The ignominious campaign of 1861 was the last organised effort put forward by Persia to protect her northern provinces. Secure in a splendid strategic position,609 the Tekkes extended their devastations far and wide. When, in 1871, a fearful famine610 more than decimated the population of Khorasan, bands of Tekke horsemen took advantage of their neighbours’ weakness to sweep the entire province with their marauding parties. It would have been an easy task to check the aggression which depopulated the richest province of Persia and caused incredible misery to the people. But so utterly corrupt was the administration of the Shah that the governing class found its account in encouraging the perpetrators. Troops were paid for by Government which existed only on paper, and the local authorities shared in the Tekkes’ booty. The first effectual blow struck at this gigantic machinery for plunder and oppression was the direct result of the Khivan campaign of 1873. General Kauffman had encountered some opposition from the Yomud Turkomans who ranged the desert of Khiva, and he was not a man to tolerate half-measures. He waged a war of extermination against this once powerful tribe, and the ruthless cruelty that attended it struck terror throughout the southern steppes. The Gokhlan Turkomans, inhabiting the estuary of the Atrak and the rich valleys behind it, had been brought to heel by an energetic governor of the Persian province of Bajnard in 1869,611 and their piracies on the Caspian had been put down with a strong hand by the Russian naval authorities.612 With the pacification of Khiva, too, came the formation, in 1874, of a Transcaspian military district, subordinate to the Caucasus,613 which was placed under the governorship of Major-General Lomakin. On the north-west the Tekkes saw an iron wall arise which checked their aggressions and was a standing menace to their independence. Nor were the prospects in the west of their habitat more encouraging. The Russian treaties with Khiva and Bokhara forbade slavery, and closed the principal markets for the captives of their bow and spear. In 1877 the Tekkes turned to Persia, and made her an offer of their allegiance in return for support against the white man’s encroachments. This contingency was not to be regarded with equanimity by the Russians, for they rightly considered the Turkomans as within the sphere of influence of the Transcaspian district.614 Nor were commercial considerations wanting. Russia was by this time the virtual mistress of the Khanates, and was directly interested in the development of their trade; but caravans were unable to cross the Turkoman Desert while the nomads remained untamed, and were driven to take circuitous routes in order to reach the commercial centre of Orenburg.615 And the authorities in St. Petersburg were still dominated by the schemes first promulgated by Peter the Great for diverting the course of the Oxus into the Caspian, and regarded the Turkoman Desert as a potential breeding-ground for cattle which would supply the home markets with hides. The Tsar Alexander II. was thus led, much against his wish, to permit his lieutenants to adopt a forward policy against the one obstacle to the Russification of Central Asia. In the spring of 1877 General Lomakin received orders to occupy the Tekke fortress of Kizil Arvat,616 200 miles east of Krasnovodsk. He set out on the 12th of April with 9 companies of infantry, 2 squadrons of Cossacks, and 8 guns, and soon came to blows with the Tekkes. His artillery and arms of precision struck terror into their hearts. They dispersed and afterwards sent delegates from every village of the Akkal oasis to offer submission; but Lomakin did not wait to receive it. Seized with a sudden panic, he retreated on the 9th of June. Then came the Russo-Turkish War, and the Tsar had more than enough to occupy his attention nearer home. The Turkomans were left unmolested for a while,617 but hardly had peace been restored ere measures were concerted against the tribesmen. In April of that year General Lazareff advanced with an expeditionary force from Chikisliar, near the mouth of the Atrak, and on his death, which took place at Chat, higher up that river, command was assumed by General Lomakin. The Kopet Dagh Mountains were crossed by the Bendesen Pass; and on 9th September an attack was delivered on the Turkomans’ entrenched camp at Dangil Teppe,618 which contained 15,000 Tekke warriors, with 5000 women and children. The kibitkas, crowded within its clay ramparts, were raked by artillery fire, and the fugitives were driven back into this hell on earth by Russian cavalry. On 9th September an attempt was made to storm the stronghold, but, maddened by their losses, and inspired by their women to resist, the Tekkes fought like demons. Lomakin was defeated with a loss of 450 killed and wounded, and retreated on Chikisliar with the remains of his shattered force. The news of his reverse was carried at lightning speed through the length and breadth of Central Asia. Turkoman bands made their appearance on the Amu Darya, proclaiming the victory with all the hyperbole which is a special gift of Asiatics. They even presented the Khan of Khiva with Russian rifles and revolvers abandoned during the abortive siege of Dangil Teppe, alleging that the spoils of war were so abundant that they had no use for them.619 Their raids were carried on with greater activity than ever. At the commencement of 1880 a horde 3000 strong swept the banks of the Amu Darya in Bokharan territory and plundered some villages close to the fortress of Charjuy. The shock to Russian prestige can be compared only to that suffered by ourselves when the news of the Mirat rising in 1857 was flashed by telegraph over India. Even the dauntless Skobeleff began to despair of the destinies of his country. “If we consider our position during the last six years,” he wrote to St. Petersburg, “we cannot avoid regarding the abyss which opens before us with terror, for it may well disorganise the economic and political condition of the empire. The English620 have succeeded in convincing Asiatics that they have forced us to stop before Constantinople and abandon the Balkan peninsula. Thanks to their agents’ zeal, a version of the Treaty of Berlin, very disadvantageous to ourselves, has been spread throughout Asia. Great God, what sacrifices of blood and honour will this peace, so painful to Russian hearts, entail!” To this illustrious soldier the Tsar turned in his perplexity. A better choice could not have been made. Michael Dmitriavitch Skobeleff was, at this epoch, in the prime of life,621 and at the zenith of his preternatural activity. His military career had begun at the age of twenty, and, two years later, he won his spurs during the Polish Rebellion. Between 1871–1875 he was in the thick of Central Asian affairs, one of the leaders against Khiva, and the conqueror of Kokand. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 found employment for him nearer home. He commanded the left wing at the storming of Plevna, and afterwards took Adrianople; but experience and military genius are of small avail without that magnetic personal attraction which is inborn only in the greatest leaders. Skobeleff possessed this heaven-sent gift. “He was the God of War personified,” said his trusted lieutenant, General Kurapatkine; and his troops loved him with a passionate ardour which no general has inspired since the days of Napoleon. A conference took place in January 1880 between the Tsar Alexander II. and his brilliant subject, followed by others at the Ministry of War presided over by General Miliutine. The ways and means were fully discussed. It became clear that the failure of 1879 was due to defective transport. The camels on which General Lomakin relied perished by thousands in the desert, and he found himself, at a critical moment, without the means of continuing the siege of Geok Teppe.622 By one of those happy inspirations which flash on the brain of men of genius, Skobeleff was led to invoke the aid of steam. He knew that the desert was a dead level, without rivers to bridge, and that a scarcity of water was the only difficulty before his engineers. Nay, his eagle eye ranged far beyond the needs of the moment, and clearly foresaw the advantages which would flow from a railway connecting the Caspian and the Amu Darya.623 A special railway battalion was formed, and materials for a portable line on the Decauville system were brought to Uzun Ada, the base on the Gulf of Michaelovsk. Before the close of 1880 the section between that post and Mulla Kari, a distance of thirteen miles, was completed. The control of the expedition was vested in the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus, but a free hand was practically given to Skobeleff, who was named “Temporary Commander of Troops operating in Transcaspia.” He obtained full powers to prepare and execute military operations, to negotiate with the neighbouring native states, and to organise the administration of conquered territories. Skobeleff knew that Orientals attach an exaggerated importance to artillery. “To conquer,” he said, “is to astonish.” Nothing has so marked an effect in Asia as the thunder of great guns and the havoc wrought by shell-fire. He stipulated for ten pieces of artillery for every 10,000 of numerical strength. Lomakin’s abortive attack on Dangil Teppe had demonstrated the power possessed by dense masses of felt-covered kibitkas to resist artillery fire. Skobeleff asked for and obtained a large supply of shells charged with petroleum, which masters the least inflammable materials. Lastly, a plentiful supply of water is essential in a tract where the heavens are clear for many consecutive months. A complete distillery was established at Krasnovodsk, and it supplied no less than 750,000 gallons daily to the troops. But the personal equation overrides the most complete material equipment. “In war,” said Napoleon, “men are nothing; a man is everything.” The general bethought him of one who had been the chief of his staff in the recent struggle with Turkey, and had shown in the darkest days of Plevna the noblest form of courage—that which stands undismayed in the presence of disaster. This was Colonel Alexis Kurapatkine, who is now Minister of War at St. Petersburg. He was resting at Samarkand from the fatigues of a recent campaign in Kulja, on the Chinese frontier, but he hastened to obey his loved master’s call. Starting from Samarkand in November 1880, with a detachment 500 strong, he hurried through Bokhara to Charjuy, barely three days’ ride from the Tekke lair at Merv; then, fetching a long dÉtour by way of Khiva to avoid the Tekke bands with which the desert swarmed, he joined headquarters on 24th December. Well might Skobeleff say of him, “Kurapatkine is the only man capable of performing so dangerous a mission.” The general’s staff was strengthened by other great authorities in Central Asian warfare—Petrusevitch, unrivalled for his knowledge of the Turkomans; Grodekoff, and Leokovitch, professor at the War Academy. Meantime Skobeleff had reached Chikisliar in May, and after a general survey of the situation had pushed forward to Bami, a Turkoman post at the entrance of the Akkal oasis, which commands the route by way of Chikisliar and Krasnovodsk, and is only seventy miles from the capital, Geok Teppe. He occupied this stronghold on the 10th of June, and on the 13th of the following month advanced at the head of 1000 men to reconnoitre the enemy’s central settlement. Arriving on the fourth day at Egman Batir, a Tekke village six miles from Geok Teppe, he formed an entrenched camp there and sallied forth to inspect the Tekkes’ position. He found them crowded into three camps, surrounded by clay ramparts. The fort at the base of the hills was known as Yangi Kal`a; the second, or central position, Dangil Teppe, from a mound at the north-western corner; the third was an insignificant collection of huts, called Geok Teppe, which, by a process akin to that which has produced the nomenclature of Arbela and Waterloo, has given its name to the scene of the last great battle of Central Asia. Having ascertained that the hornets’ nest could be taken only after a regular siege, Skobeleff’s little band returned to Bami, which had been christened Fort Samursk. He was harassed during retirement by clouds of Turkomans, whose activity in checking the arrival of supplies extended far into the rear of the Russian advanced base at Kizil Arvat. The ensuing months were occupied in active preparation for the siege. A force of 12,000 men and 100 guns had been summoned from the Caucasus, and the Russians were engaged in completing the railway and providing the vast mass of stores needed for a march through 300 miles of desert. In the beginning of December 1880 all preparations were completed, and Skobeleff advanced in force, occupying all the Tekke settlements in succession between Bami and Egman Batir, or Samursk. He arrived at this point of vantage on the 16th December. A reconnaissance made on the following day showed the majority of the foe massed in Dangil Teppe, the central encampment, an irregular parallelogram with an area of a square mile. It was surrounded by a mud wall with a profile 18 feet thick, and 10 feet high on the interior side, the exterior varying with the soil, but averaging, perhaps, 15 feet; a ditch which could not have been more than 4 feet deep. At the north-west corner was the mound from which the fortress derived its name, on which was planted the only piece of artillery possessed by the Turkomans—an antiquated smooth-bore captured from the Persians. The 30,000 Tekkes massed within these rude entrenchments obtained water from a stream which flowed through the place. This the Russians intentionally refrained from diverting, lest the quarry should desert its lair under cover of the night. No forward movement was made for more than a week. The interval was probably spent in forming depÔts for supplies; but it is, perhaps, more than a coincidence that the next movement took place on the 24th December—the day of Kurapatkine’s arrival from Samarkand. It was a reconnaissance in force, which encountered a huge mob of Turkomans, and was hard pressed until the arrival of reinforcements. A further delay of eight days followed, and then, on 1st January 1881, a fierce attack was delivered on Yangi Kal`a, the encampment at the foot of the cliffs, by 8000 troops in three columns, with 52 pieces of cannon and 11 Hotchkiss machine guns. The southern column, commanded by General Kurapatkine, forced the entrenchment in the rear, and compelled the Tekkes to evacuate Yangi Kal`a under a terrific artillery fire and join the main body at Dangil Teppe. Twice did the garrison sally forth to their countrymen’s help, and when night fell they made a determined attempt to recapture Yangi Kal`a, but on each occasion they were driven back by the Russian artillery. On the 3rd January the Russians removed their camp from Samursk to that abandoned by the foe at Yangi Kal`a, and the following day saw the first parallel laid against Dangil Teppe, at a distance of 800 yards south of the fortress. This movement provoked a sortie of the garrison, who had been reinforced by 5000 warriors from Merv. They fell with fury on the besiegers, and, seizing their rifles with one hand, hacked them with their razor-like blades, covering the soil in places with heads and limbs. Nothing can be conceived more terrible than their death-struggle at close quarters, from which arose the clash of steel, shrieks, oaths, and shouts of “Allah,” or “Hurrah.”624

On the Russian left flank more than 300 dead bodies remained as witnesses of the Tekkes’ heroic but useless courage. This encounter cost the besiegers one of their best and most valiant officers, Colonel Petrusevitch, to whom we are indebted for most of our knowledge of Turkomania at the eve of its conquest. The second parallel was laid on the 4th January, and five days later another determined sortie was made by the beleaguered Tekkes. At dusk they poured into the second parallel, which was held by 2600 men, and took possession of the outworks and trenches, destroying the artillerymen and capturing four mountain guns and three regimental standards. But the reserves were hurried up from the camp at Yangi Kal`a, and after a fearful struggle the trenches were reoccupied, and all but one of the lost guns were regained. On the 10th of January the Tekke outposts were seized after severe fighting; but at half-past eight the besieged made a third sortie. They stormed a redoubt on the left flank, cut to pieces the artillerymen and a company of Transcaspian rifles who defended it, and dragged the two cannon which it contained towards the trenches. The Russian reserves again deprived them of the fruit of victory; for one mountain gun only, rendered useless by the removal of the breech-piece, was carried off by the Tekkes.625 The time chosen by the besieged for these very effective operations was always the dark hour between sunset and the rise of the young moon. They inspired such terror that it was difficult to induce the young soldiers to await the Tekkes’ onslaught. The night of the 16th January was marked by the last of these mighty encounters, but experience had taught the Russians many a bitter lesson, and their tactics rendered the heroic bravery of their opponents useless.626 On the 16th the sap had been pushed within twenty-four yards of the east side of the entrenchments. Breaching began on the 20th; and while a heavy fire was concentrated on a spot near the south-eastern angle, a perfect hail of petroleum shells was thrown on the dense mass of kibitkas packed into the Tekke enclosure. Fearful must have been the sufferings of the 7000 women and children who had sought refuge there. Every part of the works was searched by the fragments of shell and streams of unextinguishable flame. The traveller who visits the scene of this battle of the giants is filled with wonder that an undisciplined mob should have held out for three weeks with defences so paltry. Their stubbornness inspired respect in Skobeleff himself, who was as ready as all really brave men are to render justice to a gallant foe. In a proclamation addressed to his troops on the eve of the final assault, he told them that they were face to face with a people “full of courage and honour.”627 But the end was drawing near. Not only was the breach reported to be practicable on the 23rd, but a mine had been driven under the eastern face about one hundred yards from the angle, which was charged with dynamite by a party of volunteers after nightfall. At seven on the morning of the 24th of January 1881 four columns formed for the assault, commanded respectively by General Skobeleff in person, and by Colonels Kozelkoff, Kurapatkine, and Gaidaroff. The signal was given by a vast column of smoke attended by a dull roar which rose from the eastern front. It proclaimed the explosion of the mine, which levelled 300 feet of the rampart, and overwhelmed several hundreds of the defenders. Instantly the force under Gaidaroff sprang forward and escaladed the parapet on the south-western angle. This was intended to be a feigned attack, but it soon developed into a serious one. Pushing northwards, Gaidaroff captured the mound which commanded the camp, and thus convinced the defenders of the impossibility of further resistance. In the meantime the other columns had swarmed through the breaches caused by the mine and the artillery fire, and climbed the parapet on the southern side between the two. The hand-to-hand encounter was brief, for the position was clearly untenable. O’Donovan, who watched the attack from a spur of the Kopet Dagh twelve miles off, saw a cloud of horsemen issuing in disorder from the northern side, followed by a confused mass of fugitives.628 The Russian flag waved on the mound which gave Dangil Teppe its name. It was planted at a cost to the assailants of 1200 men629 killed and wounded, out of a total engaged of 8000. That undergone by the garrison will never be accurately known. Four thousand bodies were found in the enclosure, and Skobeleff admitted that a flying column pursued and hacked the fugitives for ten miles.630 General Kurapatkine estimates that the enemy lost 9000 out of a total of 30,000. He strenuously denies the oft-repeated allegation that Tekke women and children were intentionally slaughtered. The Russians, he states, did not wilfully kill a single non-combatant, though, of course, many must have perished from the hail of petroleum shells which were poured for three weeks into the doomed enclosure. So anxious, he affirms, were his countrymen to avoid shedding innocent blood, that on the eve of the assault the garrison were formally summoned to send their families to a distance. The Turkomans’ reply was characteristic: “If you want our wives and children,” they said, “you must step over our corpses to seize them.” Fireside theorists are apt to reprobate the bloodshed of Geok Teppe and the slaughter of the wounded foe at Omdurman as unworthy of civilisation. A superficial acquaintance with the Asiatic character would convince them that an extreme application of the Virgilian debellare superbos is the least cruel policy which can be adopted in dealing with the forces of savagery and fanaticism. Geok Teppe was the last stronghold of Central Asian independence, and its capture must rank among the decisive battles of the world. While civilisation gained by the Russian victory, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to those who were crushed by its giant forces. With the conquest of Turkomania a national entity disappeared for ever which had been preserved intact during ages of change and retained many noble qualities. The world is the poorer by the disappearance of such types, and by the gradual reduction of all mankind to a dead level devoid of colour and charm. The news was received with dismay by the population of the Khanates, who still cherished hopes of regaining independence. Geok Teppe inspired the most bigoted of Russia’s foes with a conviction of the hopelessness of battling against the decree of fate; and to the lesson thus learnt is due the unbroken tranquillity which reigned for eighteen years in Central Asia. The Shah of Persia hailed the extirpation of the hornets’ nest with joy. He saw his northern provinces delivered from a terrible scourge, and peace restored to a rich territory which the corruption and incapacity of his own government was unable to protect. Thus he at once acceded to a suggestion made by the Russian ambassador, M. Zinovieff, that the left bank of the Atrak, which had been virtually annexed, should be ceded to Persia in return for the abandonment of her rather shadowy rights as suzerain over the Merv oasis, and for authority to push the Transcaspian Railway through territory which was still nominally subject to her sway.631 The absorption by Russia of the whole area inhabited by the conquered race was but a matter of time. The Akkal oasis was hers by right of conquest, and it remained to add that of Merv to the long list of her conquests. The way was paved for this measure by diplomacy, the agent being an astute Mohammedan named Alikhanoff.632 He was a native of Daghistan in the Caucasus, and had won the rank of colonel by gallantry in the field. Alikhanoff found a potent ally in the person of the once beautiful Gul Jamal, widow of the last great chieftain, Nur Verdi Khan, who enjoyed universal respect, due alike to her own force of character and the memory of her husband’s exploits. Her persuasion was seconded by a military demonstration which took place on December 1883, under Colonel Masloff; and, on the 31st January 1884, 124 delegates from the various settlements of the Merv oasis, headed by the four tribal chiefs, met at Askabad, which had been recently created the headquarters of the Transcaspian military district. Here they solemnly swore fidelity to the Tsar in the presence of the governor-general, Komaroff. A recrudescence of the old lawless spirit followed, which was prompted by an Afghan adventurer, but it was stifled on the 3rd of March by military force. In the following May, Prince Dondukoff-Korsakoff, governor-general of the Caucasus, paid a formal visit to the latest and not the least valuable trophy of Russian diplomacy, and was able to report to his imperial master that the inhabitants of the oasis had willingly acknowledged his sway. Soon afterwards the Sarik tribe, numbering 65,000, who inhabited the Yolatan oasis thirty-six miles south of Merv, tendered their submission, and that of the tribes between Giaour and Sarakhs followed.

The tract over which Russia had gained mastery was a parallelogram lying between the Oxus and the Hari Rud, which washes the walls of Herat, and in Turkomania is known as the Tajand. The western boundary marched with that of Persia, and at its northern extremity was defined by Old Sarakhs, a Turkoman village perched on an elevation which commanded a once thickly peopled country extending northwards to Merv. Old Sarakhs was easily accessible by wheeled traffic from Puli Khatan, a village on the left bank of the Hari Rud, thirty-three miles from the Zu-l-Fikar Pass, through which the Tekke hordes had often poured into Khorasan. To the east of this defile lay the Paropamisus range, a double spur of the Kuh-i-Baba Mountains, which consists of low rolling hills covered with asafoetida and thistles.633 The northern flank of the Paropamisus gives rise to the Murghab, which fertilises Merv, and its confluent the river Kushk. The country between these streams and the Hari Rud was known as the Badghis,634 and is described by Lessar as presenting the appearance of a stormy sea suddenly reduced to solidity. In 1884 it had been ruined by Tekke incursions. A few thousand Jamshidis still clung to the rich valley of the Kushk, where they had been planted by Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century as a bulwark against Turkoman aggression, and are described as a peaceable nomad race famed for their breed of horses.635 On the north-west of this forlorn tract stood Bala Murghab, an Afghan fortress commanding the road to Maymena; and thirty-five miles farther north the village of Panjdih towered above an oasis with an area of 170 square miles, peopled by the Sarik Turkomans. Afghanistan lay to the south of the debatable land. Its natural boundary was defined by the Paropamisus, and only eighty miles beyond them lay Herat. This city had played a great part in history. It was regarded as the key to Afghanistan; the only serious obstacle to a successful invasion of India from the north-west; and its citadel had been fortified in 1838 under the supervision of British officers. Nor was the importance of Herat confined to its strategic position. It was the emporium of Central Asian trade, and the centre of a well-watered and fertile country. Thus the value to Russia of her latest acquisition was immense. In Merv she possessed a region which had been once the most fertile on the world’s surface, and needed but settled government to resume its ancient importance. The ill-defined area which she claimed to the south of the Merv oasis commanded the richest province of Persia and the north of Afghanistan. It was inevitable that the news of its impending appropriation should excite a storm of indignation in England, where every step of the Russian advance was watched with the keenest suspicion. An attempt to propitiate public feeling had been made as far back as 1882, when Russia proposed a joint commission to demarcate the northern boundary of Afghanistan, and at that time she would doubtless have accepted a line drawn from Khwaja Salih on the Oxus to Sarakhs. But the Government then in power was not inclined to raise so delicate a question, and it was not until June 1884, when the situation had been radically modified by the conquest of Turkomania, that the proposal found acceptance. A joint commission was appointed in July, charged with the duty of laying down the disputed boundary. It was headed on the British side by General Sir Peter Lumsden, who had won distinction in India; while General Zelenoi was directed to watch over the interests of Russia. Sir Peter traversed Afghanistan, with the Amir `Abd er-Rahman’s permission, escorted by a little army of 500 strong with twice as many camp followers. This demonstration, for such it was, excited the suspicion of Lieutenant-General Komaroff,636 the military governor of Transcaspia, and General Zelenoi was directed to return to Tiflis. In the meantime the explorations of Lessar in the valleys of the Murghab and Kushk had led Russia to modify her claims. It was contended at the conference which followed that she should be allotted an ethnological frontier, based on the submission rendered by the Sariks inhabiting the Panjdih oasis. The British representative, on the other hand, declined to recognise any other boundary than one based on natural conditions which excluded from Russian sway all territory south of an imaginary line drawn from Old Sarakhs to Khwaja Salih on the Oxus. The Gordian knot was cut by the Afghans, who, encouraged by the presence on the Murghab of the small British force attending Sir Peter Lumsden, moved northwards and occupied Bala Murghab and the disputed oasis of Panjdih. This aggression elicited warm protests from Russia; and, according to her wont, she brought material force to the aid of diplomacy. General Komaroff occupied Pul-i-Khatun, the Zu-l-Fikar Pass, and Ak Rabat; and, on February 1885, he took possession of Pul-i-Kishti, at the edge of the Panjdih oasis. The alarm excited in England was intense. Engineers were despatched to place the fortifications of Herat in a state of defence; arms and ammunition were poured into Afghan arsenals, and troops were massed under General (afterwards Lord) Roberts on the north-western boundary of India. The match was laid to the train by Lieutenant-General Komaroff. On the 30th of March 1885 his little force of 1200 men all told637 attacked and routed an Afghan mob 46,000 strong with six guns, which latter fell into Komaroff’s hands.638 The discomfited Afghans at once retired to Meruchak, at the eastern extremity of the oasis. The skirmish, for such it was, aroused a storm in England, and war was considered inevitable. Parliament voted unanimously a credit of £11,000,000 sterling for military preparations; while Russia called into existence a Volunteer Fleet, with the object of preying upon our commerce. Happily for the tranquillity of Asia, the two greatest Powers were led to pause ere they appealed to the awful arbitration of arms. General Lumsden and his ablest coadjutor, Captain Yates, used their influence with the Afghans to prevent a recurrence of the untoward accident of the 30th of May; while the tact of the latter prompted him to open overtures which were completely successful. Diplomacy, thus assisted, won a peaceful triumph, and a basis for the demarcation of the frontier was agreed upon. The process was completed at the close of 1886, and in the April of the following year the British and Russian representatives met at St. Petersburg. The outcome of their deliberation was, on the whole, favourable to Russia. She obtained the right bank of the Hari Rud as far as the Zu-l-Fikar Pass, and the valleys of the Badghis south of and including the Panjdih oasis.

The southern boundary of her Asiatic possessions has advanced to a point within fifty-three miles of Herat as the crow flies, and separated by no natural obstacle of importance from that great commercial and strategic centre. On the other hand, the Amir of Bokhara surrendered to the Afghans the rich pastures on the left bank of the Amu Darya south of Khwaja Salih. Russia has loyally accepted the work performed by the Boundary Commission, and has concentrated her energies during the eleven years which have intervened in developing the commerce and improving the administration of the rich possessions thus added to her empire.

The successful issue of this enterprise led, in 1895, to the appointment of a mixed commission to demarcate the spheres of English and Russian influence on the Pamirs. The boundaries of the three Asiatic empires meet in those stupendous hills, but their difficulty of access had hitherto precluded any attempt to lay them down authoritatively. The English representatives, under the direction of Sir M.G. Gerard, K.C.S.I., left India on the 30th June; and, a month later, they met their Russian colleagues on the shore of Lake Victoria, a wild mountain tarn which gives birth to the Oxus. No time was lost in tracing the boundary prescribed in an agreement entered into between the two Powers. Starting from the eastern side of the lake, it follows the crest of the Sarikol range until the Chinese frontier is reached. “From the sixth mile,” wrote Sir T. Holdich, K.C.I.E., the chief survey officer, “a rugged and inaccessible spur of the Sarikol range carried the boundary into regions of perpetual ice and snow to its junction with the main range. Here, amidst a solitary wilderness, 20,000 feet above sea-level, absolutely inaccessible to man, and within the ken of no living creature except the Pamir eagles, the three great empires actually meet. No more fitting tri-junction could possibly have been found.”

The cordiality which marked the relations between the subjects of Queen and Tsar was even more marked than on the earlier occasion. On their arrival at the scene of action the travel-worn Britons were hospitably received in the Russian camp, and a feeling of good-fellowship was then and there engendered which never afterwards grew cold. The scanty leisure left the commissioners by their duty of traversing ninety miles of the most difficult country in the world was devoted to races and shooting-matches.

The Kirghiz of the Russian escort astonished our countrymen by their prowess at ulak, a struggle on horseback for a goat, similar to the Bokharan game of baigha. The Cossacks, too, displayed their wondrous equestrian skill. August 3rd, the name-day of the Dowager-Empress of Russia, was the occasion of an outdoor service, and the sweet plaintive melody of the anthems of the Greek Church never sounded so impressively as it did on those remote mountain heights.639 Every lover of his country will re-echo the hope expressed by the Russian commissioner at a farewell banquet given to his colleagues on 11th September 1895, that “the agreement just concluded would be the beginning of more cordial relations between the two countries, and of a better understanding of their national aims and desires.”