607 A small mat costs £40, and a work of larger size sometimes as much as £400 (Moser, p. 331). The ordinary kinds were made of sheep’s wool and camel’s hair, with a little cotton; the better, wholly of silk. O’Donovan saw one, eight feet square, priced at £50 (p. 308). Carpets of the highest quality are now not procurable. They are cherished as heirlooms, and all are essential parts of a Turkoman maiden’s dowry. Those of the second grade, but coloured with honest native dyes, fetch 13s. a square yard.

608 Marvin, quoting Vambéry and Conolly, mentions more ancient forms of marriage customs—the simulated abduction of the bride and the pursuit of her on horseback. These, however, are obsolete. For a considerable time after the fall of Geok Teppe the price of Tekke spouses sank to a low ebb, owing to the fearful slaughter of eligible males.

609 The Merv oasis is a wedge driven between Persia and Afghanistān. Meshed is only 150 miles from the centre, Herāt about 240; and the Paropamisus range which intervenes was no deterrent in the eyes of Tekke horsemen.

610 According to the agents employed by a London relief committee, a fifth of the population perished (Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 326).

611 Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 321.

612 Astrabad Consular Report for 1879.

613 Provisory Ordinance of the 21st March 1874, quoted by Ney, p. 225.

614 Ney, p. 225.

615 In 1875 a caravan, fitted out by the energetic Colonel Glukhovsky, was destroyed between Krasnovodsk and Khiva. In 1877 the Turkomans looted one proceeding northwards from the Atrak; and a little later they cut up, near Krasnovodsk, some of their brethren who had accepted Russian rule, and intercepted many postal couriers (Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 331).

616 Ney, p. 226. It is now the site of a great railway workshop.

617 In 1878, when Russia was within an ace of going to war with England on the Eastern question, it was arranged that columns from Turkestān and the Caspian should meet at Merv and subdue that almost unknown region; but the Congress of Berlin rendered the measure unnecessary (Ney, p. 227).

618 Geok Teppe, which will for ever be associated with the final struggle for independence, is the name of a district; Dangil Teppe, that of the famous entrenched camp. It was originally that of a mound at the north-western angle.

619 Ney, p. 240.

620 Skobeleff was in politics an Anglophobe, though his relations with our countrymen individually were cordial. There is not an iota of truth in his belief that Lomakin’s failure was due to British intrigue. It is fully accounted for by his incapacity. The result was only what might have been expected. Russian authority in Central Asia was ill cemented, and it needed but the news of a crushing reverse to produce the wildest hopes in the Khānates.

621 He was born in 1841.

622 General Lomakin started from his base with 12,000 camels, and had lost the whole of them by the twentieth day of his march (Ney, p. 315).

623 He wrote from Krasnovodsk in June: “If we wish to recoup our immense expenditure in Asia we must popularise the desert journey between the Caspian and the basin of the Amū Daryā; and, after rendering the steppes safe for transit, we must make a railway to Askabad and on to the Amū Daryā” (Ney, p. 286).

624 Moser, p. 315.

625 According to the official accounts, the artillery taken by the Turkomans included six mountain guns and three mortars, two of which were actually dragged within the entrenchment. General Kurapatkine, however, has stated the number of cannon captured by the Tekkes as fourteen. All of them, save one, were recaptured by the reserves. The fourteenth remained in the enemy’s hands until the final assault, when it was retaken, decked with green boughs, and paraded through the lines, accompanied by music and the frantic cheers of the troops.

626 Skobeleff relates that, during one of his nightly rounds, he heard a private soldier remark to another that the Russians were at a great disadvantage, for they were huddled in the trenches, while the enemy hacked and stabbed them from above. He suggested that the trenches should be left empty, and the troops be posted ten paces to the rear. The hint was acted on with brilliant results, for the Turkomans on the following night sallied out in force and leapt into the trenches, where they were shot and bayoneted with ease (Moser, p. 315).

627 He was much impressed by the punctilio with which the Tekkes had observed an armistice agreed on for the purpose of burying the dead on the 19th January. Skobeleff’s appreciation of the really noble qualities elicited by severe trial is shared by General Kurapatkine, who humorously alludes to Tokma Sardār, the commander of the entrenchment, as mon vainqueur, and styles him un magnifique soldat. An account of a visit paid by this leader to O’Donovan shortly after the siege will be found at p. 274.

628 The Story of Merv, p. 155.

629 The official list admits only 937 casualties during the siege, including 268 killed (Marvin, Merv, p. 401). An iron tablet on a white-washed mound in the little cemetery behind the site of the Russian camp substantiates these figures, but the extent of the three burial-places which lie to the east of the entrenchment, including separate ones for the Cossacks and the Stavropol Regiment, would imply a much greater sacrifice of life. General Kurapatkine states the total casualties to have been 1200, including 400 killed. The Russians in Central Asia have adopted Napoleon’s system of minimising losses.

630 Telegram quoted by Marvin, p. 399.

631 Ney, p. 249.

632 Moser, p. 343.

633 See Moser, p. 344. M. Paul Lessar, who was charged by the Russian authorities with the duty of surveying the debatable land in 1884, was the first to dissipate the “Paropamisus myth,” which made these insignificant hills an impenetrable barrier to the passage of troops.

634 The meaning of Bādghīs is “windy.” It was suggested by the storms which sweep over the plateau in winter.

635 Moser, p. 345.

636 This very distinguished officer had been educated at the Petersburg Military Academy. He had seen much service in the Caucasus, when he had been governor of Southern Dāghistan, and afterwards of Darbend. He had gained eminence in the fields of archaeology and ethnology. As an administrator he was equally successful; and Askabad, the present capital of Transcaspia, owes much to his genius.

637 It was composed of four companies of Transcaspian Chasseurs, three squadrons of Cossacks from the Kuban, one of Turkoman militia, and four guns (Ney, p. 252, note).

638 Four of them now adorn a monument on the Askabad parade-ground commemorating Geok Teppe.

639 The Englishmen were particularly struck by the eagerness shown by their rivals to support the national sports of the nomads, the liberal prizes awarded and the careful observance of ceremony in their official intercourse with Asiatics,—a policy which inspired the latter with a sense of their liberality and power. This is an attitude which would do much to consolidate our own power in India (Report of the Pamirs Boundary Commission).

640 The late Major-General L. M. Annenkoff was then in the prime of life. He had won his spurs as a railway engineer by the rapid construction of a strategic line in Lithuania, and was afterwards appointed chief of the mobilisation department in the Ministry of War. At the outbreak of the Tekke campaign he volunteered for service under General Skobeleff, and was wounded at Geok Teppe. On returning to Russia he was appointed superintendent of transport throughout the empire (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 283).

641 The rails were steel, flat-footed, weighing 68 pounds to the yard, and cost £16 a ton. The sleepers came from the Baltic and Caucasus. The rolling stock consisted of 80 locomotives on the Siegl system, and 1400 cars and waggons. Everything was produced in Russian workshops.

642 They earned rather less than £2 per mensem. They were allowed to work in their own fashion, just as if they were repairing their arīks, or irrigation canals. It is said that in India, when the contractors insisted on the use of wheelbarrows, the native labourers carried the vehicles and their contents on their heads.

643 Ney, p. 321.

644 It cost 6½ d. per cubic yard.

645 The moral effect produced by the spanning of the Amū Daryā was immense and far reaching. General Annenkoff told the members of the St. Petersburg Technical Society that when the first locomotive, draped with the imperial flag, crossed the river, loud cheers echoed from the hosts that lined the banks (Ney, p. 304).

646 It is interesting to compare the cost of the Russian Asiatic railways with that of Indian lines constructed under similar conditions. It averaged £6144 per mile. The report of the Director of Indian Railways for 1872–1873 gives that of the earlier lines as £18,000 to £20,000. It is probable that the cost of the three railway battalions has not been taken into account. But, allowing for that item, we must admit that the Russian railways were far cheaper than our Indian trunk lines.

647 Ney, p. 305.

648 The following statistics for 1897 have been furnished by Colonel Brunelli, the much respected commandant of the railway battalion stationed at Merv:—

649 Phasis, Φᾶσις, a river of Colchis emptying itself into the Euxine. Its banks are clothed with forests whence pheasants were brought to delight Roman epicures (Mart. Ep. xiii. 45, 72).

650 See an interesting paper read before the London Chamber of Commerce in 1866, by Colonel C. Stewart, C. B., H. B. M. Consul-General at Odessa. Sir W. W. Hunter, K.C.S.I., the brilliant historian of India, has also pointed out the striking correspondence between the former paths of trade and those mapped out by Russian engineers. It is, he explains, a question of correspondence rather than identity of work, but the section between the Black Sea and the Caspian follows the ancient ways very closely (History of British India, p. 32).

651 Extensive additions to the station accommodation and rolling stock are contemplated. Estimates have received sanction which place the cost at two millions sterling. The question will shortly be studied by a committee of experts.

652 An officer in command of the post at Kushk told one of the writers that the friendliest relations prevailed between the Russians and Afghans. On one occasion the staff of the Amīr’s Regiment, invited to a banquet by their brethren in arms, arrived in a grande tenue of second-hand railway uniforms. Thus the colonel’s collar exhibited the magic words “Ticket collector,” and a major strutted proudly with a label of “Guard.” The Russians were under the impression that a portion of our ally’s subsidy was taken out in cast-off accoutrements, but the fact is that His Highness, being a prince of frugal mind, is a bidder by proxy at the periodical sales of unserviceable railway stores held in Upper India.

653 M. P. Lessar, who surveyed these hills in 1884–1885, states their height above sea-level as 3140 feet.

654 Colonel Arandarenko, district chief of Merv, states that only two assassinations of Russian officials had occurred during the last thirty years. General Kurapatkine, too, gives numerous instances of kindness and respect shown to disabled Russians by Turkomans (see Appendix II.).

655 Messrs. Nobel have works there which produce a thick ropy petroleum. The out-turn in 1890 was nearly 3000 tons, but had fallen in 1895 to 1300.

656 The movement by rail in 1896 was upwards of 60,000 tons. Transcaspian cotton is rapidly ousting the American product, thanks to protective tariff. It is a remarkable fact that the market price of cotton is higher in Transcaspia than at Manchester.

657 The value of exported carpets and rugs in 1891 was 160,000 roubles. In 1894 it had fallen to 60,000, and is now probably 25,000 only.

658 The official statistics for 1896 give the following percentages:—Persians, 39.2; Armenians, 32.2; Tartars, 11.7; Russians, 6.8; Jews, 5.0; Turkomans, 3; and “others,” 2.1.

659 Mr. E. C. Ringler Thomson, late assistant agent to the Governor-General of India in Khorāsān, who knows General Kurapatkine well, wrote thus of him in the National Review for February 1898: “He is still in the prime of life, not yet fifty years of age, has served from the commencement of his career in Central Asia, has taken a leading part in its conquest, and has made some important contributions towards its literature. He thoroughly knows the various countries, and thoroughly understands the people inhabiting them, and their modes of diplomacy and warfare. He was chief of the Staff to the great Skobeleff during the Russo-Turkish War, and greatly distinguished himself in it. Indeed there is little doubt that some of Skobeleff’s laurels were won by him. Skobeleff was the dashing, impetuous, reckless leader; Kurapatkine the cool, patient, calculating corrective who restrained him. He is a man of indomitable will, of untiring industry, master of his profession as a soldier, a great civil administrator, deliberate of speech, exceedingly gentle and modest in manner, and with a temper always under control. He wears the first class of the Order of Saint George (equivalent to our Victoria Cross), and his courage is of the type which does not comprehend fear. He is the strictest of disciplinarians, but beloved and respected by all, and his own good qualities are perforce in a great measure reflected in those serving under him. He is, indeed, the equal in every respect of any commander we could place in the field to oppose him. General Kurapatkine has brought Transcaspia in all matters, both civil and military, to a high state of perfection. He works from sunrise till late into the night, inquires personally into the minutest details, and finds time to be constantly making long and fatiguing journeys of inspection throughout his extensive command. This man, if he took the field against us, would be hard to beat. He has told me more than once that he has seen too much of war not to hate it, that neither he nor his Government have the least desire to fight us, and to suggest that they wish to invade India is absurd. I believe him. But all the same, he is a Russian of Russians, and, if he thought there was just cause for it, would delight in trying conclusions with us. In diplomacy, of course, General Kurapatkine is a thoroughbred Russian.”

660 Krasnovodsk has two. They are administered by subordinate executive officers called pristavs.

661 The Russian equivalent for mayor.

662 The statistics for 1890–1895 are given below:—

663 Murderers are sometimes sent to serve their term of imprisonment at Chikisliar, a dismal place on the south-eastern Caspian shore, made to enhance the penalty and also to lessen the opportunity for vendetta, to which the Turkomans are greatly given.

664 They numbered, in 1895, 161,618 souls. It is curious to compare these figures with former calculations. Burnes, in 1832, estimated the number of Tekkes as 200,000; Vambéry, in 1863, as 180,000; and Petrusevitch, writing in 1878 on the eve of the Russian conquest, at 240,000. But these figures are mere guesswork. They are based on an average of five persons to each kibitka, or tent, while experience shows that four is nearer the mark (chap. iii. Marvin’s Merv).

665 The families of the operatives of the Kizil Arvat Railway workshops, especially the children, are pallid, anæmic, and a prey to skin diseases.

666 The percentages in 1895 were—in Mangishlāk, 11 per cent.; Krasnovodsk, 11 per cent.; Askabad, 11 per cent.; Tajand, 30 per cent.; and Merv, 85 per cent. It is a remarkable fact that the hospitals and dispensaries maintained so generously by Russia at the administrative centres have conquered the prejudice entertained at first for European treatment. The applicants for medical and surgical relief in 1890 were only 6000. In 1895 the number had risen to 34,950.

667 This would be an object-lesson for the “Conscientious objector,” were it not that fanaticism is impervious to teaching or argument.

668 For the system of irrigation before the Russian conquest, the reader is referred to chap. xviii. of O’Donovan’s Story of Merv, and p. 81 of Marvin’s Merv.

669 Mīrāb, lord of water, an old Persian title.

670 Sū is a Turkish word for water. It is met with in the nomenclature of many streams near Constantinople.

671 A Persian word meaning, primarily, government; secondarily, an estate or property.

672 Marvin’s Merv, p. 263. The date is there given as 1787; as a matter of fact, the invasion of Murād, alias Ma´sūm, commonly styled “Begi Jān,” took place three years earlier.

673 Maktab, an Arabic word meaning school.

674 The income from posts and telegraphs is increasing, though the statistics are still insignificant. It was 82,832 roubles in 1890, and 133,005 roubles in 1895.

675 Three steamer companies ply on the Caspian; the oldest is the “Caucasus Mercury,” and the others are termed the “Caspian” and “Eastern.” The steamers are better suited for goods than passengers.

676 A verbatim reproduction of this remarkable utterance is to be found in the Appendix. General Kurapatkine’s great master, Skobeleff, was equally explicit in a proclamation issued to his troops on the day after his victory at Geok Teppe. “A new era,” he said, “has opened for the Tekkes—an era of equality and of a guaranteed possession of property for all, without distinction. Our Central Asian policy recognises no pariahs. Herein lies our superiority over the English” (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 248).

677 This is a by-product of petroleum distillation, and termed, in Russian, astatki. After the more volatile illuminants have passed over, a residue remains in the shape of a ropy greenish-brown fluid, which in former days was considered valueless. It is now rapidly superseding coal as a steam raiser, and the recent rise in the market price of crude petroleum is in great measure due to the constantly extending use of astatki on steamers and railways.

678 This ancient piece, a prize taken from the cowardly Persians, very nearly cost Skobeleff his life. Moser relates that the general, while reconnoitring the defences, became a mark for a brisk fusilade which wounded several of his staff. He was implored not to expose himself unnecessarily; but his only reply was to call for a chair and a glass of tea. There he sat indulging calmly in a cigarette while the bullets whistled round him. When, however, the cannon spoke, and its projectile plunged deeply into the soil close to his chair, Skobeleff adopted the “best part of valour.” He rose, saluted the Tekke gunners, and walked slowly back to his quarters (A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 315).

679 This little ceremony is of ancient date in the Russian army. There is no hard-and-fast rule as to the wording of the general’s greeting. In some favoured corps, such as the Nijni Dragoons, etiquette ordains that it shall be followed by the name of the regiment.

680 The Story of Merv, p. 194.

681 The Central Asian tiger has a shaggier coat than his Bengal relative, and his disposition is less truculent. He never molests human beings or shows fight unless attacked. About a year ago one strayed during the noonday heat into a kibitka near the Sir Daryā, pushed aside the occupant, a woman who was spinning at the door, and coiled himself up in a dark corner for a nap. Alas for outraged hospitality! Information was given at the nearest post, and a party of riflemen soon arrived and did the poor beast to death.

682 Three have been identified—Giaur Kal`a, Sultan Sanjar, and Bahrām `Alī. Some entrenchments are fabled to represent a fourth, older than the rest, built by Alexander the Great. But, as is well known, Iskandar Zū-l-Karnayn, “Alexander the Two-horned,” shares with Tīmūr and the Amīr `Abdullah the credit of having built nearly everything worth seeing in Central Asia.

683 Moore’s Veiled Prophet of Khorasan.

684 A description of the difficulties encountered has already been given.

685 Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 18; Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 8th June 1840.

686 “Mémoire sur l’ancien cours de l’Oxus,” par M. Jaubert, Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Dec. 1833.

687 Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 300.

688 The Zarafshān, called by the ancients Polytimætus, takes its rise in a tremendous glacier of the Kharlatau Mountains, 270 miles due east of Samarkand. Its upper reaches are little but a succession of cataracts, and it is too rapid and shallow for navigation. The average width is 210 feet. More than 100 canals are supplied by this source of Bokhārā’s prosperity, some of which are 140 feet broad. The capital is watered by one of them, called the Shari Rūd, which is 35 feet wide, and supplies innumerable smaller distributories (Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 39; Meyendorff’s Bokhara (Paris, 1820), p. 148).

689 Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 120.

690 Khanikoff, p. 188.

691 Throughout Central Asia the unit of surface measure is the tanap, which is equivalent to 44,100 square feet. This pest is termed reh in India, and is fought in a very half-hearted way by the ryots.

692 Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 9. This author, who wrote in 1845, gives as the average price of good land a sum equivalent to £20 of our currency (p. 154). Forty years later the Russians paid £16 per acre for land required for their railway (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 311).

693 According to Wolff, it numbered 180,000 in 1843 (Bokhara, p. 163).

694 They are named Imām, Samarkand, Mazār, Kārshi, Salahkhānā, Namāziyya, Shaykh Jalāl, Kārākul, Shīr-Gīrān, Talipash, and Oghlān.

695 For the ethnology of Bokhārā the reader should consult Meyendorff, p. 189; Khanikoff, chaps. vii., viii., and ix.; and Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 68.

696 The etymology of Bokhārā is also a moot point. There can be little doubt, however, that the word is derived from the Sanskrit vihára, or hermit-cell, which was adopted by the Buddhists and became búhára in Mongolian. The city clustered round the retreat of an early ascetic.

697 Ujfalvy states that the Tājiks of the plains, as distinguished from their brethren of the hills, and the branch called Galchas inhabiting the Pamirs, have a triple origin. They are (a) descendants from the Iranian aborigines of Bactriana and Soghdiana, who remained in the level country throughout the successive invasions of Turko-Tartars, Mongols, and Arabs; they accepted the domination of each new-comer, and were compelled to give their daughters in marriage to the conquerors; (b) immigrants who from time to time arrived in Bokhārā from Khorāsān; (c) mixed alliances between the wealthier inhabitants of the Khānate and Persian slaves brought thither during many centuries by Turkoman freebooters. This author adds that many Tājiks show signs of Arab blood in their aquiline noses and brilliant eyes (Les Aryens, Paris, 1896).

698 An Uzbeg proverb has it: “When a Tājik tells the truth he has a fit of colic!”

699 The Kirghiz style themselves Kazāk, “warriors.” They roam over the Khānates, and love to shelter themselves from the icy blasts in the long reeds lining the banks of the Sir Daryā. They are cruel, treacherous, and given to rapine. Government is exercised by hereditary Khāns, but the personal equation is everything, and the Khān who derogates is lost. Fighting men are called Bahādurs; the relatives of the tribal Khān, Sultāns.

700 A native chronicle called “Nassed Nameti Uzbekia,” giving a catalogue of these clans, is quoted by Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 74.

701 Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 163. The doctor states that their synagogue possesses an ancient version of the Prophet Daniel, giving the variant “2400” in the place of “2300” in chap. viii. ver. 14.

702 As is well known, the Mohammedans everywhere are ranged into two sections. The Sunnis are the orthodox, and owe their name to their adhesion to the traditionary teaching, Sunna, of the Prophet. The Shī`as reject it; and are also champions of the claim to succeed Mohammed of `Alī, his cousin and son-in-law, and of his sons in their turn, Hasan and Husayn. With the exception of the Persians, who are Shī`as, almost the whole of the Mohammedan world is Sunni. The two sects hate each other with the true odium theologium.

703 These unhappy victims were British officers sent to Bokhārā on diplomatic service. After a long imprisonment they were cruelly beheaded by order of the Amīr Nasrullah in 1843. See Wolff’s Bokhara, passim.

704 This neglect of one of the chief duties of government—the protection of its subjects abroad—is universal in Central Asia. We have no consul farther east than Baku. The Russians excuse their persistent refusal to grant an exequatur to a consul at Tiflis by the allegation that we would not permit them to establish such agencies on our Indian frontiers.