The conception of a railway between the Caspian and the heart of Asia took shape, as we have seen, during the campaign of Geok Teppe, when a little portable line between the base and a point thirteen miles inland was of good service to the transport. The new railway battalion redoubled its efforts after the fall of the Tekke stronghold, and before the close of 1885 the line had been carried as far inland as the large Turkoman village of Kizil Arvat, 135 miles from the Caspian. A mighty impulse was given to schemes for railway extension by the cession of the Merv oasis in 1884. The entire area between the Caspian and the Amu Darya was now in Russian hands, and there were no political and few natural obstacles to delay the construction of a railway which should connect the great arteries of traffic. But the advisers of the Tsar were by no means unanimous in approving of the enterprise. A strong party favoured the canalisation of the Amu Darya, and an attempt to divert its stream to its ancient channel, which entered the Caspian at Krasnovodsk. Another faction pointed to the vast results achieved in India by the network of railways, which enables a European military force barely 60,000 strong to dominate 250,000,000 Asiatics; and urged the necessity of providing the means of rapid transport of troops and material between the Caucasus and the new strategic bases. Foremost among the latter was General Annenkoff, who enjoyed great influence at St. Petersburg, due less to family connections than to his experience in the construction of railway lines.640 His opinion was reinforced by events in the Merv oasis, for the collision with Afghanistan in 1884 convinced the stubbornest advocates for water-carriage that a post of vital importance could not be held without the assistance of a railway. In April 1885 an imperial ukase directed the construction of a line on the standard gauge between the Caspian and the new territories, and charged its designer with the duty of carrying it into execution and studying the question of extensions. General Annenkoff’s first care was to devise a system calculated to economise time and transport, and peculiarly adapted to countries which present few obstacles to the engineer. A temporary line was to be laid with the utmost speed, over which the materials and labour for completing the task might be conveyed at leisure. The accommodation of the personnel was of equal importance. The supervising staff consisted of three engineers-in-chief and an army of subordinates, military and civil, selected for their exceptional ability and vigour. Under their orders were two battalions of railway operatives on a strictly military basis. The second of these was recruited at Moscow by the general himself; and both corps showed a devotion to their arduous duties which it would be difficult to parallel. The scarcity of water in the desert precluded the possibility of forming camps at intervals or working in sections. By a brilliant intuition Annenkoff conceived the idea of a camp on wheels, which would move onwards as the work progressed, and be furnished with provisions and material by construction trains. It contained everything needful for comfort and efficiency. There were carriages for the office staff; dormitories and restaurants in two-storeyed cars, a telegraph carriage, and a saloon for the director, resembling the cabin on a man-of-war in the compactness and modest luxury of its fittings. Each vehicle communicated with the others by means of covered passages; and due attention was paid to ventilation and warming. Work began on the 30th of June 1885. The rails641 were spiked down to the sleepers without the aid of chairs, and the rolling camp moved forwards at a speed which was ultimately four miles a day. When Kizil Arvat had thus been reached the soil ahead was levelled by 22,000 Tekke labourers, whom stern necessity had compelled to exchange their long knives for spades and sacks.642 The rails and sleepers, brought from the base daily by a portable railway on the Decauville system, were rapidly laid on the soil thus prepared. Water in this dry and thirsty land is of prime importance. It was provided at Uzun Ada, the Caspian terminus, by a huge distilling apparatus. At other points the streams issuing from the distant hills were diverted into reservoirs, whence the precious liquid was carried to the line in pipes. At Merv the source of supply was a canal connected with the Murghab. The waterless tracts were supplied from the nearest spring in immense wooden tubs placed on trucks. To avoid the interruption in the flow of materials due to the closure of the Volga by thick-ribbed ice, great depÔts were formed at Merv, Charjuy, and, later, at Bokhara, while the minutest care was given to perfecting every portion of the complicated mechanism.

The comfort and efficiency of the directing and the subordinate staff were the subject of equal anxiety. The labourers, whether Russian soldiers or natives of the soil, worked in shifts of six hours, and were free for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to enjoy repose in their moving barracks and kibitkas. The sleepless activity of the chief was contagious, and his behests were obeyed with a devotion which few generals on the field have commanded. But when the arduous day’s work in the burning sun or the icy blast was done, the sturdy Russians were wont to break into song. Beautiful, indeed, was the effect of their melody wafted on the still desert air; and finer still the spectacle afforded by groups of the toilers, their faces glowing with the ruddy bivouac fire, while from their midst came the rhythmic strain of some chant, now breathing profound melancholy, and anon rising high in notes of fierce martial passion. General Annenkoff justly said that “one of the sources of Russian strength is that we are a singing people.”643 And thus the work of piercing these hitherto unknown steppes was pushed onwards with a rapidity which was the wonder and envy of Europe. Merv, 352 miles from Kizil Arvat, was reached in fourteen months. The arrival of the latest product of civilisation at the old robbers’ lair was made the occasion of brilliant fÊtes, and six weeks of rest were given to the toil-spent men. The works on the section between Merv and Charjuy began on August 1886. Here the engineers had to encounter an obstacle even more formidable than Chat Moss presented to George Stephenson. This was the famous sandy tract—a stretch of nearly sixty miles extending to a strip of land fertilised by the great river. It resembles nothing so closely as the mountains of the moon as seen through a powerful telescope. The eye ranges over a boundless expanse of sandhills covered in the near foreground with camels’ grass. Here, when the wind blows fresh, the air becomes charged with sand, which blinds the drivers and accumulates in deep drifts on the line of rail. At such times night-running is suspended, and detentions of several days are frequent. The construction of stone galleries was at first considered inevitable, but the expense involved was prohibitive. The desired object has, to some extent, been achieved by planting the saxaul, a gnarled shrub which thrives on the desert soil and throws out spreading roots for many feet. On the Merv and Charjuy section, too, the earthwork was far heavier than had hitherto been encountered,644 and it is highly creditable to the engineering staff that 141 miles should have been completed in little more than four months.

Hitherto the bridging operations had been of no great importance. The river Tajand, at the 434th mile, had been spanned by a wooden viaduct of 348 feet water-way; and the Murghab, at Merv, by a similar structure with an opening of 197 feet. Charjuy is 664 miles from the Caspian, and stands on the left bank of the Oxus, or Amu Darya, incomparably the mightiest river in Central Asia, and worthy to rank with the Ganges and the Nile. At Charjuy it is a mile and a quarter wide, and in all characteristics it resembles the Mississippi and the rivers of the Gangetic Delta. All have the same wide fringe of sand on either side, covered in portions with fertilising silt, the same islands clad with long reeds and juniper, the same tendency to shift their banks. At present the Amu Darya’s main channel has swung to the eastern bank, and its dull red stream surges with a perilous velocity. The cost of a steel viaduct at so vast a distance from the manufacturing centres was not to be faced, and nothing remained but to attempt a wooden structure. Happily for the Russian engineers, a stratum of tenacious clay underlies the sandy bed at no great depth, and afforded a secure resting-place for the timber piles. These numbered 3330, and were all brought from Russia by rail. The first was driven into the river bed in June 1887, and so intense was the energy of the working staff that on the 18th January 1888, little more than six months after its commencement, the Amu Darya was opened for traffic.645 In spite of its fragile construction, this work must rank with the greatest feats of modern engineering. The vast distances from which every portion of the material was brought, the rapidity and treacherous nature of the stream, and the unforeseen difficulties grappled with at every step, conspire to render the Amu Darya bridge a conspicuous triumph of skill and energy over the blind forces of nature. The Englishman cannot view this grand work, dwindling to a mere point as its interminable length spans the broad river, without a feeling of respect for the men who carried it into execution. We have shown the world that nothing is impossible to modern science, and we can best appreciate the noble qualities evinced by General Annenkoff and the devoted band which toiled to execute his grandiose conceptions.

The Amu Darya bridge is 4600 yards in length, including the approaches. The water-way is 2270 yards, and a permanent way is laid 35 feet above the mean river-level. The small cost of the structure is not its least recommendation. Official statistics place it at £44,000, without, however, reckoning the cost of transport and the pay of the railway battalion engaged in erecting it. The whole is of wood; and it is impossible to look down on the rapid current swirling round the piles without a feeling of wonder that so frail a structure should have borne the strain of eleven years. But fire is a far more dangerous foe than water. The rainfall at Charjuy is insignificant, and the mass of bristling piles as dry as touchwood. It is crossed daily by trains drawn by locomotives burning petroleum fuel, and boats loaded with inflammables constantly pass beneath. There are six fire-stations, and the bridge is patrolled night and day; but all protective measures would be useless if the flames once took hold. It is this consideration which has induced the authorities to face the immense expense involved in a steel girder bridge.

A pause of three months followed the conquest of this great barrier; and, in September 1887, the engineers attacked the last portion of their task—the 216 miles between the Amu Darya and Samarkand. They were aided by a third railway battalion 1000 strong, incorporated in 1886, and posted at Charjuy in the beginning of the following year. The final section, however, was mere child’s play as compared with those already traversed. After passing through 28 miles of desert, the line enters at Kara Kul on a cultivated zone, watered by the river Zarafshan and its affluents, which extends as far as the terminus at Samarkand. The capital of Tamerlane was reached in May 1888, and on the 1st of the succeeding month trains began running with regularity between the Caspian and Samarkand, a distance of 879 miles.646 General Annenkoff’s achievement was rewarded with the generous appreciation meted out to every Russian servant of the state who distinguishes himself by devotion to duty. “During three years,” wrote his imperial master in a rescript dated 5th July 1888, “you have worked with the energy which distinguishes you in accomplishing the task, sparing neither health nor strength in a constant struggle with natural obstacles which seemed almost insuperable. In just recompense for the service you have rendered to the state, we have granted you the insignia in diamonds of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, which we command you to wear according to regulations.”647 In thus hailing the completion of a line linking the Caspian with Samarkand the Tsar could hardly have foreseen the vast economic results of General Annenkoff’s enterprise. Its inception was due to considerations of politics and strategy,—if the Central Asian Railway would rob the desert of its terrors, strengthen Russia’s hold on the newly conquered territory, and give the means of overawing Persia and Afghanistan; and so it was treated as a military work and placed under the governor of Transcaspia, who was himself subordinate to the Minister of War. But trains had hardly begun to run ere merchants and passengers flocked to the station; goods accumulated in masses which defied the slender means of transport. In 1893, 185,000 tons of merchandise and material were carried; and in 1897 the volume dealt with aggregated 249,000.648 Trade left its old channels and poured into that which gave merchants steamer communication with the great consuming centres and the seaboard. Tea, which cheers the nomad as well as his civilised brother, no longer enters Central Asia through Afghanistan. It is transhipped at Bombay into steamers which convey it to Batum. Thence it crosses the Caucasus by rail and the Caspian by steamer, and finds the terminus of the Central Asian Railway at Krasnovodsk. This trade is of very recent growth. In 1893 none travelled by rail; in 1897 no less than 6,192,000 pounds. The commerce with Russia has been equally affected. The wool and cotton worked up in Moscow factories no longer reaches them by camel caravan; while the manufactured beet-sugar and drugs so largely in demand in the Khanates travel by the new route. That the railway should have profoundly modified the whole course of Central Asian commerce is a natural outcome of the line selected by the Tsar’s advisers. It follows the principal channel whence the silks, sugars, and stuffs of India and China poured into Europe during the ages illumined by Greek culture, and moulded by the governing instincts of Rome. Balkh in Northern Afghanistan was a rendezvous for caravans from the south and east. Thence the goods find water-way to the Oxus, and so, by its ancient course, to the Balkan Bay on the Caspian. The precious wares were carried in small vessels across that sea to the embouchure of the Cyrus, now the Kura, 90 miles south of the modern town of Baku. Here they were transhipped into canoes and dragged up stream to the foot of the Suran Pass. At this point the light vessels were carried, with their contents, 40 miles over the mountain to the river Kvirilla, a confluent of the Phasis,649 now called the Riom, which discharges into the Black Sea near the fever-haunted port of Poti. A glance at the map will reveal the identity of this ancient highway of trade with that followed by the railway systems of the Caucasus and the regions beyond the Caspian.650 The revolution has been recognised by the Russian authorities, and the Central Asian railways have now lost their exclusively military character, and have passed under the direction of the Minister of Ways and Communications. They will eventually have a central administration at Tashkent, and be managed by the governor-general at Turkestan.651 The unlooked-for success which has attended the opening of the trunk line has given a great impetus to extensions. In 1895, works were commenced for branches connecting Samarkand with Tashkent, the Calcutta of Central Asia, and Andijan in Farghana, a point near the Chinese frontier, and little more than 300 miles due north of Chitral. The length of these sections is 401 miles; their cost has been £2,743,000, or £6840 for each running mile, exclusive of rolling stock.

The line to Andijan follows pretty closely the old trade-route eastwards, crossing the Zarafshan by a viaduct 392 feet long, near the remains of the famous bridge attributed to Timur, and passing the towns of Jizak, Khojend, and Kokand. At Khavast, 110 miles west of Samarkand, a branch runs to Tashkent which traverses the Sir Darya at Chinaz by a wooden bridge, on the Oxus model, 1120 feet in length. Another bifurcation connects the main line at Khwaja Maghiz with New Marghilan. The engineers have encountered enormous difficulties in the construction of these branches, arising from the fact that they run at right angles to the watershed of the country. The innumerable torrents which pour down the mountain flanks on either side cause extensive inundations during the rainy season. The water-way on this section is greater than on any other portion of the line of equal length, and heavy protective works have been deemed necessary to divert the floods into the channels provided for them. The activity with which the construction was pushed forward may be gauged by the fact that 63,000 tons of railway material were carried over the trunk line between July 1897 and May of the following year. The extensions will serve a rich and thickly peopled country, and open up the vast mineral wealth of the mountain system whence the Zarafshan takes its rise. An annual movement of goods to the extent of 240,000 tons is predicted, which will increase by leaps and bounds when the great irrigation works now under construction in Farghana are completed. Another branch line has been constructed between Merv and Kushk, on the Afghan frontier, a distance of 192 miles. It follows the left bank of the Murghab as far as Pul-i-Kishti at the embouchure of the river Kushk, and the latter up to the Russian cantonment bearing that name.652 The economic advantages of this line, which was thrown open for through traffic in January 1899, are enormous. It passes through a tract which was once among the richest in the world, and will soon regain a share of its ancient fertility when the irrigation projects, which have received favour, become accomplished facts. Its strategic value is equally indisputable, for it will enable troops and supplies to be massed in a few days within striking distance of Herat. For Englishmen, however, the importance of the Merv-Kushk branch lies in the fact that it is designed to serve as a link in a project which germinated in General Annenkoff’s fertile brain—that of uniting England with India by railway. A glance at the map of the eastern hemisphere will show that the shortest practicable line of communication between London and the Indus passes through Russia and Central Asia. The direction would be vi Calais, Berlin, Warsaw, Rostov-on-Don, Petrovsk, Baku, Krasnovodsk, Merv, Kushk, Girishk, and Kandahar. The whole of this distance has now been covered by railway, with the exception of the 195 miles of Caspian between Baku and Krasnovodsk, and the gap of 450 miles which still separates Kushk from Chaman. If the last-named hiatus were bridged the journey from London to the Indus would easily be performed in seven days, assuming that the present rate of speed—thirty-two miles an hour on the European and twenty-five on the Asiatic lines—were maintained. The net saving in time, if the railway were completed, would be ten days, while the horrors of the Red Sea and the monsoon would be bad dreams to the Anglo-Indian traveller. The country between Kushk and Chaman presents no obstacle to the engineer. The Paropamisus range would be crossed by the Khombau, or the Chashmi Sabz Pass, neither of which is more than 3400 feet above sea-level, or 1000 higher than that on the tableland on either side.653 From this point, Herat, the garden and key of Afghanistan, is only 30 miles; and thence the line would be carried by way of Sabzawar, Farrah, Girishk, and Kandahar to Chaman. India is now awaking from her long sleep, and is permeated by new and unsuspected forces. If the tie which binds her to ourselves is to be a lasting one, it must be drawn more tightly.

That the line which is being carried across Siberia will eventually be linked with the Central Asian system admits of no doubt whatever. Expert opinion, however, is by no means in accord as to the route by which the junction should be effected. General Kurapatkine, while governor of Transcaspia, had detailed surveys made for a line between Merv and Orenburg. A strong faction advocates one which would commence at Tashkent and run by way of Chimkent, Turkestan, Turgai, Nicholaievsk, and Troitzk to Chelyabinsk, the starting-point of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Another party urges the superior advantages of a route vi Turkestan, Albasar, Kokchetav, and Petropavlovsk to Ishim. Prince Khilkoff, the Director of Ways and Communications, favours a railway starting from Tashkent, and traversing Verni, Semipalatinsk, and Barnaul, to end at Tomsk. The country which would thus be opened up presents no serious obstacles to the engineer. It has great fertility, and abounds in coal and other forms of mineral wealth.