- banoff made accusations against Annenkoff, who retorted in the same way ; and at last Shebanoff left the Transcaspian, and rejoined the Staff in St. Petersburg. Shebanoffs suc- cessor, the late General Bazoff, who was in charge of the railway as far as the Oxus during the construction of the Bokharan half of the line, was also very hostile to the chief constructor. It was said that he not only would not himself attend the opening of the railway at Samarkand, but at first re- fused to facilitate the journey of Anncnkoff's Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 125 guests when they were detained by the inunda- tion of the railway. One can imagine the surprise of Annenkoff at the appearance of this Commission with Colonel Shebanoff as one of its principal mem- bers. It was at the same time reported that the construction of barracks and other official buildings at Oozoon Ada had been suspended by telegram, in consequence of the determina- tion to extend the railway to Krasnovodsk. The Commission completed its work and re- turned to the capital, whither it was soon followed by General Annenkoff, who continues down to this day to express the most sanguine confidence in the perfect security of his precious creation. Nothing officially has transpired ; but I am inclined to believe that the Krasnovodsk extension, although pretty certain to be made in the end, will not be undertaken for some time to come. The train from Askabad which was to take me from Oozoon Ada to Samarkand, came in between ten and eleven at night, and started back again five or six hours behind time to begin with, as soon as the exchange of passengers had been effected. I was told there was not a single 126 R7(ssias Railway Advance. first-class carriage on the entire line, and such is the case up to the present day, with the excep- tion of one or two special coaches reserved for General Anncnkoff and the Governor-General. At the end of the train there was one very- high double-storied waggon, second-class below and third on the top. There was no other second- class compartment, the rest of the train being made up of third and fourth-class cars. Several of the closed trucks, used indiscriminately on all Russian railways for cattle or troops, and marked "Eight horses or forty men," were filled by persons who found them much cooler. An official informed me that there were as yet only about i,ooo waggons and sixty locomotives for the entire distance of 900 miles, but these num- bers have since been increased to 112 loco- motives, 70 passenger carriages of second and third-class, 1,146 closed goods waggons, 570 open trucks, 62 water cisterns on trucks, and 82 tank-cars for petroleum. Many of the locomo- tives are always under repair in consequence of the sand getting into their wheels and machinery. /\s the l^okharan branch was not yet opened, there were no through tickets for Samarkand, and passengers could only book Oozoon Ada and Krasnovodsk. 127 as far as the Amu Darya. I should not omit to mention that strict Mahommedan travellers have been specially thought of, and provided with separate waggons, lettered in two lan- guages. A Persian time-table and guide has also been published by General Annenkoff, with a fine portrait of the Shah, for the purpose of inducing the Shiite Mahommedans to avail themselves of the Russian Railway in their pil- grimages to the holy city of Meshed. 128 CHAPTER VI. OOZOON ADA TO CEOK TEPE. Departure from Oozoon Ada — Howling wilderness- Desolation — Persian hamals — Railway dam — Blood- red water — Kizil-Soo — Michailofsk : the original terminus — Bala Ishem — The Balkans — The Kuren and Kopet Dag mountains : lifeless appearance and Turkoman avoidance of — Fertility of their Persian slopes — Insignificant valleys and streams on Russian side — Rise of Tedjent and Rlurghab — The moun- tains relieve the sight, and supply the water — Failure of wells — Memorial of Skobelefif's march — Gradients — The salt steppe — Mirages — Ninety per cent, of desert — Fast and movable sands — " White earth," or loess — Proposed colonization and irrigation — Ex- pected results — Old channels of the Oxus crossed by the railway — Former bottom of the sea — Naphtha Dag and petroleum supply — Kazandjik: the first fresh-water source — Delays and damage caused by floods — Insufficiency of culverts — Easy construction of the line— Difficulties of the sand — Cuttings — Part of road re-made twenty times — Materials lost in the sand — Speed and cheapness of construction — Com- petition between General Annenkoff and the Minister of Communications — Effects of floods — Troubles and pastimes of Annenkoff' s guests — Kizil Arvat : beginning of the Akhal Tckke oasis — Population — Oozooii Ada to Geok Tepd. 129 Fountains — Bami — Junction with the Atrek — Charac- ter of the oases — Turkoman obas — Towers of refuge — Salt, sand, and grass steppes -- Saxaoul — Dis- comforts of the railway — Military control — Turkoman platelayers — Turkoman dress — Cossack justice — Persian navvies and porters — Russian tenderness for the Tekkes and dislike of the Persians — Persia and the Yomud and Goklan Turkomans — Russia claims them — Treatment of Persians — Official monopoly of railway accommodation — Fellow- passengers. When I left Oozoon Ada it was a clear moonlight night, and the sandy desert could be comfortably surveyed from the rear of the train through the end door of the two-storied car which took the place of a brake-van. As we dragged along at the moderate rate of thirteen or fourteen miles an hour, the lone and desolate outlook recalled my school-day visions of the Great Sahara. I could compare this howling wilderness with nothing else that I had ever seen or read of; and all that was wanting to complete the picture were the bleached rib- bones of camel skeletons protruding through the yellow sand. After the noble and elevating scenery of the Caucasus, this violent contrast was all the more melancholy and depressing. The only signs of human kind on this part of the road were two or three kibitka tents, seen K .130 Russia's Railway Advance. between the hills, and half-buried in the sand. A French acquaintance boasted of having descried a jackal sneaking along in the distance, but I am pretty sure that it was only a stray dog, for no other animal would be likely to follow man into this wretched region. I do not believe there was a single other quadruped at Oozoon Ada, nor a single wheeled vehicle of any kind off the railway sidings ; so that the traveller with luggage had reason to be thankful for the strong Persian hanials, who are able to wade through the hot sand with weights on their bent backs almost as heavy as the ordinary load of a camel. The train first finds its way through a cutting between the sand dunes at a certain gradient, and then passes over the long dam or sand bank, which is very well laid across the estuary or lagoon that separates the island of Oozoon Ada from the peninsula of Dardja. This narrow trail of the water-flanked line is the only instance throughout the length of the railway, as far as my observation went, of the use of good stone rubble to strengthen the sides of the embank- ment. The thin telegraph posts seemed very infirmly stuck into the sandy bottom of the water along the side of this dam, and looked as Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepd. 131 though they would require frequent attention. Farther on we passed several pools of presum- ably briny, and decidedly blood-red water, which probably accounts for the origin of the name of Krasnavodsk, in native nomenclature Kizil-Soo, both meaning red water. The first halt of the train is at the little station of Michael's Bay, which was the original terminus and landing-place from Baku and Astrakhan, but is no longer used as such on account of the shallowness of the harbour. Here the train has to retreat a few hundred yards in order to reach the platform bordering the first rails laid down in the Transcaspian. The first part of the twenty-five versts, or seventeen miles, to this station presents nothing but shifting sand driven up by the winds into hills of all shapes and sizes, destitute of vegetation, and interspersed with salt lakes and pools. At Michailofsk the sand hillocks are varied by the kitchen middens of the former settlement, which has now entirely disappeared, and a rough wooden cross or two mark the sites of human graves. Nothing else has been left, except the small station building, and two or three scattered wooden houses be- longing to the half-dozen employes. Morning dawned upon us near Bala Ishem, K 2 132 Russia's Raihuay Advance. and we soon saw the last of the Great and Little Balkan mountains, between which the train had passed during the night ; while in return for this loss to the view we came in sight of the steep, rugged range of the Kuren Dag, continued opposite Kizil Arvat by that of the higher Kopet Dag, rising 6,000 feet above the sea. These mountains, which form the natural frontier of Persia, run parallel with the railway on the south for 350 miles, until the line bends off near Doo- shak on its way to Merv. When one sees the sterile and lifeless character of their Northern or Russian slopes, it is no longer surprising that the Turkoman enemies of Russia preferred to re- main and accept defeat upon the open plains, rather than retreat into their mountain recesses and imitate the opposition of the Caucasus. This side of the Kopet Dag is bleak and bare. All the fertility, and all the best water-sources, are on the opposite side in Persia, where the rainfall is just about double what it is on the Russian side. There arc no Alpine pastures, says M. Semenoff, and no very deep and shelter- ing valleys for the refuge of independent moun- taineers, as in the Caucasus ; and none of the streamlets that fertilize in a very half- hearted sort of fashion the oases of Akhal Oozoon Ada to Geok TepS. 133 Tekke, take their origin on the snowless crests of these scabrous heights : they nearly all rise from underground sources at the foot of the moun- tains, and the valleys which lead to them are of small and insignificant extent. An exception to this rule occurs on the eastern part of the range, where the rivers Tedjent and Murghab, rising on the Persian and Afghan slopes, break through to the Russian side. These mountains are said to almost over- shadow the railway the whole of the long distance of some 400 miles as far as Dooshak ; and, indeed, it would be a great blessing if they actually did so in such a way as to moderate the excessive heat. They have their uses, however, of another kind. Happily for the weary vision of the traveller, compelled for several days to- gether to gaze across this sorrowful expanse of unvaried flatness, they constitute the one reliev- ing feature of the endless plain extending in every other direction ; and without them, in fact, the railway would have been quite im- possible, for they furnish the greater part of its fresh-water supply, though often, it must be con- fessed, in far too great abundance to benefit the line. The system of wells, which was to provide all the necessary water, has turned out a failure. 134 Rjissias Railway Advance. An artesian \vell bored at Molla-Kari, a small station beyond Michailofsk, has never yet pro- duced anything but salt water, and has now been abandoned. A natural source, it is said, formerly existed here in the so-called " Sacred Mountain," but this has also become brackish, owing to the infiltration of tainted water from the salty sur- face of the soil. On this first waterless section of 115 miles, on one of the hills of the Little Balkans, near the station of Pereval, there is a small stone shrine commemorative of the passage of the Russian troops in the Expedition of 1881, when Skobelefif and his men took two months to cover the distance along this road to Askabad, which can now be traversed in twenty-four or thirty hours. Although the railway seems to be everywhere built on low level ground, it is said that at Molla-Kari, passing the Little Balkans, there is a gradient of O'OiS fathoms, and between the small stations of Aydin and Pereval, the latter meaning " pass," a lesser one occurs of 0"0i5. There is no other rise worth men- tioning as far as the Amu Darya. The flat plain on all sides for many miles along this part of the line, after quitting the mobile sands near Molla-Kari, is caked over Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepd. 135 with a thick crust of whitish clay or marl, impregnated and faced with salt, which crystallizes perfectly white on the surface like snow, especially in the sunken spots and salt pans left by the rain pools. Salt here, for the most part, takes the place of sand, and glitters brightly in the glare of the sun. It is probably this top dressing that helps to form the distant mirages of the Tekke desert, which I more than once saw from the windows of the train, presenting the appearance of sheets of cool inviting water with islets of rich vegetation floating on their surface, and tremulously glistening in the lambent atmosphere. In order to appreciate the little there is of variety in this ill-favoured country of Trans- caspia, — which is larger than France, and contains 10,000 geographical square miles, with no less than ninety per cent, of desert, — it is necessary to distinguish between two kinds of sandy surface, in addition to the more argil- laceous and saliferous districts just mentioned. The sand wastes are divided into shifting sands, billowed up by the force of the winds, and fast sands covering a very hard clayish level, some- times with the smallest possible sprinkling of vegetation, but oftener with none at all. These o 6 R7(ss7as Raihvay Advance. fast sands arc especially noticeable between Aydin and Aktcha Kuima, near Kazandjik, between Askabad and Giaours, and after passing Merv towards the Amu Darya, before reaching the shifting sands of the Kara Kum. The Russians call this particular kind of sand steppe by the name of takir, which is apparently a Turkoman form of the Turkish word taq or tak, to fasten or attach. There is even a station named Takir next to Dooshak, where the rail- way turns off towards Merv. Another uncommon term — loess — is used to denote the rich, compact, loamy soil found over a great part of the Transcaspian steppes, which is said to resemble the fertile mud of the Nile and the alluvium of the Blue and Yellow Rivers of China. Russian authorities state that the whole of the distance between Kizil Arvat and Askabad, after discounting the intervals of sand, is covered with this kind of soil, and the possibilities of its productiveness, when properly watered, are said to be boundless. It is from this wonderful loess, or " white earth," as the Russians also call it, in contradistinction to the " black earth," or " chorny zem " of their southern provinces, that the Turkomans, accord- ing to General Annenkofif, have lately obtained Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepd. 137 as much as one hundred and seventy fold from their crops in the oases of the Tedjent and the Murghab. They told M. Semenoff, the vice-president of the Imperial Geographical Society, during his visit there last year, that eighty fold, and over, was the average yield in the most favourable years. The General believes, that with the aid of this soil, and the indispensable auxiliaries of a vast system of irrigation, such as the Government has already begun on the Murghab, and of Russian colon- ization aided by the State, the Transcaspian deserts may in time be made as flourishing and populous as the best parts of China. Let us hope that this marvellous transformation may one day be effected, in spite of ninety per cent, of desert at present absolutely in- capable of producing anything. Many Russians think it could be accomplished in time by the diversion of the waters of the Amu Darya into its old channels, which are also bordered by abundant deposits of this rich soil of loess. Six of these channels have been traced between Askabad and the present stream of the river, and the railway crosses three of them between Merv and Chardjui. The line also cuts the Uzboi, or principal ancient arm, east of Molla- 138 Russia s Railway Advance. Kari. But these old delta ramifications do not force themselves upon the attention of the ordinary traveller. They have to be care- fully looked for, or to be pointed out by some one who knows the country well. Their very existence is apt to be forgotten under the strong impression that within a very appreciable distance of time the whole of this expanse must have been at the bottom of a sea which washed and abraded the slopes of the Balkans and the Kopet Dag ; and if the waters of the Caspian could be let in to cover it over again, that would perhaps be the best solution of the problem. Some twenty miles west of Bala Ishem, and connected with the railway by a Decau- ville line, is the Naphtha Dag, or black petroleum hills, which formerly supplied the locomotives and stations with fuel and light. At first, when the wells yielded an average of five tons of oil per day, the supposed total quantity of the source was estimated by the engineer, Kanshin, at 9,677,420 tons ; but the supply gradually diminished until the last three borings produced none at all. The railway has now, therefore, to procure its petroleum from Baku at the rate of about 25,000 tons Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepc. 139 a year. There is a reasonable prospect, how- ever, that the coal recently discovered at Penjakent, thirty to fifty miles from Samarkand, or the seams long worked at Hodjent, may be made available by the extension of the rail- way to Tashkent ; so that the line may not be always dependent for its fuel upon petroleum. At the station of Kazandjik, the first fresh- water source from the Caspian, and eleven miles from another station misnamed Oozoon- Soo, " Long water," where there was not a drop of water to be had from any local supply, we heard of passengers ahead of us having had to wait as long as three days until the repairs on the inundated section had been completed. We afterwards passed the places where the damage had been done, between the small station of Ushak, or Ooshak, and Kizil Arvat, which is the first of the larger stations on the line ; and there we saw the old rails bent and curled into all manner of shapes, lying hundreds of yards off from the line, where they had been thrown by the force of the water. I could never have believed in such hydraulic power on a perfectly level plain, had I not seen something more of the water's violence on my return journey, when I narrowly 140 Rtcssias Railiuay Advance. escaped the consequences of another destruction of rail and roadway. General Annenkoff had not then paid enough attention to this important matter. The line was not destitute of culverts through which the water would find its way in ordinary cases, but there were evidently far too few of these structures. Perhaps the Trans- caspian Railway is not much worse off in this respect than many other Russian lines on which the traffic is often stopped for days together in spring-time by the floods from melting snows and swollen rivers ; but this does not justify the appearance of floods on the rails in Central Asia, where they might be avoided. Without being a professional engineer, it was not difficult to see that there were many old waterways and depressions crossed by the railroad, which had not been provided with the requisite water passages ; and although this defect had in some degree been remedied by trenches cut parallel with the road, about eight or ten feet broad and half as much in depth, there was still a great deal to attend to in this respect before the line could be pronounced perfect. After heavy storms, such as at that time burst over the mountains, the rain-water rushes and bounds across the plain in turbulent torrents and over- Oozoon Ada to Gcok Tepd. 141 flows these trenches in a very few minutes. Neither was there any ballast worth speaking of, which could offer the slightest resistance to attacks of this nature. With few exceptions, the rails have been laid down along the perfectly flat plain of alternating desert and oasis almost without any embankment whatever ; and it struck me as well as several other persons, who like myself were travelling over it for the first time, that this must have been one of the most easily constructed railways in the world. There is not one tunnel along the entire distance of nine hundred miles ; and the only engineering difficulties, properly so called, have been the bridging of the Amu Darya, — no slight under- taking, however, — and the two or three cuttings through the moving sands. These sand cuttings, it must be admitted, have been exceedingly difficult work, and quite out of the range of ordinary railway engineering. It would not be easy to say which has given the most trouble, — the making of them, or the keeping them open now they are made. A gentleman who helped to supply materials told me that one bit of the line at Michailofsk had to be re-made twenty times before the attacking sand could be finally held at bay ; and in the meantime several 142 Russia's Raihvay Advance. barrels of fastenings completely disappeared beneath the sandy deluge. It certainly needed the discipline of the raihvay battalions to build these sections of the line ; and the indomitable perseverance of a man like General Annenkofif was none the less necessary in directing the work. As to the other parts where no dif- culties or impediments existed, they might per- haps have been made more substantial and secure, had more money and time been devoted to them at the very outset ; but the main con- siderations which guided the construction, irre- spective of the pressure of military necessities, and the danger of Afghan frontier troubles, were cheapness and speed in getting the work done. It was all the time a contest between General Annenkoff as the representative of the Minister of War, and the Minister of Ways of Com- munication, in order to prove which of the two could build strategical railways cheapest and quickest. This competition between the military and civil engineering departments had been going on ever since General Annenkoff built the Jabinsk-Pinsk line in Poland, which was severely criticized by the opposing author- ities at the Ministry of Communications ; but up Oozoon Ada to Geok Tcp^. 143 to the present the energetic constructor of tlie Transcaspian Railway has managed to hold his own, and even to get the better of his rival. It seems strange to be writing about so much water in this desert country, which has been generally regarded as quite destitute of it ; but my experience impressed me almost as much with the water nuisance, as it did with the dangers and troubles of the sand. I was told that these destructive floods had never been known before, and were quite ex- ceptional. It was not the first time nor the last that the line has been inundated, but never to the same disastrous extent. Between Ushak and Kizil Arvat the damage extended over some six versts and a half. At one place every sign of the iron road was obliterated for 1,000 yards, as though there had never been any railway at all, while the rails and sleepers were carried half a verst away. It was a poor treat for General Annenkoff's daughters and their party to be on their way to Samarkand at this unfortunate juncture, though at the same time it was for- tunate that the " representatives of all nation- alities," so pompously proclaimed as having been present at the inauguration, only existed in the Russian imagination. Their accounts of 144 Rtissias Raikvay Advance. the journey, had they been there, would hardly have been enthusiastic descriptions of triumph- ant railway progress. The General's relatives and French friends and admirers had to be carted through the water to Kizil Arvat, or wheeled there on trollies in the middle of the night, in order not to delay the opening of the Samarkand branch beyond the anniversary of the Tsar's coronation. They were first delayed at Kazandjik, where there is a tiny oasis supplied with water brought in canals cut by the Russians from a mountain stream into a reservoir, and then conducted two versts to the station through 4-in. pipes into six tanks, each holding 700 pailfuls. The Oozoon Ada-Kizil Arvat section is supplied with water from this station. There is also a very flourishing garden and a quantity of acacia, pistachio, and other trees planted as experiments. The belated guests had plenty of time during three days here to visit a cotton plantation and small house, with bathing accommodation, belonging to Prince Khilkoff, and occupied by the en- gineer of the section. This district I heard is also prolific of scorpions and tarantulas, some of which, I was told, the detained passengers had procured from the Tekkes, and beguiled Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepe. 145 the time in verifying the suicidal instincts of the scorpion by worrying it with the more active tarantula. The worst awaited the festal party two stations beyond Ushak, where they had to abandon the train, and camp out after dark in the wild open, with soldiers' rations of black bread, mutton, and onions, until they could be sent for, as already stated, from Kizil Arvat through the intervening waters. These rain floods, however, quickly disappear without any apparent benefit to the land. When I passed over this part to Kizil Arvat, the water had already subsided, having been rapidly absorbed by the earth, or evaporated by the great heat, and the ground had even begun to split into cracks and fissures. Kizil Arvat, generally recognized as the be- ginning of the Akhal Tekke oasis, is a fertile spot with a number of houses and barrack build- ings of white stone from the Kuren Dag, and an important point as the head-quarters of the railway battalion and the principal depot of the line as far as the Amu Darya. The town contains 210 houses and 3,296 inhabi- tants, including 1,700 Russians, 660 Armen- ians, 60 Georgians, and 816 Persians. There is a splendid fountain at the station, and the L 146 Russia's Railway Advance. waiting-rooms are even furnished with the electric Hght. Two stations farther on, at Bami, there is another fountain, and still two more beyond at smaller stations towards Askabad. General Annenkoff has certainly made a con- spicuous show of water wherever he has been able to obtain it, and these jets and basins of the indispensable element are very refreshing after the sight of so much salt and sand. Bami, which is celebrated as one of the principal ctapcs of the Skobeleff expedition, and the point of junction with the line of the Atrek on the opposite side of the mountains running from Chikishliar, presents a green and flourishing appearance, with a few clumps of small trees near the foot of the mountains, and a sparkling rivulet or two winding towards the station. A few versts more of comparative desert separate it from more streamlets and verdure, and even some thinly-sown wheat fields. Most of these small oases very poorly justify their name, and are chiefly conspicuous by the utter barrenness which prevails between and around them. They are nearly all confined to the mountain base on the south of the railway, while beyond a short distance on the northern side of the line the great desert of the Kara Kum rarely O 020071 Ada to Geok Tepd. 147 gives any signs of life. The vegetation, except- ing the saxaul, comes to an end where the puny streams from the foot of the mountains ex- haust themselves in the sand, or are tapped for the purposes of the railway. It was not till we reached this point in the journey that the kibitkas of the Turkomans, with their numerous flocks and herds of camels, were at all notice- able by their numbers. The first Turkoman village, after leaving the Caspian, is situated two versts east of Molla Kari, but we had only seen an occasional Turkoman horseman some- times careering across the plain, or a few camels browsing off the short camel-thorn, called yangiit, while the Turkoman aoiilSy or obas, clus- ters of dingy dome-shaped tents pitched near the mountains, had hitherto been few and far between. Dotted all over the plain in their neighbourhood, were generally to be seen the mud-built towers of refuge, which now serve no other purpose than to mark the rude and lawless life of these sturdy brigands before the Russian conquest. The best characterization of the whole sur- face of the country is to divide it into sand steppes, salt steppes, and grass steppes, the last named being the so-called oasis inter- im 2 148 Russia s Railivay Advance. spersed between the other two. It is only between Oozoon Ada and Molla Kari on the Caspian, and between Merv and Chardjui on the Amu Darya, that the sand steppes exhibit any dunes or hills, and are regarded as being dangerous ; the other parts are deadly flat and uninteresting. With few exceptions, all the sand steppes manage to nourish the short and knotty shrub called the saxaul, which strikes its hardy roots down to a wonderful depth, sometimes ten or twelve feet, into such soil as it can find, and appears on the surface like a thin and scanty gooseberry bush, varying from a foot to five feet in height, at intervals of five, ten, twenty, or, perhaps, forty feet, all over the plains as far as the eye can see. Be- tween Oozoon Ada and Michailofsk, the first two stations from the Caspian, there is not even this saving sign of vegetation, for not a speck of verdure of any kind is visible, while the dunes here are larger and higher than those of the Kara Kum on the other side of Mcrv. Strangelj'- enough, the saxaul grows most luxuriantly, if such a word may be applied to anything in a desert, on the first part of the sand steppe bordering the Amu Darya, which is the most abominable section of the whole road. As soon Oozooii Ada to Geok Tepd. 149 as the great heats come on, the saxaul gets scorched up, and assumes a similar colour to that of the dusty drab steppes. But it is one thing to describe the Central Asian Railway, and quite another to travel over it and experience its many discomforts. It was naturally not to be expected that a purely military railway not yet quite finished would afford all the comfort of first-class lines to every ordinary passenger, and it is from the ordinary passenger's point of view that I feel bound to regard it, at least as far as the Amu Darya, where I received my first recog- nition as a special visitor for the opening at Samarkand. A big cattle van or goods truck without seats, for instance, when placed at the disposal of one or more persons in 100 deg, of heat, is a very agreeable change from hot, dusty cushions and close, stuffy compartments ; but this is what may be called the inaxhnum of room with the miniumni of comfort. There was such a lack of respectable passenger waggons for the inauguration that the first train from the Oxus carrying the constructor's family and Parisian friends was composed of simple goods platforms, upon which a number of deal boards had been roughly knocked to- 150 Rtissian Railway Advance. gether into the form of a Russian peasant's eesba, or hut, with a lining of common cotton print loosely tacked up inside to cover the chinks between the planks, and furnished with rough wooden benches and tables. A few of these platforms were only shaded with an awning for those who preferred to sit out in the open. One of these gipsy-like house-trucks was kindly reserved for me on my return from Samarkand to Chardjui, and I succeeded in making it tolerably comfortable with the aid of a Turko- man carpet and a travelling pillow. My only trouble was after dark to prevent the candle, fixed in an empty wine-bottle, from being shaken against the loosely hanging cotton lining and setting it on fire. There was no lavatory of any kind, and other conveniences were of the most primitive description. The thing was certainly original, but uncommonly rough. The entire line, as may be supposed, was under strictly military control ; and I was sadly disappointed to find that what many enthusiastic Russians had told me of the Turkomans having been already so far Russified as to be employed on the trains, was nothing but a miserable hoax. There were sometimes a few of them mixed to- Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepd. 151 gether with the Persian navvies and assisting the Russian platelayers in repairing the line, and this was evidently the only kind of work they as yet aspired to. I saw a good many of them staring and gaping about at some of the stations, and wearing such gigantic black sheepskin hats, that how they managed to support such heavy head dresses in a climate like theirs was to me a mystery. Imagine a round hat of black sheep's wool half as large again as a Grenadier's busby, often with its long curly wool hanging down all round over the face and neck of the wearer, like a most abnormal crop of hair, and you will have some idea of the savage-looking Tekke's head- gear. A long, reddish-coloured cotton gown, generally with a sash round the waist, and thick slippers or Russian top-boots, complete the cos- tume. None but soldiers, I found, were em- ployed as conductors and railway servants generally. All the telegraphists, ticket-sellers, and collectors were also soldiers. The station- masters were generally officers, except at the very small stations, which were left in charge of subalterns. There are no blue-coated gendarmes at the stations, as in Russia, but a Cossack parades the platform, when there is one, and ad- ministers summary justice with his short whip. 152 Russia s Railway Advance. His principal duty seems to be to dictate and shout to the lazy, slipshod Mahommedans, who jump out to fill their pitchers from the water- tubs sunk deep into the ground, or to perform their religious ablutions at a fountain basin and make the train wait. Any unruly person of the lower civil orders, or in fact any misdemeanant out of uniform, is not taken before a gendarme and the station chief to have a protocol drawn up as in Russia, but is simply thrashed over the head without more ado. All the dirty work of the line is done by the Persians, who are very numerous as porters at all the principal stations. They seem to prefer to come over the border and work for the Russians in the desert, in spite of the Cossack whip, at a miserable pittance that defies all competition, rather than stay to be harassed by tax-gatherers in their own beautiful and flourishing Khorasan. Six or seven years ago they would never have ventured here among the man-stealing Turkomans, who used to sell them in thousands to the slave-markets of Khiva and Bokhara. It was highly interesting to see the Tekke marauder and his would-have-been slave peacefully labouring together on the Rus- sian railway as though they had always been the best of friends. The Russians now seem to be Oozoon Ada to Gcok Tepd. 153 affected with a certain tenderness towards the Turkoman Tekkes, perhaps in a kind of inverse ratio to the mercilessness of Skobeleff's treat- ment of them at Geok Tepe; but the Persians, on the contrary, come in for a good deal of rough handling. Their Russian employers deny them all the manlier virtues ; and are filled with end- less amusement at the stories spread about of the way in which the Shah's troops, on the other side of the frontier, have to be concentrated in thousands from all points during several months in order to punish a few hundred Turkomans of the Goklan or Yomud tribes. Of course, say the Russians, these Turkomans left over in Persia, as well as those still wandering and op- pressed within the Afghan boundaries, will all have to come over to Russia before they can be properly dealt with and licked into respectable order. This is regarded as inevitable, and only a question of time. I several times saw a whole crowd of dusky, ragged Persian hamals, strong as horses, being driven away from the train by a single Cossack, until they fell over each other in their flight, and fairly screamed for mercy. Every officer, as may be inferred, is master on this military railway, and I presume that a full general could stop a train without having to 154 Russia s Raikuay Advance. answer to anybody who might object. Any military officer, or, for the matter of that, any of the numerous engineers of sections, as they are called, who should consider himself of sufficient importance, can easily occupy a whole carriage or truck, and nobody complains except the ordinary passenger, who finds no available carriage to correspond with the class of his ticket. An enormous number of officials and officers seemed to be travelling about in this way on service, some with their wives and children. At different times nearly half the carriages of our train were separately engaged. One was occupied by a scientist who was study- ing the flora and fauna for the Emperor's cabinet, another by the Postmaster who was organizing the post, and so forth. In my com- partment was a young officer, who was the first to be sent by this route to reach Eastern Siberia, where his regiment had long been stationed. He was bound for the far-distant Amoor, and the War Office had made out his march route over the Samarkand Railway as an experiment. He was very doubtful about reaching his desti- nation within the allotted time, considering the great delays ; but as it was only a trial case, there was no anticipation of blame being Oozoon Ada to Geok Tepd. 155 attached to him for arriving late. The other non-military passengers were Poles, Germans, and natives of the Caucasus and Armenia, going, as they said, to see if any business could be done ; and a Persian Prince, in the uniform of a Russian colonel, was taking his wife and daughter on a pilgrimage to Meshed. Although the daughter had been brought up in a Russian educational institute at Tiflis, and had always been accustomed to European dress, both she and her mother were attired for this occasion in Mahommedan costume, and strictly veiled. Many other Mussulmans sat among the Rus- sians, and did not seem to be particularly anxious to avail themselves of the waggons reserved for their separate use. m6 CHAPTER VII. GEOK TEPE TO MERV. Arrival at Geok Tepe — The fortress — Disease — Removal of the Russian settlemetit — Siege and slaughter — Burning the dead— Skobeleff the "Split Beard"— Unjust criticism of Skobeleff — Dr. Heyfelder's opinion of — Author's acquaintance with Skobeleff — His typical Russian character — A great leader of men — His cruelty at Geok Tepe explained — Differ- ence between his mode of warfare and the English method — Killing of women inexcusable — Mr. Marvin on the subject — Remains of the siege — Alleged neglect of the Turkomans to use their water supply against the Russians — Their chivalrous bravery — Osman Pasha's mistake repeated at the Turkoman Plevna — Arrival at Askabad— Akhal Tekke oasis — Giaours — Ak-soo — Artik — Luftobad — Its retention by Persia dis- approved of by Skobeleff — Dooshak — Nearest point to the Afghan frontier — Future junction of Russian and Indian railways — Refusal to permit Englishmen to go to Kelat — Tedjent river and oasis — Sarakhs and Zulficar — Population and administration — Fever — Tigers, boars, lizards, and tortoises — Losing sight of the mountains — Camels — Their proposed intro- duction into Russia — Depilation of — Present style of caravan progression — Arrival at Merv — Delay — Geok Tepd to Merv. 157 Merv station — Garden irrigation— No native town — Russian town — Floods and draining — Koushut Khan Kala — Forced growth of business — Turkomans in the hands of Jews and Armenians — Attempt to bathe in the Murghab — The " Penjdeh sore "—Filters — A wash in a bath-house. On arriving at Geok Tepe, after passing six stations from Askabad, and altogether eighteen from Oozoon Ada, it was our second evening in Transcaspia, and fortunately not too dark to get a view of the famous fortress where 35,000 Tekkes made their last desperate stand for inde- pendence. As we slowly approached it from the west, the great ramparts of earth and clay composing this formidable-looking stronghold loomed up immensely high in contrast with the flatness of the surrounding plain. I just had time to pay a flying visit to the crumbling ruins of its southern wall, close to the railway station, where the final assault was delivered, and to observe that its spacious interior, which once contained the entire population of the Akhal Tekke oasis, was now quite empty and deserted. This great earthwork has not yet been utilized by the Russians, like the other Turkoman fortress at Merv, owing, probably, to the terrible epidemic which broke out immediately after the slaughter of its defenders, and caused the re- 158 Russia s Railway Advance. moval of the small Russian settlement to a much healthier spot, two or three miles nearer to the mountains. Its huge, thick walls are as much as four miles in circuit ; and near the north- eastern corner is the large aperture or break in the unfinished wall, through which the panic- stricken crowd of defeated Turkomans, with their women and children, fled out before the murderous onslaught of Skobeleff's troops, and were ruthlessly mown down by their pursuers without distinction of age or sex. Eight thou- sand of the besieged perished in this disastrous rout, besides 10,000 or 15,000 more slain during the siege and capture. So great was the carnage that thousands of bodies had subsequently to be burnt to prevent the spread of disease. After this terrible decimation, the Turkomans called Skobeleff " Ouenz kanli," or " Bloody Eyes," which corresponds with the late Mr. MacGahan's description of the General's bloodshot eyes after an attack on one of the redoubts at Plevna. They have since enshrined the memory of the cruel exterminator of their freedom in native verse, under the more agreeable name of the " Sakal airi ooroosi," or the "Russian Split Beard," in allusion to the Dundreary form of his whiskers. Gcok Tepd to Merv. 159 Skobelefif has been severely criticized in Eng- land for his massacre of the Turkomans at Gcok Tepe ; and his character has lately been sub- jected to the most reckless kind of dissection on the strength of conversations with Dr. Heyfelder, the obliging host of all foreign visitors to Bok- hara. This amiable gentleman has consequently been attacked in the Russian Press for com- municating disparaging anecdotes about Skobe- lefif to foreign tourists. The fact is that Dr. Heyfelder has published the most exhaustive accounts of Skobelefif and his personality, the sum total of which is quite the reverse of de- famation of the late General's character ; and it would be very strange if he now entertained any other feeling than that of admiration for the Russian popular hero. In recent English criticism Skobelefif has been called " eccentric ; a jumble of nobility and meanness, with a childish temper, and a petulant, ill-assorted, and unprincipled nature, querulous and morose, sanguine and de- spondent ; without stability and without faith." A more terrible array of disreputable qualities could hardly be attributed to the most degraded character. The mildest view that can be taken of them, is that they represent a very hasty and superficial estimate of a Russian of Skobelefif's i6o Russia s Raihuay Advance. stamp. No other Englishman has ever made such an attack on the modern Suvoroff, as the Russian Staff Academy christened him over his grave ; and Mr. G. K. Gradofsky, the only one of Skobeleff's own countrymen who ever ven- tured to publicly question his right to fame, has never pushed his adverse criticism as far as that. The author of this sweeping condemnation, who admits that in Russia every man who raises himself above the crowd has a host of enemies always trying to pull him down by the most despicable means, seems to have forgotten that, although in Skobeleff's case it was the crowd which raised him aloft on the pinnacle of fame, he still had enemies, mostly among the foreign elements, Vv'ho always placed the lowest con- struction on everything he did. If General Anncnkoff were also judged by the gossip of his much wider circle of enemies, he would not be a second Lesseps, but the greatest charlatan in Russia. The vast majority of a people do not elevate a man into a hero for nothing ; and now that Skobeleff is dead, foreigners might be generous enough to admit that he was a great man, at least in his own country. I was closely acquainted with the General for some years, both in war and peace, and may be allowed to Gcok Tepc to Merv. i6i add my small quota to what has already been said on the subject. I saw him lead his men up to the Turkish redoubt at Plevna, and was subsequently in his company at Constantinople when he wept bitterly over the death of our mutual friend MacGahan. He was not only in some respects, as described by the writer re- ferred to, but wholly and entirely the typical representative of his nation ; the personification of all its merits and defects ; and doubly endowed with the virtues and vices of his fellow-countrymen. And yet no one would seriously think of condemning the entire Russian people in the terms used by our critic against Skobeleff. If his passing humours, as gathered from trumpery anecdotes, were to be taken as the touchstone of his genius, he would no more stand the test than a good many other great men. A great many other equally, or even better, authenticated stories show him in the light of one of the best-natured and most magnanimous of men and soldiers. He cer- tainly never pretended to be a moral or a religious genius, nor could he have ever been mistaken for one. It would be odious, for in- stance, to compare him with General Gordon, who was just as much the outcome of British M 1 62 Ivussias Raikvay Advance. civilization, as Skobeleff was the product of his Russian surroundings. In her present state Russia could no more produce a Gordon than England could tolerate a SkobelefT. If a Russian soldier is religious at all, it is rather in the spirit of the Old Testament than in that of the New, Skobeleff was, perhaps, overrated as the idol of the Russian people ; but he was undoubtedly a great soldier and leader of men. As to his cruelty at Geok Tepe, he always indignantly repelled the charge of wanton bloodthirstiness or unnecessary destruction of human life. The Russian traditions of Central Asian warfare, and the fact that he was not fighting a settled and peaceful population, compelled him to do what he did, and not any personal lust for blood. He was cruel, if at all, only to be kind. The crushing blow dealt the Tekkes in their flight after the capture of the fortress was considered necessary to break their deter- mined spirit and force of resistance, which had been immensely elevated and increased by the disastrous failure of his two predecessors. Had he not completely routed and cowed the Tekkes in this way, it v/as foreseen that they would pro- bably continue their resistance from the posi- tion on the Murghab, and by thus drawing on Geok Tepd to Merv. i6 a another Russian attack, Merv, instead of being peacefully annexed, as it eventually was, by the diplomacy of Konshin and Alikhanoff, would have had to submit at the expense of a much greater sacrifice of life than even that incurred at Geok Tepe. Skobeleff's cruelty consisted in his adoption of a policy the very reverse of the English plan of sparing the enemy to fight him again another day, instead of finishing the war at one fell stroke. The killing of women, how- ever, is the one black feature in the battle of Geok Tepe, which no explanation will ever excuse in the minds of English readers ; so that it would be useless to discuss the point here, especially after Mr. Marvin's exhaustive treat- ment of it in his account of conversations with Skobelefif and his officers.* To return to Geok Tepe, there was still the breach made by the Russian sap and mine, visible from the station, and the ground for hundreds of yards outside the wall presented a puzzling confusion of irrigation canals, now mostly dry, rifle trenches, and minor earthworks. This Turkoman Plevna, as most readers are aware, was built over a rivulet brought from the mountains, only a mile or two off, which * See accounts of Tekke women in Chapter XIII. M 2 164 Russia's Railzuay Advance. creates the oasis here at the foot of the range. Possessed of this stream, and well aware, as they must have been, by the experience of their own history, of the importance of water as a weapon of war, it seemed strange to Dr. Heyfelder that they did not use it against the Russian troops. Had they dammed up their canals, and thus flooded that part of the stream which led into the Russian camp, the latter, with all its trenches, would have been completely swamped, and while the Russians were in this predicament, had the Tekkes accompanied the manceuvre with an energetic sortie, the Russians would in all probability never have been able to extricate their horses and guns from the mire. This was the opinion of Dr. Heyfelder, who took part in the expedition, and was afterwards medical adviser to General Annenkoff during the railway construction, But against this theory it has been advanced by Grodekofif, Lessar, and others, that the Tekkes could not have cut off the water supply of the Russian camp, which was situated upstream, without exposing themselves to the deadly fire of the besiegers, or without swamping their own retreat, and undermining the walls of the fortress. Another notion is that the Tekkes fought with the most unselfish Geok Tepd to Merv. 165 and high-minded bravery, and scorned to use the tricisis of war which even Europeans do not despise. It appears, however, that they used all the tricks which they knew, and that was not many. They did not cut the Russian field telegraph when they could have done so, be- cause they were ignorant of its use and im- portance ; and they were not magnanimous enough to let a Russian prisoner remain among them without flaying him alive, because he refused to fire upon his comrades. As far as my own observation went, it occurred to me that the Turkomans had neglected another advantage in selecting the site of their fortress. They seemed to have imitated the blunder of Osman Pasha at the real Plevna in Bulgaria, when he pitched upon the more or less isolated town on the Vid for his fortifications, instead of choosing Loftcha, with the Balkans at his back. Had the Tekkes built their great mud work closer up against the mountains, the Russians would not have been able to get round it, and they would apparently have been able to retreat through the passes, with much less risk of pursuit. Forty-two versts, or twenty-eight miles, from Geok Tepe we arrived at Askabad, the capital 1 66 Ritssias Railway Advance. of the Transcaspia, in the middle of the night, and were only able to observe that this station was decidedly the best in every respect that we had yet seen. There was an excellent buffet and well-furnished waiting-rooms, which were very comforting during half an hour's stay, after the wretched places hitherto passed. I was only sorry that I was unable to see the town until on my return journey from Bokhara. From Geok Tepe onward to Askabad there were more signsof fertility and nomadic popula- tion than had hitherto been seen on the green patches which determine the beginning of the Akhal oasis from Kizil Arvat. The belt of country so called is reckoned about 145 miles long, of oval shape, with an average breadth of four to ten miles, and is supposed to come to an end at Giaours, the second station after Askabad ; but as there is more sand, and even salt steppe, between these two places, this theory seems to be rather incorrect. About thirty m.ilcs more of desert country intervenes between Giaours and the northern end of the Tedjent oasis ; and in the name of another waterless station, called Ak-soo, or "white water," we come across the second misnomer of this kind since leaving the Caspian. Artik, the -* ~%i-y. -w» ^•iiC^' Geok Tepd to Merv. 167 fifth station beyond Askabad, is only a few miles from the Persian town of Luftobad, which forms the one single piece of Persian territory penetrating through to the Russian side of the mountains, and was left to Persia by the boundary arrangement of 1881, much to the disgust of Skobeleff, who strongly opposed its concession. Passing two more stations, we reach the southernmost bend of the railway at Dooshak, which is also the point of the line nearest to the Afghan frontier. If the Russian and Indian railways are fated ever to meet, the Russian branch will probably start from this station, or somewhere near it, to join the lines of Chaman Candahar and the Bolan Pass. This station was selected by three other English tourists, several months after my journey, as the starting point for an intended visit through the mountains to the Persian Khanate of Kelat, which a short time ago was erroneously reported to have been ceded to Russia ; but on telegraphing to the Russian authorities for permission to make the excursion, it was peremptorily refused. Here the railway makes an angle to the north-east, and we rapidly lost sight of the Kopet Dag mountains, whose company we had enjoyed for 1 68 Russia s Railzvay Advance. more than three hundred miles, as they turned off in the opposite south-easterly direction towards Sarakhs. The railway soon afterwards enters the Tedjent oasis and crosses the river of that name, — called also in its upper course the Heri Rud, — not far from where its fan-shaped extremities, like those of the Murghab, farther on, are swallowed up by the sandy ocean of the Kara Kum. The station of Tedjent appears to be the nearest to Sarakhs, which is only about eighty-five miles off, and about i6o miles from Zulficar. The Tedjent oasis is peopled by about 30,000 Turkomans under the administration of Makhmud Kuli Khan, son of the famous leader against the Russians, Noor Verdi Khan, with a Russian Lieutenant-Colonel, or p7'istav, as his assistant. According to Doctor Heyfelder, the locality is a fever nest for Europeans, and swarms with gnats and mosquitos. M. Semenoff says that tigers are sometimes found lurking here along the banks of the river in search of the wild boar, and the same authority re- ports having seen between the Tedjent and the Murghab lizards {Varanus stincus) nearly five feet long, resembling young crocodiles. I did not come across any of these reptiles myself, but I saw a great many tortoises crawl- Geok Tepd to Merv. 169 ing among the scanty shrubs of the semi-sand steppe which separates the Tedjent oasis from that of the Murghab. Our parting with the mountains was the subject of Hvely regret, as now on either side there was nothing to reh'eve the eye from these staring wastes, except the isolated station huts and perhaps a few sohtary kibitkas, or now and then a camel or two leisurely browsing on the scattered tufts of herbage, and exhibiting the most supreme indifference to the passing ot their new steam rival. It is not to be supposed that the ship of the desert has been altogether superseded here by the railway, which ought, on the contrary, to bring this ungainly beast into even more than usual requisition at places like Merv and Chardjui, where large quantities of goods have to be transported to and from the railway station, especially as the Russians have not yet introduced anything but droshkies, and the nomad Tekkes have never possessed wheeled conveyances of any description. But if the camel in the new towns of Transcaspia is likely to be supplanted by Russian, or even Bokharan, carts, there seems to be just as much chance of the animal in revenge entering into competition I yo Russia's Railway Advance. with the horses and oxen of Southern Russia. An enterprising proprietor of coal mines in the neighbourhood of the Don told me that he had seriously thought of purchasing camels to carry or draw his coal to the nearest railway station, as they would be much cheaper, and could be easily procured from the Calmucks living close by. Camels already carry coal from the Hod- jent mines to Tashkent. While I stayed on the Murghab and the Amu Darya, there was constant loading and unloading of these animals, and long caravans of them laden with bales of cotton were all the time coming in or going out of the town. I was rather puzzled at first to account for the hairless state of their tawny bodies, with tufts of dirty wool hanging from the neck and feet ; but upon inquiry I found that this unsightly depilation was caused by felt wrappings during the winter. Their present style of progression when in caravans, thanks to the Russian occu- pation, is apparently no longer that of a military transport attended by an armed convoy. I am not sure that they go through the more remote parts of the deserts in this lightly equipped fashion ; but I often saw long trains of them walking into I\Ierv with only a single nomad, sometimes two together, striding a donkey in Geok Tcpc to Merv. 1 7 1 front and guiding the leading camel by the nose chain. In twelve hours from Askabad, at about noon the next day, we glided into the historical capital of Turkomania, or rather the " tented field," which has generally passed under the name of Merv in Western Europe. As soon as we reached the station, we were informed that the train would go no farther until the evening, the reason being that the next desert, or sand steppe — the bugbear of the entire route — was dangerous, and in order to avoid accidents or delays in the dark in the midst of this veritable wilderness, all trains from Askabad were detained at Merv until nightfall, so that the worst part of the way to Chardjui might be got over the next morning in daylight.* The station of Merv, though not so large and hand- some as that of Askabad, was still very com- fortable and cool after the trying heat and close- ness of the railway waggons. There was a large fountain-basin between the platform and the station building, forming the centre of a newly- laid-out garden, as yet without cultivation, but being prepared for it by a deluge of water run * I am told that the trains now often run through this desert durinq; the ni