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THROUGH
RUSSIAN
CENTRAL ASIA

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STEPHEN GRAHA

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THROUGH RUSSIAN
CENTRAL ASIA

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK ¦ BOSTON ¦ CHICAGO ¦ DALLAS
ATLANTA ¦ SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited.
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

The Tomb or Timoub.

THROUGH RUSSIAN
CENTRAL ASIA

BY

STEPHEN GRAHAM

* * *

AUTHOR OF " WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA "
"RUSSIA AND THE WORLD," "THE WAY OF
MARTHA AND THE WAY OF MARY," ETC.

WITH MANY BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights reserved

Copyright, igi6,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1916.

J. S. Cnshing Co. — Berwick & Smith Oo.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction  ix
I. Leaving Vladikavkaz  i
II. Where the Desert Blossoms  17
III. Wonderful Bokhara  27
IV. Mohammedan Cities and Mohammedanism . . 39
V. The History of the Tribes  49
VI. To Tashkent  61
VII. The Russian Conquest  70
VIII. On the Road  80
IX. The Pioneers  147
X. Fellow-travellers  171
XI. On the Chinese Frontier  190
XII. "Midsummer Night among the Tent-Dwellers" . 201
XIII. Over the Siberian Border  221
XIV. On the Irtish  228
XV. The Country of the Maral  236

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Tomb of Timour  Frontispiece FACING PAGE
The Central Asian Desert  22
Bokhara : The Escort of a Magistrate .... 30
Outside One of the Most Famous of the Mosques . . 36
The Central Asian Railway : Nearing the Oxus . . 36
A Holiday at Samarkand : Boys of the Military School
Playing among the Ruins of the Tomb of Tamerlane 40
Mohammedan Tombs and Ruins in the Youngest of the
Russian Colonies ....... 44
A Mohammedan Festival at Samarkand — The Hour of
Prayer  44
Central Asian Jewesses  56
Fine-Looking Sarts in Old Tashkent .... 62
Outside a German Shop in Old Tashkent .... 66
The Russian Teacher : A Native School in Tashkent . 66
Tashkent : A Football Match at the College ... 68
Pleasant Country Outside Tashkent  68
A Tent of Lonely Nomads on a Summer Pasture in Cen
tral Asia ......... 84
Russians and Kirghiz Living Side by Side at the Foot of
the Mountains  84
Sarts Selling Bread : The Lepeshka Stall .... 96
The Native Orchestra: See the Men with the Ten-Foot
Horns, " Trumpets of Jericho," as the Russians Call
Them  96
" Past the Ruins of Ancient Towers " . . . . 132
vii

viii ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
A Settled Kirghiz : One of the Characters of Pishpek . 144
The Irrigated Desert — An Emblem of Russian Colonisa
tion in Central Asia  156
The Shady Village Street One Long Line of Willows and
Poplars  156
Chinese Praying-House at Djarkent . . . .176
The Cathedral of St. Sophia at Verney — After the Earth
quake of 1887  176
Visitors at a Kirghiz Wedding . . . . . .184
Lepers in a Frontier Town . . . . . .198
A Patriarchal Kirghiz Family . . . . . .206
In Summer Pasture : Evening Outside the Kirghiz Tent . 206
Four Wives of a Rich Kirghiz  224
Kirghiz Praying ........ 230
Nomad Kirghiz Women Outside their Movable Homes . 234
In the Altai: Kirghiz Tombs Near Medvedka . . .242
"One of the Mud-Domed Ace-of-Spades-Like Tombs of
the Kirghiz "........ 242
Altaiska Stanitsa : View of Mount Bielukha . . .252
Mobilisation Day on the Altai: The Village Emptied of
its Folk .  252
Map of Route Taken by Author ..... 290

INTRODUCTION
The journey recorded in these pages was made in
the summer before the great war, arid although the
record of my impressions and the story of my adven
tures were fully written in my road diary and in the
articles I sent to The Times, I had thought to postpone
issuing my book to some quieter moment beyond the
war. But the days go on, and we are getting accus
tomed to live in a state of war ; war has almost become
a normal condition of existence. At first we could do
nothing but consider the facts of the great quarrel of
nations and the exploits of the armies. War for the
moment seemed to be our life, our culture, and our
religion. But things have changed. War started by
concentrating us and making us narrow, but now it is
giving us greater breadth. We have become more
interested in the home Ufe of our Allies, in the "after-
the-war" prospects of Europe, in the future of our own
British Empire and of the wide world generaUy. The
war has given us a larger consciousness, and we have
become, as some say, "Continental." In any case,
we are much less insular. France and Russia have

x INTRODUCTION
become real places to the man in the street, and the
account he gives of them is more credible. Even
our country labourer can say where GaUipoU is, Meso
potamia, Egypt, Salonica, Bulgaria, Serbia, though,
indeed, I have frequently heard the latter spoken of
as Siberia. "My son's gone to Siberia," says the
countryman; "it's a cold place." Our imagination
ranges farther afield, and young men of all classes think
of making far travels when the war is over. We are
not less interested in other things, but more ; only less
interested in the old suffocating business and industrial
Ufe of the time before the war, of the stuffy rooms, the
circumscribed horizons, the dull grind. All eyes are
opened wider, all hearts have greater hopes, and that
which dares in us dares more. We are reading more,
reading better, and, among other matters, are thinking
more of foreign countries, empires, far-away climes.
The war, bringing so many nations together, has touched
imaginations. It has mixed our themes of conversa
tions and enriched our life with new colours, new ideas.
So, perhaps, the story of this journey and my impres
sions of an interesting but remote portion of the Tsar's
Empire wiU not come amiss just now. Moreover, dur
ing the war many problems have become clearer
especiaUy those of the British Empire, clearer, but none
the less unsolved, and I feel that a study of a vast
stretch of the Russian Empire, and of its problems and
its prospective future, cannot but be helpful.

INTRODUCTION xi
Among the letters sent me care of The Times there
is one written about an article which has become a
chapter in this book :
"Since I was a child and steeped myself in the 'Arabian
Nights,' I have never been so enthralled as I was by an article
of yours called 'Towards Turkestan,' which appeared in The
Times long since, as it seems now (last May?). I am an old,
tired recluse. I have been reading for over sixty years. I'm
very much extinct, but my desert also blossomed with your roses.
"Charm inexpressible breathed from the roses (I think they
must have been the black-red sort). Strange figures — rich
garments, all solemnised by, as it were, a twilight glamour made
of magical influences. All so real, yet remote. I repeat, I
have never been taken away so far since I was a child. There
was another article which I cut out and lost . . . but I did not
prize it as I did the Turkestan article, where figures both bizarre
and dignified greeted you and bade you farewell with roses.
And sunset steeps them in a golden haze. And they still move
there whilst the traveller who has spell-bound them in his writing
has gone on his way. ..."
I have printed this letter because it was sweet to
have it, and it touched me. May the roses bloom
again! I am indebted to the Editors of The Times and
Country Life for permission to repubUsh portions of
this book previously printed in their columns, and to
Country Life for permission to repubUsh photographs.
For these photographs, except those relating to the
Altai, I am chiefly indebted to the professor of French

xii INTRODUCTION
at Tashkent MiUtary School and to M. Drampof, of
Pishpek. Special permission has to be obtained to
enter Russian Central Asia, and, as I was going on
foot, the possession of a camera might have led to the
suspicion of miUtary spying. So I had my camera
sent to Semipalatinsk, wliich is in Siberia, and only
used it on the Siberian part of my journey. My
thanks are also due to Mr. Wilton, the courteous and
able correspondent of The Times at Petrograd, who
obtained for me my permit for travel in Russian Cen
tral Asia. STEPHEN GRAHAM.

THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL
ASIA

LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ
In the early spring of 1914 I walked once more to
the Kazbek mountam. It was really too early for
tramping, too cold, but it was on this journey that I
decided what my summer should be. Once you have
become the companion of the road, it caUs you and
caUs you again. Even in winter, when you have
to walk briskly all day, and there is no sitting on
any bank of earth or fallen tree to write a fragment
or rest, and when there is no sleeping out, but only
the prospect of freezing at some wretched coffee-house
or inn, the road stiU Ues outside the door of your
house fuU of charm and mystery. You want to know
where the roads lead to, and what may be on them
beyond the faint horizon's Une.
So it is March, and I am walking out from Vladi
kavkaz on the Georgian road, and only on a four
days' journey — to the Kazbek mountain and back.

2 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
Indeed, the road beyond is probably choked with
snow, and there is no further progress. But I shaU
see how the year stands on the Caucasus.
The stillness of the morning — a circumambient
silence. A consciousness of the silence in the deep of
space. Three miles of level highway stretch straight
and brown from the city on the steppes to the dark,
blank waU of the mountains. Beyond the black wall
and above it are the snow-mantled superior ranges,
and above aU, almost melting into the deep blue of
the Caucasian sky, the glimmering, icy-wet slopes of
the dome of the Kazbek. The sun presides over the
day, and as a personal token burns the brow, even
though the feet tread on patches of crisp snow on the
yeUow-green banks of the moor. No Uzards basking
in the sun, no insects on the wing, no flowers — not a
speedweU, not a cowsUp, not a snowdrop. Only little
flocks of siskins rising unexpectedly from sun-bathed
hoUows Uke so many fat grasshoppers. Only an
occasional crazy brown leaf that scampers over the
withered faUen grass. There is vapour over the
plumage-like woods on the hiUs, but no birds are
singing. Nature can almost be described in negation,
she shows so Uttle of her glory; yet she makes the
heart ache the more.
Persian stone-breakers, hammer in hand, sitting on
mats by the side of the heaps of rocks ; primitive carts
lumbering with their loads of faggots or maize-straw

i LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 3
or ice ; horsemen Uke centaurs because of their great
black capes joining their head and shoulders to little
Caucasian horses — that is all the Ufe at this season of
the year of the one great highway over the mountains,
the great miUtary road from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis —
no motor-cars, no trams, no Ught-roUing carriages with
gentry in them, no trains.
Stopping at a sunny mound to have lunch, you
hear from a hundred yards away the River Terek like
the sound of a wind in the forest, the impetuous
stream rushing between white crusts of frozen foam
and washing greenly against ice-crowned boulders.
For sixty nules the road is that of the valley of the
Terek. It passes the Redant and then becomes the
visible companion of the river, winding with it among
the primeval grandeur of its rocks. The Kazbek
begins to disappear, hidden by its barrier cliffs — its
Kremlin; but for a mile or so its snowy cap remains
in sight over the great lopsided, jagged crags. The
blue smokes of Balta and red-roofed nestling DoUna-
dalin rise into the afternoon sky. The road enters
the chilling shadow of the Gorge of Jerakhof, and
you look back regretfuUy on the red sunUt strand
behind you. The white-framed Terek moves in a
grand curve through a broad wilderness of stones and
snow. An icy mountain draught creeps from the
cleft in the grey cold rocks. On the deserted road
the telegraph poles and wires assume that sinister

4 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
expression which they have in vast and lonely moun
tain tracts. The opening by which you entered the
gorge becomes a purple triangle, and far above you
and behind you glimmers the tobacco-coloured sunUt
Table Mountain.
The road becomes narrower: on the one hand the
river roars among ice-mantled rocks, on the other the
black sUt continuaUy trickles and whispers. The faint
crimson of sunset lights the wan towers of Fortoug,
and then one by one the yellow stars come out Uke
lamps over the mountain waUs.
There are three inns between Vladikavkaz and the
Kazbek mountain. I stayed at the second, at Larse,
and made my supper with some thirty Georgians,
Ossetines, and Russians, workmen on the road and
chance traveUers. Here I heard many rumours of the
commercial destiny of the miUtary road, of the thirty-
verst tunnel that it is necessary to make, of the Eng
Ushman named Stewart, the "Boss of the Terek" —
Khosatn Tereka — who has the contract to supply the
whole of the Caucasus with electricity, who will or
wfll not make an electric power station in the shadow
of Queen Tamara's castle, needing an artificial water
faU three hundred sazhens high.
"But the project has grown cold," said I.
"It wiU come to nothing," say the hillmen; "for
ten years people have been talking of such things, but
nothmg has changed except that we have got poorer."

i LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 5
But the host is an optimist. "ItwiUcome. There
wiU be a tramway from the city to the Kazbek. The
trams wiU go past my door. We shall have electric
Ught and electric cooking, and will become rich."
We remained all thirty in one room aU night —
square-faced, gentle, sociable Russians in blouses;
taU, Roman-looking Georgians and Ossetines in long
cloaks, with daggers at their tight waists, with high
sheepskin hats on their heads. They ate voraciously
bread and cheese and black pigs'-Uver, putting the
waste ends when they had finished into the bags of
their winter hoods — astonishing people to look at,
these Caucasians ; though half -starved, yet of great
stature and iron strength, with fine, broad-topped,
inteUigent heads, deeply lined, cunning brows, long,
beak-like, aquiline noses. They would make splendid
soldiers — but not so good "soldiers of industry."
They are a people who often fail when they go to
America. They aU knew men who had gone there
and had returned with stories of unemployment or
exploitation. Scarcely one of them had a good word
to say of America. They aU, however, looked forward
to the time when the Caucasus would be developed on
American Unes and hum with Western prosperity.
We slept on the tables of the inn, on the bar, in the
embrasures of the windows, on the forms, on sacking
on the floor — the kerosene lamp was turned low, and
nearly everyone snored.

6 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
We were aU up before dawn, and I accompanied
an Ossetine miller who was in search of flint for his
mill, and we entered the Gorge of Dariel whilst the
stars were dim in the sky. It was a sharp wintry
morning, and as the road led ever upward and became
ever narrower, the wind was piercing. The leaking
rocks of summer where often I had made my morning
tea were now grown old in the winter, and had wisps
of grey hair hanging down — yard-long icicles and thick
tangles of ice. The precipitously faUing streams and
waterfaUs were ice-marble stepping-stones from the
Terek to the mountain-top.
We entered the gorge by the Uttle red bridge
which, like a brace, unites the two sides of the
river at its narrowest point. The stars disappeared.
Somewhere the sun was rising, but his Ught was
only in the sky so far above. We beheld the green,
primeval ruin of Nature, the red-brown, grey, and
green boulders of Dariel in varied immensity and
diversity of shape, the vast shingly, boulder-strewn
wastes, the adamantine shoulders of porphyry, the
cold, ponderous immensities of rock held over the
daring Uttle road, the river eddies springing like
tigers over the central ledges between fastnesses of
ice. My Ossetine picked up various stones and struck
them with his dagger to see how weU they sparked,
and, having apparently found what he wanted, accepted

i LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 7
a lift in an ox-cart and returned back to the inn at
Larse. Perhaps it was too cold for him. I walked
up to the square cUff of Tamara and the tooth of the
waU of the ancient castle where Queen Tamara treach
erously entertained strangers, making love to them
and feasting them, and then having them murdered;
the castle where the devil once arrived in the guise
of such an unlucky wanderer — the scene of the story
of Lermontof's "Demon."
This was once the frontier of Asia, and the romantic
country of a fine fighting people. To this day, despite
raUway projects and the hope that the river may
provide the Caucasus with electricity, Queen Tamara's
castle remains almost the newest thing. It is modern
beside the antiquity and majesty of the ruin of Nature.
Here the real world seems to jut out through the
green turf and flower-carpeted earth into the Ught of
day, striking us awfuUy, Uke the apparition of God
the Father coming up out of the bowers of Eden.
You feel yourself in the presence of something even
older than mankind itself, and you wonder what dif
ferences you would note if, with the goloshes of For
tune on your feet, you could be transported back a
thousand years, a second thousand, a third thousand,
and so on. What did the Ancients make of this?
They held that it was to the Kazbek mountain that
Prometheus was bound as a punishment for stealing
fire from heaven. Was that what they said when they

8 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA I
first came fearfuUy through and discovered the plains
of the North?
An ancient way! And then at the turn of it, the
gate to the "Kremlin" of Dariel, and the towering
Kazbek Ufting itself to the sky within. Here is truly
one of the most wonderful and romantic regions in
the world. But it was not to see the Kazbek that I
made this journey, but to find again a certain cave
where years ago I found my companion on the road,
the place where we Uved and slept by the side of the
river. It was there as I left it, famiUar, calm, by
the side of the running river, gUttering in the noon
day sun, and the granite boulders held threads of ice
and ice-pearls — the ear-rings of the rocks. And I
would have liked to meet my companion again. But
Heaven knew under what part of its canopy the tramp
was wandering then. I felt a home-sickness to be
tramping again, and I decided that as soon as the
snow and ice had gone I would take to the road.
******
And so, the season having changed, and the cold
winds and rains of spring giving way to summer, I take
the road once more into new country. The season
reaUy changes when it is possible to sleep comfortably
out of doors. This year I go into the depths of the
Russian East, and, besides taking the adventures of
the road, continue my study of Easternism and West-
ernism in the Tsar's Empire. I travel by train to

I LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 9
Tashkent, the Umit of the raUway, and then take the
road, with my pack on my back, through the deserts
of Sirdaria and the Land of the Seven Rivers towards
the Umits of Chinese Tartary and Pamir, then along
the Chinese frontier, north to the Altai mountains
and the steppes of Southern Siberia. This is a long,
new journey — new for EngUsh experience — because,
until our entente with Russia, mutual jealousy about
the Indian frontier made it extremely difficult for the
Russian Government to permit observant and adven
turous Enghshmen to wander about as I intend to
do. Indeed, even now I may be stopped and turned
back from some forlorn spot seven or eight hundred
mUes from a railway station, and then, perhaps, silence
may enguh my correspondence for a time. AU things
may happen ; my papers may be confiscated or lost in
the post, or my progress may be stopped by various
accidents. In any case, I have official permission for
my journey, and the weather is fine.
The old grandmother baked me a box of sweet
cheesecakes {vatrushki), Vassily VassiUtch brought me
fruit and chocolate, another friend brought three dozen
cabbage pies — thus one always starts out for the
wilderness. We assembled in the grandmother's sit
ting-room to say good-bye. I am to beware of earth
quakes, of snakes, of having much money on my per
son, of being bitten by scorpions, of tigers, wolves,
bears, of occult experiences.

io THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
"It is occult country," said G  , teacher of
mathematics in the "Real School." "You are Ukely
to have occult adventures ; some enormous cataclysm is
going to take place this summer. I don't know what
it is, but I should advise you to get across this danger
ous country as soon as you can. Siberia is safe, and
North Russia, but not Central Asia, and not, as a
matter of fact, Germany."
He had had a strange dream, and, being of occult
preoccupation, ventured on vague prophecy, which
generaUy took the form of earthquakes and cataclysms.
When I met him in the autumn after my journey,
the great war with Germany had broken out, and I
was inclined to credit him with a true prophecy ; but,
with honest wUfulness, he was stiU figuring out earth
quakes and cataclysms to be, and would not have it
that the European conflagration was the fulfilment of
his dream.
Another friend is charmed with the idea that I am
going to Bokhara, and won't I bring her home a silk
scarf from the great bazaars? Another is touched by
the dream that I am reaUsing. To him Central Asia is
a fairyland, and the Thian Shan mountains are not real
mountains so much as mountains in a book of legends.
At last the old grandmother says :
"AU sit down!"
And we sit, and are sUent together for a few mo
ments, then rise and turn to the Ikon and cross

I LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ n
ourselves. The grandmother marks me in the sign of
the Cross and blesses me, praying that I may achieve
my journey and come safely back, that no harm may
overtake me, and that I may have success. Then I pass
to each of the others present and say "Good-bye."
Vera, however, looks at me in such a way that I am
sure she means that she feels I shaU never return. So
I am bound to ask myseU : Is not this fareweU a final
fareweU? Does not this Russian see something that
is going to happen to me ? But she has been very kind
to me, and just at parting puts a beautiful Ikon-print
into my hand, and I fix it in the inside of the cover of
my stiff map.
The train from Vladikavkaz wanders along the
northern side of the Caucasus, unable to find a pass
over the mountains. The meadows as far as eye can
see are yeUowed with cowsUps. Now and then a
derrick teUs that you are in the oil region, and in an
hour or so the train steams into the pavement-shed
station that marks the weariness and mud of Grozdny,
capital of the North Caucasian oilfields. There is a
breath of salt air at Petrovsk, a few hours later, and
you reaUse that you have reached the Caspian shore.
AU night long the train runs along to Baku, glad, as
it were, to turn south at last and get round the Cau
casus it cannot cross. At Baku I change and take
steamer across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk, on

12 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
the salt steppes, but I have a whole day to wait in
the city.
Ordinarily, you come to Baku to make money.
There is nothing to tempt you there otherwise. In
windy weather you are blinded with clouds of flying
sand ; in the heat of summer you are stifled with kero
sene odours. It is a commercial city without glamour.
Though it boasts several miUionaires and is an impor
tant name in every financial newspaper in the world,
it has no pubUc works, nothing by virtue of which it
can take its stand as a Western city. The working
men are very badly paid — that is, according to our
Western standards — and they do not obtain the few
advantages of industrial civflisation that ought to
come to make up for dreary Ufe and health lost. There
is a constant ferment amongst the labouring classes
in the city, and repeated strikes, even in war time.
Baku, again, is one of the last refuges of the horse
tram and the kerosene street-lamp. It is only in the
eastern quarter that the town has charm. There
you may see strings of camels loping up the steep
streets, panniers on their worn, furry backs, Persians
squatting between the panniers, contentedly bobbing
up and down with the movement of the beast. Or you
may watch the camels kneeling to be loaded, crying
appealingly as the heavy burdens are put on them, cum-
brously Ufting themselves again, hind-legs first, and
joining the waiting knot of camels already loaded.

I LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 13
The great shopping place — the bazaar — is wholly
Eastern, and even more characteristic than in Russia
proper. I feel how the bazaar and the ways of the
bazaar came to Russia from the East. As you go from
stall to staU you are besieged by porters holding empty
baskets — they want to be hired to walk behind you
and carry your purchases as you make them. Charac
ters of the Arabian Nights, these; and yet in the
streets of Warsaw and Kief, and many other cities,
those men in red hats and brass badges, who sit on the
kerb or on doorsteps waiting for passers-by to hire
them, are really the Uneal Westernised descendants of
the tailor's fifth brother — I think it was the fifth
brother who was a porter.
In the harbour, at the pier where my boat is wait
ing, I watch the Persian dockers working. Real slaves
they are, working twelve hours a day for is. 4d. (60
copecks). They have straw-stuffed pack carriers on
their backs, Uke the saddhng of camels, and the
rhythm of their movement as they proceed with
their burdens from the warehouse to the ship is
that of slavery. The name of slavery has gone,
but the fact remains. Still, the European is not
awakened to pity. The Persians are the human
camels, work hardest of aU the people of the East,
and are the least discontented. They are singing
and crying and calling all the time they work. The
East slaves for the West, but still is not much

14 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA i
influenced by the West. It is not they who cause
the strikes.
Just before the time for my boat to leave another
boat arrives from Lenkoran, and out of it come a party
of Persian men with carpet bags slung across their
shoulders, their wives in black veUs, many-coloured
cloaks, and baggy cotton trousers, their chUdren all
carrymg earthenware pots. More labour available on
the docks, more homes occupied in the Uttle houses
that dot the eight-mile crescent of the mountainous
city of Baku.
The boat leaves at nightfaU. It is the Skobelef, a
handsome steamer, built' in Antwerp in 1902. It must
have been brought to the Caspian along the waterways
of Europe; an officer on board ventures the opinion
that it was brought to Baku in parts and fitted up
there. A pleasant ship, however it was brought —
considerably superior to the ordinary American lake-
steamer, for instance. There were very few passengers,
and these lay down to sleep at once, fearing the storm
that was blowing, so I remained alone on deck
and watched the retreating shore. Leaving Europe
for America, you sit up in the prow and look
ahead, over the ocean; at least, you do not sit
and watch the Irish coast disappear. But leaving
Europe for Asia, you sit aft and watch her to the last.
And the retreating Ughts of Baku are the Ughts
of Europe.

i LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ 15
The night is very dark and starless, and so the eight-
mile semicircle of Ughts is wonderful to behold; the
handsome lanterns of the pier, the Ughts of the espla
nade, of the three variety theatres, of the cinemas and
shops, the thousands of sparks of homes on the moun
tain-side. This is the real beginning of my journey,
and it is very thrilling; good to sit in the wind and
feel the movement of the sea ; good to watch the many
Ughthouses turning red, then green, in the night, and
to pass within ten yards of a Uttle lamp, just over
the surface of the sea, alternately going out and
bursting into brightness every thirty seconds. The
lamp seems to say: "There is danger . . . there
is danger," and it whispers joyful intelUgence to
the heart.
There is trouble on the water as we reach the
open sea, and the boat begins to roll, but it is still
pleasant on the upper deck, and the high wind is
warm. The Ughts of Baku and Europe have been gradually
erased. First to go were the sparks of the homes on
the mountain-side, then the lights of the esplanade;
the eight great lamps of the pier remain, and one by
one they disappear till there is only the great yellow-
green flasher that tells ships coming into the harbour
just where Baku is. That also disappears at last, and
it begins to rain heavily. So I go down to my berth
to sleep.

16 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA I
Next morning the wide green sea was sunUt and
flecked with white crests of turning waves. Looking
out of a port-hole, I saw the bright Ught of morning
shining on the grey and accidental-looking mountains
of Asia. The boat was coming into Krasnovodsk.

II
WHERE THE DESERT BLOSSOMS
Kbasnovodsk is one of the hottest, most desert,
and miserable places in the world. The mountains
are dead; there is no water in them. Rain scarcely
ever faUs, and the earth is only sand and salt. Strange
that even there there is a season of spring, and Uttle
shrubs peep forth in green and Uve three weeks or a
month before they are finally scorched up. I spent the
day with a kind Georgian to whom I had a letter;
a shipping agent at the harbour. He was to have
helped me, supposing the local gendarmerie should stop
my landing. But by an amusing chance I escaped the
inspecting officer's attention, and got into Trans-
Caspia without questions or passport-showing. One
can never be quite sure of passing, even when one's
papers are in order. The Russian Government does
not give a written passport for Central Asia, but trans
mits your name to aU the local authorities, and you
have to trust, first, to their having received your name
and, second, to their agreeing that the name received
in its Russian speUing is the same as yours written in
c 17

18 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA n
EngUsh on your British passport. In the case of a
name such as mine, wliich is spelt one way and pro
nounced another, there is Ukely to be difficulties. Dur
ing my stay in Central Asia, moreover, I saw my name
spelt in the foUowing cheerful ways — Grkhazkn,
Groyansk, and, of course, the inevitable Graggam, and
on some occasions I had the difficult task of persuading
Russian officials that the names were one and the same.
StiU, they were incUned to be lenient.
The Georgian was very hospitable; he took me
from the pier to his house, behind six or seven wilted
and tired acacia trees, gave me a bedroom, bade the
samovar and coffee for me ; and I made my breakfast
and then slept the three hot hours of the day. In
the evening he brought up his other Caucasian com
patriots from the settlement, a Uttle band of exiles,
and we talked many hours to the tune of the humming
samovar. We talked of Vladikavkaz and the Kazbek
beloved of Georgians, and of my tramps and of mutual
acquaintances in Caucasian towns and viUages, talked
of ethics and poUtics, and the working man, and of
Russia, especiaUy of modern Russia, with its bourgeois
and the evU town Ufe. Mine host had almost Victorian-
EngUsh sentiments, did not Uke the sht skirt and Tango
stocking — so evident in Baku, did not know what
women were coming to — despised the Russians for
their flirting and dancing and gay Uving, beUeved in
quiet famUy Ufe as the foundation of personal happiness,

n WHERE THE DESERT BLOSSOMS 19
and in SociaUsm as the foundation of poUtical blessed
ness. The Ughts of Europe had not quite disap
peared. As the train did not leave tiU twelve, we had a
long and pleasant evening, and when the time came
to go mine host brought me a big bottle of Kakhetian
wine, and we all went together to the railway station,
I got my ticket, found my carriage. No commotion,
no excitement, the empty midnight train crept out
of the station, over the salt steppes, and I felt as if
in the whole long train there was only myseU. It
was very vexatious, leaving in the shadow of dark
night when no landscape was visible, but there was
consolation in the fact that the train accomphshed
no more than seventy-five miles before sunrise. Next
morning, directly I awakened, I looked out of the
train, and there before my gaze was the desert ; yeUow-
brown sand as far as eye could see, and on the hori
zon the enigmatical silhouette of a string of camels,
looking Uke a scrap of Eastern handwriting between
earth and heaven. A new sight in front of me, for I
had never seen the desert before, except, of course, in
Palestine, where it is hardly characteristic. The
cliffs of Krasnovodsk had disappeared ; the desert was
on either hand. I looked in vain for a house or a
tree anywhere, but I saw again, as at Krasnovodsk,
Nature's pathetic Uttle effort to make a home — an
occasional yeUow thistle in bloom, a wan pink in

20 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA n
blossom here and there on the sand. The train was
going so slowly that it seemed possible to step down
on to the plain, pick a flower, and return.
Strange that the Russian Government should take
raUways over the desert before it has developed its
home trade routes! The Western mind would find
this railway almost inexpUcable. You might almost
take it to be an elaborate game of make-beheve. The
train is scheduled in the time-table among the fast
trains, and yet at successive empty desert stations stops
21, 31, 14, 6, 12, 12 minutes respectively, and takes
23 hours to traverse the 390 miles from Krasnovodsk
to Askhabad, an average rate of 17 miles an hour.
The reason for this slowness Ues, perhaps, in the fact
that the sleepers are not very weU laid, and would be
dislodged if greater speed were attempted; and the
stops at the stations are impressive, indulge a Russian
taste for getting out of trains and having a look round,
and also, incidentaUy, let the wild natives know that the
steam caravan is waiting for them if they want to go.
We stop longer at one of these blank desert stations
than the Nord express at Berlin or a Chicago express
at Niagara. Russia is not excited about loss of
time. Time may be money in America; it is only
copper money in Russia, and it is more interesting
to have a poUtical raUway across the deserts of Asia
than to help the fruit-growers of Abkhasia or to
functionise industriaUy the vast railwayless North.

n WHERE THE DESERT BLOSSOMS 21
It is duU traveUing, but hills at length appear — the
lesser Balkans, the greater Balkans ; salt marshes give
way to sandbanks — drifts of sand heaped up and
shaped by the wind Uke grey snowdrifts. The beauti
ful curving Unes of the sandbanks are wind runes.
AU this district was once the bed of the Caspian Sea,
or, rather, of an ocean which, it is surmised, stretched
on the one hand to beyond the Aral Sea, and on the
other to the Azof and the Black Sea. The mountains
were islands or shores or dangerous rocks in the sea.
When we had passed the Balkans the country im
proved by bits. Suddenly, far away, a patch of
green appeared, and one's eye hailed it as one at sea
haUs land. When the train drew nearer there came
into view a wonderful emerald square thick with young
wheat, set in the absolute grey and brown of the wilder
ness. This was the first irrigated field. Soon a second
and a third field appeared in blessed contrast and re
freshment. Out of the yellowish, cloudy sky the sun
burst free, and I remembered that it was the first of
May. So May Day commenced for me.
People began to appear at the stations, which up
tiU then had been desolate ; stately Turkomans, wear
ing from shoulders to ankles red and white khalati,
bath-robes rather than dresses ; Tekintsi, in hats of
white, brown or black sheepskin, hats as big and
bigger than the bearskins of our Grenadiers; fat,
broad-Upped Kirghiz, with MongoUan brows and rat-

22 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA n
taU moustachios drooping to their close-cropped beards ;
poor Bactrian labourers, in many colours ; rich Persian
merchants, in sombre black. Many women stood at
the stations -with hot, just-boiled eggs, with roast chick
ens, milk or koumis in bottles, even with pats of
butter, with samovars. And there were native boys
with baskets heaped fuU of lepeshki (cakes of bread).
Each station was provided with a long barrier, and
the women, in lines of twenty or thirty, stood behind
their wares and cried to the passengers. The many
steaming samovars were a welcome sight, and at the
charge of a hahpenny I made myself tea at one of
them. The country steadily improved, and the train passed
by fields along whose every furrow little artificial
streams were trickUng, past many more emerald wheat-
fields surrounded by big dykes. The yeUow dust of this
desert needs only water to make it abundantly fertile ;
it is not merely frayed rock and stone, as the sand of
the seashore, but an organic substance which has been
settling from the atmosphere for ages — the lessovaya
zemlya. When we realise that there is of this strange
dust a coat deep enough to be a soil, we understand
something of the antiquity of the desert and the fact
that, when we consider geological history, our mind
must range over millions of years, whereas in thinking
of the history of man we are almost aghast to think
of thousands of years. So the leoss dust settles out of

The Central Asian Desert

ii WHERE THE DESERT BLOSSOMS 23
the clear air. IncidentaUy, what else may not be
settling out of the air into the everyday of our world ?
The spring flowers show the richness of this dust of the
wilderness, for now behold the desert under the influ
ence of irrigation blooming as the rose. It does, in
deed, actually blossom with the rose, for I notice even
on the fringe of the hopeless desert the sweetbriar,* and
it is unusually lovely. At the new stations Uttle chil
dren appear, having in their hands Uttle clusters of deep
crimson blossoms. Poppies now appear on the waste,
irises, saxifrages, muUeins, toad-flax — the voice of a
rich country crying in the midst of the sand. Here
1
it is UteraUy true :
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
By evening the train is running along the frontier
of the north of Persia, and every house has a garden of
roses. A Persian silk merchant, aU in black, with a
tahsman of green jade hanging from a gold chain round
his neck, comes into my carriage, and prepares to
occupy the upper shelf. He is travelUng aU night to
Merv, and has brought a great bouquet of sweet-
smeUing, double roses into the carriage. A knobbly-
nosed, grey-faced, animal-eared, antediluvian old sort,
this Persian would not stay in my carriage because
there was a woman in it, but asked me to keep his place
while he went and locked himself in the empty women's

24 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA n
compartment next door. He left his black, horn-
handled, slender, leather-wrapped walking-stick behind
— its ferrule was of brass, and seven inches long.
We reached Geok-Tepe, a great fortress of the
Tekintsi, reduced by Skobelef in 1881. At the raUway
station there is a room in which are preserved specimens
of aU the weapons used in the fight. There are also
waxwork representations of a Russian soldier with his
gun, and a native soldier cutting the air with his semi
circle of a sword. Many passengers turned out to have
a look at these things. It was sunset time, and the
west was glowing red behind the train, the evening air
was fuU of health and fragrance, the stars were like
magnesium Ughts in the lambent heaven, the young
moon had the most wonderful place in the sky, poised
and throned not right overhead, but some degrees from
the zenith, as it were ori the right shoulder of the night.
It was an evening that touched the heart. At every
station to Askhabad the passengers descended from the
train, and walked up and down the platforms and
talked. The morning of May Day had been blank and
dismal; the evening was fuU of gaiety and life. We
reached Askhabad, the first great city of Turkestan,
about eleven o'clock at night, and its platform presented
an extraordinary scene. The whole forty-five minutes
of our stay it was crowded with all the peoples of
Central Asia — Persians, Russians, Afghans, Tekintsi,
Bokharese, Khivites, Turkomans — and every one had

n WHERE THE DESERT BLOSSOMS 25
in his hand, or on his dress, or in his turban roses. The
whole long pavement was fragrant with rose odours.
Gay Russian girls, aU in white and in summer hats,
were chattering to young officers, with whom they
paraded up and down, and they had roses in their
hands. Persian hawkers, with capacious baskets of
pink and white roses, moved hither and thither; im
mense and magnificent Turkomans lounged against
piUars or walked about, their bare feet stuck into the
mere toe-places they call slippers — they, too, held roses
in their fingers. In the third-class waiting-room was
a Une of picturesque giants waiting for their tickets,
and kept in order meanwhile by a cross little Russian
gendarme. Behind the long barrier, facing the wait
ing train, stood the familiar band of women with
chickens and eggs, with steaming samovars and bottles
of hot mUk. They had now candle lanterns and kero
sene lamps, and the light ghmmered on them and on
the steam escaping from the boUing water they were
seUing. I walked out into the umbrageous streets,
where triple lines of densely foliaged trees cast shadow
between you and the beautiful night sky; in depths
of dark greenery lay the houses of the city, with grass
growing on their far-projecting roofs, with verandas
on which the people sleep, even in May. But they were
not asleep in Askhabad. I stopped under a poplar
and Ustened to the sad music of the Persian pipes. In
these warm, throbbing, yet melancholy strains the

20 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA n
night of North Persia was vocal — the night of my
May Day.
I returned to the station and bought a large bunch
of pink and white roses, and, as the second beU had
rung, got back to my carriage, laid my plaid and my
pUlow, and as the train went out I sUpped away from
the wonderful city — to a happy dream.

Ill
WONDERFUL BOKHARA
The promise of Persia was not fulfiUed on the morrow
after my train left Askhabad. We turned north-east,
and passed over the lifeless, waterless waste of Kara-
Kum, ioo mUes of tumbled desert and loose sand. At
eleven in the morning the temperature was 80 in the
shade — each carriage in the train was provided with
a thermometer — and the air was charged with fine
dust, which found its way into the train despite aU
the closed windows and closed doors. Through the
window the gaze ranged over the utmost disorder —
yeUow shores, aU ribbed as if left by the sea, sand-
smoking hiUocks, hoUows specked with faint grasses
where the marmot occasionaUy popped out of sight.
At one point on the passage across we came to mud
huts, with Tekintsi standing by them, and to a reach
of the desert where a herd of ragged-looking drome
daries were finding food where no other animal would
put its nose. Then we passed away into uninterrupted
flowerless sandhiUs, aU yeUow and ribbed by the wind.
So, aU the way to the red Oxus River. It is caUed the
Amu-Darya now, but it is the ancient Oxus, a fair,
27

28 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA m
broad stream at Chardzhui, but, from its colour, more
Uke a river of red size than of water. AU the canals
and dykes of the irrigation system of the district flow
with the red water of the river, and wherever the water
is conducted the desert blossoms hke virgin soU. The
river is the sun's wife, and the green fields are their
chUdren. Chardzhui, the port on the Oxus, is the point for
embarkation for Khiva. There is a smaU fleet of
Government steamers plying between the two cities,
though it is comparatively difficult for traveUers on
private business to obtain a passage on one of them.
When first this fleet was started there was some idea
that Russia would use them in her imperial warfare
as she pushed south, but probably the vessels have
little mUitary significance nowadays. For the rest,
Chardzhui is famous for its melons, which grow to the
size of pumpkins and are very sweet. Frequently in
Petrograd shops or in fashionable restaurants one may
see enormous melons hanging from straps of bast —
these are the fruits of Chardzhui. At this season of
the year Chardzhui has a great deal of mud and does
not invite traveUers, especiaUy as its inns are bad.
The train entered the Russian Protectorate of
Bokhara, and the population changed. From Ask
habad the natives had special cattle-trucks afforded
them, and they sat on planks stretched over trestles ;
they were Sarts, Bokharese, Jews, Afghans. Into my

in WONDERFUL BOKHARA 29
carriage came two Mohammedan scholars going to Bok
hara city. They washed their hands, spread carpets on
one side of the carriage, knelt on the other, said their
prayers, prostrated themselves. Then they took out
a copy of the Koran, and one read to the other in a
sonorous and poetical voice all the way to the city —
they were Sarts, a very ancient tribe of Aryan extrac
tion, some of the finest-looking people of Central Asia,
taU, dignified, wrinkled, wearing gorgeous cloaks and
snowy turbans. The two in my carriage had, ap
parently, several wives in another compartment, as
they each carried a sheaf of tickets. The women here
about were very strictly in their charchafs. There was
no peeping out or peering round the corner, such as
one sees in Turkey, but an absolute black, blotting out
of face and form. When you looked at five or six sit
ting patiently side by side, each and all in voluminous
green cloaks, and where the faces should appear a black
mask the colour and appearance of an oven-shelf,
you felt a horror as if the gaze had rested on corpses or
on the plague-stricken.
From the Oxus valley the people swarmed in a
populous land, and it was a sight to see so many
Easterns drinking green tea from yeUow basins.
Already we were nearer China than Russia, and the
sight took me back in memory to Chinatown, New
York, and the chop suey restaurants. I fell into con
versation with a Tartar merchant in carpets, and I

30 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA m
tried to obtain an idea of what Bokhara was like in
the year of grace 1914.
"Is there an electric tramway in Bokhara, or a
horse tramway?"
"No, nothing of the sort. The streets are so
narrow, two carts can't pass one another without
eoUision." "Are there any hotels?"
"There are caravanserai."
"No European buildings?"
"Only outside the town. There is a Russian police-
station, and a hotel built for officials. The Emir won't
allow any hotels to be buUt within the walls."
At length we reached New Bokhara, the Russian
town, with its white houses, avenues of trees, its
broad streets, and shops, and we changed to a by
line for Ancient Bokhara. The train drew through
pleasant meadows and cornfields, bright and fertile
as the South of England, and after twelve sunny
versts we came into view of the cement-coloured mud
waUs of the most wonderful city of Mohammedan Asia,
a place that might have been produced for you by
enchantment — that reminds you of Aladdin's palace
as it must have appeared in the desert to which the
magician transported it. Within toothed waUs — a
grey Kremlin eight miles round — live 150,000 Mo
hammedans, entirely after their own hearts, without
any appreciable interference from without, in narrow

Bokhara: The Escort of a Magistrate

m WONDERFUL BOKHARA 31
streets, in covered alleys, with endless shops, behind
screening walls. The roads are narrow and cobbled,
and wind in aU directions, with manifold alleys and
lanes, with squares where stand handsome mosques,
with portals and stairways leading down to the cool
and tree-shaded, but stagnant, little reservoirs that hold
the city's water. Along the roadway various equipages
come prancing — muddy proletkas, unhandy-looking,
egg-shaped carts, with clumsy wooden wheels eight feet
high, and projecting axles, gilt and crimson-covered
carts made of cane and straw, the shape of a huge egg
that has had both ends sliced off. The Bek, or Bok-
harese magistrate, comes bounding along in his car
riage, with outriders, and all others give him salute
as he passes. It is noticeable that the drivers of vehi
cles prefer to squat on the horses rather than sit in
drivers' seats. Strings of laden camels blunder on the
cobbles, innumerable Mohammedans come, mounted
on asses — it is clear that man is master when you see
an immense Bokharese squatting on a meek ass and
holding a huge cudgel over its head. Charchaffed
women are even seen on asses, and some of them carry
a chUd in front of them. There are continuaUy dead
locks in the narrow lanes, and aU the time the drivers
shout "Hagh, hagh!" ("Get out of the way, get out
of the way!")
The houses are made of the ruins of bygone houses,
of ancient tiles and mud. They have fine old doors of

32 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA in
carven wood, but no windows looking on the streets.
A sort of inlaid cupboard, with a glass window, half
open, a spread of wares, and a Moslem sitting in the
midst, is a shop. Thus sits the vendor of goods, but
also the maker — the tinsmith at work, the copper
smith, the maker of hats. The bazaars are rich and rare,
and in the shadow of the covered streets — there are
fifty of them — the lustrous silks and carpets, and pots
and sUppers, in the shops each side of the way, have
an extraordinary magnificence ; the gorgeous vendors,
sitting patiently, not asking you to buy, staring at the
heaps of metaUics, silver-bits and notes resting on the
httle tabourets in front of them, belong to an age which
I thought was only to be found in books. What a
wealthy city it is ! It offers more silks and carpets for
sale than London or Paris ; it is an endless warehouse
of covetable goods.
What strikes you at Jerusalem or Constantinople is
the abundance of English goods for sale, but here at
Bokhara there is a strange absence of Western commod
ities. Formerly the English sent all sorts of manu
factures by the caravan road from India, but since the
Russians ringed round their Customs system the com
mercial influence of England has waned. Western
goods come via Russia. What European articles there
are come from Germany or Scandinavia. For the
rest, as in other Eastern cities, the street arabs hawk
churek-cakes and lepeshki; men in white sit at corners

m WONDERFUL BOKHARA 33
selling, in this case, Bokharese deUght, brown twists
of toffee, old-fashioned sugar-candy which in piles
looks like so much rock crystal. Beggars in rags
sit outside the mosques and hold up to you Russian
basins — they do not, however, cry and clamour and
foUow you, as in the tourist-visited cities of Asia
Minor and North Africa. Outside every other shop
is a bird-cage and a large pet bird; in some cases
falcons, much prized in these lands. I admired the
falcons, and their owners seemed childishly pleased at
the attention I gave them. I gave a piece of Bok
harese silver to a beggar outside a mosque (the
Bokharese have their own silver coinage, which, how
ever, looks hke ancient coin rather than any which is
now in use). In one of the big shadowy bazaars I
bought a delicious silk scarf of old rose colour full of
light and loveliness, falling into a voluminous grandeur
as the melancholy Eastern showed it me. I did not
bargain about its price, that seemed almost impossible,
only five roubles (ten shillings), and the lady who has
it now says it is enough to make a whole robe. Some
how I liked it better as a scarf than I could if it were
"made up."
I passed out of the city and walked round the walls.
A road encompasses them, and on the road are camels
with blue beads on their necks and many Easterns
riding them. There is a strange feeUng of contrast
in being outside the city. The arc of the grey walls

34 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA in
goes graduaUy round and away from you, surrounding
and enclosing the life of the city; the city is like a
magical box fuU of strange magicians and singers and
toy shop-men and customers; it is like a strange
human beehive full of Ufe. And outside the waUs
there is the sudden contrast of fresh air and space
and Ufe and greenery and broad sky. Inside the city
the streets are so narrow that you feel the "box" has
got the Ud on. Someone said to me when I went to
New York: "We'U give you the freedom of the
city with the lid off." Well, Bokhara has the lid
on. And you feel that certainly when you get out
side and look at the silent, significant enclosing wall.
But the fields are deep in verdure, and it is like
a lovely June day in England — the wiUow leaning
lovingly over you, overwhelmed with leaves. The
waUs are battlemented, rent, patched up, buttressed;
there are eleven gates, and at each gate the traffic
going in and out has a processional aspect. Along
the waUs, between gate and gate, there is a deep and
gentle peace. No sound comes through the waUs;
they are broad and high and solid. The swallows
nesting there twitter. You cannot obtain a gUmpse,
even of the high mosques within.
I entered the city once more, lost myself in its
mazes, and was obliged to take a native cab in order
to get out again. I was Uving outside the town in
an inn speciaUy buUt for men on Government service.

m WONDERFUL BOKHARA 35
I got the last empty room. Pleasant it was to lie
back in the sun and be carried along twenty wonderful
streets and lanes, seeing once more aU I had seen
before of colour and OrientaUsm.
The Bokharese are a gentle people. They wear no
weapons. They sit in the grass market and chatter and
smile over their basins of tea. The Uttle pink doves of
the streets search between their bare feet for crumbs.
The wild birds of the desert buUd in the waUs of their
houses and bazaars. On the top of the tower of every
other mosque is an immense storks' nest,' overlapping
the turret on aU sides. Some of these nests must be
eight to ten feet high ; they are round, and so look like
part of the design of the architecture. Storks are
encouraged to build there by the Mohammedans,
by whom they are held sacred. It is pleasant to
watch the bird itself, standing on one leg, a black
but Uving and moving silhouette against the sky;
to Usten to the clatter of biUs when the father stork
suddenly flies down to a nest with food.
Bokhara is a sort of Mussulman perfection — there
is no progress to be obtained there except after the
destruction of old forms. The Bokharese keep to the
forms of their religion and its ethical laws ; they wear
their clothes correctly ; they know their crafts. They
are a great contrast to the Russians, who are careless
and inexact, and in their worship often nonchalant to
their God ; to the Russians, who wear nothing correctly

36 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA m
and come out in almost any sort of attire; to the
Russians, sq ignorant and clumsy in their crafts. Yet
Russia has aU before her, and Bokhara has aU behind
her. The Bokharese have no ambition; civihsation
and mechanical progress do not tempt them. They
have a happy smile for everything that comes along,
but nothing moves them. A Russian motor-car comes
bounding over the cobbles, whooping and coughing its
alarm signals ; a score of dogs try to set on it and bite
it as it passes, and the natives sit in their cupboard
shops and laugh. If the car stops, they do not coUect
round it, as would a viUage of Caucasian tribesmen, for
instance. There was one Bokharian — a Sart, in full
cloak and turban — who rode a bicycle, an astonishing
exception. The Russians at present hold Bokhara very Ughtly,
but wUl no doubt tighten their hands on it later, as
they are taking the sohdification of their Central Asian
Empire very seriously. At present there are no pass
ports, and there is mixed money; but passports are
coming in, and the banks are taking up aU the ancient
Sartish bits they can get and giving Russian silver in
exchange. There are several Russian banks within the
city waUs, and they have a great influence. The Emir
is friendly towards Russia, and is a pompous figure at
the Russian Court, though it is rumoured that in his
native palaces he whiles the long empty day away by
playing such elementary card games as durak, snap,

Outside one of the Most Famous of the Mosques

The Central Asian Railway: Nearing the Oxus

m WONDERFUL BOKHARA 37
and happy family. The Russians have permission to
build schools in the city, and the Russian bricklayer is
to be seen at work with trowel and Une, whilst the
native navvy carries the hod to and fro. The foreign
goods in the bazaar are mostly cotton, and if you
examine the splendidly gay prints that go to form the
clothing of the natives you find it is aU marked Moscow
manufacture. The Bokharese rnerchants go to Nizhni
Fair not only to seU, but to buy. There are no Eng
Ush in the streets, no tourists, no Americans. Indeed,
I asked myseU once in wonder : Where are the Ameri
cans? The only people in Western attire are com
mercial traveUers {commerqants), and they are mostly
Russians or Armenians, though Germans are occa
sionaUy to be seen. I noticed knots of these men
discussing prices of horse-hair, wool, oil-cake, carpets,
silks. It should be remembered that that district is
more justly famous for its carpets than for its silks.
The best carpets in the world are made by the Tekintsi.
Armenians, Turcomans and Persians work in whole
vUlages and settlements in Trans-Caspia making
carpets with needle and loom. They have the original
tradition of carpet-making, a sense for the particular
art of weaving those wonderful patterns of Persia, and
for them a carpet is not a covering on which it could
be possible to imagine a man walking with muddy
boots ; it is for dainty naked feet in the harem, or it
is a whole picture to be hung on a waU, not thrown

38 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA m
on the floor. Singer's sewing machines are, of course,
instaUed at Bokhara; they are in every town in the
wide world. The cinema also has come, and a green
poster announces that the Tango wiU be shown after
the presentation of a striking comedy caUed "The
Suffragette." But what does this reaUy matter? Let us ask the
dehberate stork, standing on one leg on the height of
the mosque of Lava-Khedei. The mosque tower has
a clock, and the stork seems to be trying to read the
time. But he wiU give no answer, nor will the Mussul
mans below ; they also are scanning the wall to see if
it is nearer the hour to pray. And the clock, be it
observed, is not set by Petrograd time.

TV
MOHAMMEDAN CITIES AND MOHAM
MEDANISM
The consideration of the wonderful Moslem cities,
Constantinople, Cairo, Jerusalem and Bokhara, with
their marveUous blending of colours, their charac
teristic covered ways and bazaars, their great spreads
of lace and silk and carpets, sUppers, fezes, turbans,
copper ware, their gloomy stone ways and close courts,
their blind houses, made windowless that their women
be not seen, their great mosques and splendid tombs,
inevitably suggests a great question of the East. What
is Mohammedanism, what does it mean? At Cairo
and Jerusalem, and even at Constantmople, it is possible
to doubt the real nature of the Moslem world; it
seems a makeshift world giving way readUy to Western
influence, or, in any case, reproved by the more splendid
and vital institutions of the West standing side by
side with many shabby and wretched phenomena of
the East.
But Bokhara is a perfect place. It is much more
remote even than Delhi, and is almost untouched,
unaffected by Western life. It is a city of a dream,
39

40 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rv
and if a magician wished to transport some modern
Aladdin to a fairy city, where there would be nothing
recognisable and yet everything would be beautiful
and bewUdering, he need only bring him to the waUs of
Bokhara. Through Bokhara and its undisturbed peace
and beauty, one obtains a new vision of Mohammedan
ism, and it becomes absurd to think that the real
Moslem world is of the same pattern as the Westernised
and yet strangely picturesque -cities with which we are
famUiar. We remember the fact that there are so
many miUions more Mohammedans than there are
Christians, that they hve off the railways, in deserts,
in far away and remote cities, that they journey on
camels and in caravans, and that to them their reUgion
and way of hfe are sufficient, that they do not seek
new words or inspiration, nor do they want time to
do other things, nor change of any kind. We remember
their mystery, their faith and loyalty, their superb
detachment, their state of being enough unto them
selves, their playfulness, audacity, hospitaUty, how
they shine compared with Christians in the keeping
of the conventions of their rehgion, their punctual
piety, their pilgrimages, and, with all that, their fixed
and definite inferiority of caste.
Their pUgrimage to Mecca, which we are apt to
regard merely as something picturesque, is in reaUty
one of the most mysterious of human processions.
From Northern Africa, from Syria, from Turkey and

A Holiday at Samarkand: Boys of the Military School Play
ing Among the Ruins of the Tomb of Tamerlane

iv MOHAMMEDAN CITIES 41
Armenia, from Turkestan, from the Chinese marches
(there are even Chinese Mohammedans, the Duncani),
from India, from the depths of Arabia and Persia — to
Mecca. Through Russia alone there travel annually
considerably more Moslems to Mecca than there do
Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem; and some of these
Mohammedan pilgrims are the most outlandish pil
grims. They are UUterate, simple, unremarked. They
do not possess minds which could understand our
modern Christian missionaries, and Russia, at least,
has no desire to proselytise among them. If the peo
ples of the world could be seen as part of a great design
of embroidery on the garment of God, it would probably
be seen that Mohammedanism at the present moment
is part of the beauty of the pattern and the amazing
labyrinthine scheme. It is not a rent, not a disfigure
ment. Mahomet and the Mohammedans is not a subject to
dismiss, and when we look at those wondrous cities of
the East it is worth while remembering that we are
looking at a new image and superscription, and are in
the presence of people who own a different but none
the less true aUegiance. As upon one of the planets
we might come across a different race that had not had,
and could not have, our revelation.
Our prejudice as mihtant Christians, however,
ought necessarily to be against Mohammedans. They
have ever been our reUgious enemies in arms, the

42 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA iv
Saracens, the Paynim, the Tartar hordes; we are
not very amicably disposed to those of our argu
mentative brothers who, to show their independence
of thought, say they prefer Mohammedamsm or
Buddhism or Confucianism or whatnot.
In reading Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-worship "
there is a haunting feeUng that it was a pity that
for the "Hero as Prophet" he chose Mahomet and
not Jesus, or that, choosing Mahomet, he had not
traveUed in Mohammedan countries, investigating his
subject more thoroughly and giving a truer picture of
the significance of Mohammedanism and of the man
who founded it. The Mahomet section of "Heroes"
is Uke a note that does not sound. Reading the lec
ture over again, one is struck with a new fact about
Carlyle — his insularity of inteUigence. Despite the
fact that he is preoccupied with French and German
history, you notice his narrowness of vision, or perhaps
it is that the general vision of the world which men
have now was not so accessible in his day, and the
differences in national psychology now manifest were
hidden in obscurity then. Carlyle saw mankind as
Scotsmen, and aU true religion whatsoever as a sort
of Southern Scottish Puritanism. He saw aU national
destinies in one and the same type, without any con
ception of fundamental differences of soul. He ad
mired the Germans, and the Germans adopted him
and his works. And he disliked the French because

rv MOHAMMEDAN CITIES 43
so few of them had that "fixity of purpose" and "man
liness," "thoroughness," "grim earnestness" of his
compatriots. Russia was a very vague country, but
Carlyle approved of the Tsar, dimly discerning in
him one who must have something in common with
CromweU or Frederick the Great, "keeping by the aid
of Cossack and cannon such a vast empire together."
And the further his imagination ranges the more do
his notions of foreign peoples and races fail to corre
spond with his patterns of humanity. Among the
many other destinies which Carlyle might have had
and lived through, one can imagine one wherein he
traveUed, and found in real Ufe what he sought in
museums and Ubraries. He would have been a won
derful traveUer, and would have known and shown
more of the verities and mysteries of the world than
he was able to do through the medium of history.
Carlyle's Mahomet is an example of old-fashioned
visions. It is clear now that this "deep-hearted Son of
the Wilderness, with his beaming black eyes and open
social deep soul, " was not that determined, conscien
tious British sort of character that he is made out to
be, nor has Mohammedanism that Cromwelhan earnest
ness which Carlyle imputed to it.
It is impossible to find in the Moslem soul "the
infinite nature of duty," but we would not explain the
"gross sensual paradise" and the "horrible flaming
hell" of the Mohammedans by saying that to them

44 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rv
"Right is to Wrong as Ufe is to death, as heaven to
heU. The one must nowise be done, the other in no
wise be left undone. ' ' Mahomet and Mohammedamsm
are not explainable in these terms.
Probably the most common assumption in the West
is that Mohammedamsm does not count. In its adher
ents it greatly outnumbers Christianity, but not even
those who beUeve that the wiU of majorities should
prevaU would recognise the Mohammedan majority.
For though more warlike than we, they have not our
weapons, and though they are finer physically, they
have not our helps to Nature, nor our civihsation, nor
our passion. They are apart, they are scarcely human
beings in our Western sense of the term, and are
neghgible. StUl, Mohammedanism is an extraordinary
portent in the world. The Mohammedans, those many
miUions, are not merely potential Christians, a set of
people remaining in error because our missionary enter
prise is not sufficient to bring them to the Light. It
is not an accident, or a makeshift reUgion, but evi
dently a happy form suitable to the millions who
embody it. It is a poetically fitting reUgion, part of
the very fibre of the people who have it, and it cannot
easily be got rid of or supplanted.
As enthusiastic Christians we consider the Moslem
world with some vexation ; some of us even with mahce
and a readiness to take arms against it. But as pleas
ure-seeking tourists and worldly men and women, we

Mohammedan Tombs and Ruins in the Youngest of the Russian Colonies

«31l ** y

A Mohammedan Festival at Samarkand — The Hour of Prayer

rv MOHAMMEDAN CITIES 45
rather love the Turk and the Arab for his "picturesque
ness," for the picturesqueness of his rehgion. As
sportsmen, we love him because he has the reputation
of fighting weU.
It was with a certain amount of dissatisfaction that
I feU into the hands of an Arab guide when I was in
Cairo, and was shown, first of all, the picturesque
mosques so beloved of tourists, — the Mosque of Sultan
Hassan, the Alabaster Mosque, and so on. Not the
ancient Egyptian remains, which are the most signifi
cant thing in Egypt, not the Early Christian ruins,
wliich are most dear to us (the old Christian monas
teries which the Copts possess seemed to be known by
none), but the mosques made of the stolen stones of1
the Pyramids and of the tombs, and inlaid with the
jewels taken from ikon frames and rood-screens of the
first churches of Christianity. And as I Ustened to the
detaUs of the bUnding of the architects, the destruction
of the Mamelukes, the fighting and the robbing, the
disparaging thought arose: "They are aU a pack of
robbers, these Mohammedans."
They are robbers by instinct, and non-progressive
not only in Ufe, but in ideas. But they are picturesque,
and have given to a considerable portion of the earth's
face a characteristic quaintness and beauty. They
cannot be dismissed.
Carlyle tries to see some Ught in the Koran, and
fails. Probably the Koran is translated in a wrong

46 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA iv
spirit or to suit a British taste. But obviously it is
meant to be chanted, and it is full of rhythms with
which we are imfamihar, as unfamiUar as we are with
the sobbing, plaintive, screaming music that is melody
in the Moslem's ears. The soul of the Koran is not hke
the soul of the Bible, just as the soul of a mediaeval
Christian city such as Florence or Rome is unhke Khiva
or Bokhara or Samarkand, just as the souls of our eager
mystical populations are different from the souls of
those simple, satisfied and fatalistic people. It is not
easy to communicate the difference by words ; it is not
merely a difference in clothes. It is a difference in the
spirit, a difference in the spirit that causes the expres
sion to be different, whether that expression be clothes,
or houses, or cities, or way of life, or music, or litera
ture, or prayer. And while our expression changes,
theirs remains the same. Our spirit remains the same,
theirs remains the same, but only with us does the
expression change.
" God is great ; we must submit to God," is Moham
medan wisdom. It is in a way a common ground —
we must submit. But with the Mohammedan there
is a waiting for God's will to be shown, whereas with
us rather a divination of it in advance. We are alive
to find out what God wills for us. After "Thy will
be done!" we put an exclamation mark and rejoice.
Mohammedanism is fataUsm, but Christianity is not
fatahsm.

rv MOHAMMEDAN CITIES 47
And if fatalism gives a tinge of melancholy to Ufe,
especially to an unfortunate Ufe, it still makes Ufe
easier. It reUeves the soul of care and takes a world of
responsibility off the shoulders. The Mohammedan is
a care-free being. He has, more than we have, the
Ufe of a child.
Consequently, one of the greatest characteristics of
Mohammedan people is playfulness. All is play to
them. They are playful in their attire, in their busi
ness, in their fighting, in their talking. They buy
and sell, and make a great game of their buying and
seUing. They lack "seriousness." They are in no
hurry to strike a bargain and get ahead in trade. Their
instinct is for the game rather than for the business.
Hence the comparative poverty of the Tartars — the
most commercial people of the East. They are not
serious enough to get rich in our Western way. If
they would get really rich as a Western merchant is
rich, they must not waste time playing and haggling.
They fight well because they see the game in fighting.
Death is not so great a calamity to them as to us, for
Ufe is not such a serious thing. They look on play
fully at suffering, and laugh to see men's limbs blown
away by bombs. They like the gamble of modern
warfare. And, of course, they were warriors and rob
bers before they were Mohammedans. Fighting is
one of their deepest instincts, and as they do not change
with time as we do, they have an almost anachronistic

48 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rv
love of battle. They are fond of weapons as of toys,
fingering blades and laughing, guffawing at the sight
of cannon. They love steamboats and battleships
as children love toy steamboats, and they sail them
on the waters of the Levant as chUdren would their
toys. Their hospitality is mirthful, as are also their
murders and their massacres. Their heaven and hell
are playful conceptions.
The condition of their remaining children is obedi
ence to the simple laws of their religion. These
obeyed, they are free of all troubles. And they obey.
Hence, from Delhi to Cairo and from Kashgar to Con
stantinople, a playful and sometimes mischievous and
difficult world. Looking at the great cities, with their
quaint figures and their chaffering, their elfish spires
and minarets, their covered ways and gloomy and
mysterious passages ; looking at this city of Bokhara,
with its covered ways crowded with these children-
merchants and children-purchasers, their beggars,
tombs, shrines, we must remember it is aU a chU-
dren's contrivance, something put together by a
people who do not grow up and do not grow serious
as we do — mysterious yet simple, fierce yet chUdhke,
valorous and yet amused by suffering, Islam, the
enemy of the Church in arms, to this day.

V
THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES
From Bokhara I proceeded to Samarkand, the
grave of Timour. Turkestan has four great cities
remaining in splendour from the most remote times —
Bokhara, Khiva, Samarkand, and Tashkent. Alex
ander the Great conquered most of this territory and
established himself at Samarkand for winter quarters,
but there are few traces of Alexander to-day. In his
day the land was inhabited by tribes who had come
out of the Pamir — Persians, Indians, Tadzhiks.
There were also primeval nomads, with their tents and
their herds, a people something like the Jews when
they were simply the Children of Israel, when they
were a family. There were possibly hordes of Jews,
as there were hordes of Tartars and Mongols. At the
time of the shepherd dynasty of Egypt the peoples
of the east were Uving in patriarchal families, resem
bUng in a way the famiUes of the Kirghiz in Central
Asia to-day.
For the ethnologist Central Asia is necessarily one
of the most interesting districts of the world, and its
inhabitants are like Uving specimens in a great ethno-
E 49

50 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA v
logical museum. The races there teU us more about
the past of the world in which we are interested than
any pages in the history book. Here we may feel what
the Children of Israel were, the Egyptians, the Syrians,
the Persians, the Turks, the Russians. We see the
destiny of Rome, the destiny of the Church of Christ,
of Christianity, of barbarism.
Not that there are many pure or clear types of
historical races in Central Asia to-day. The land has
been a running ground for fierce tribes coming out of
China and Manchuria, coming from the mysterious and
vague regions of the Pamir and Thibet. The Kirghiz
to-day exhibit every shade of difference between the
Mongol and the Turk.
After the Greeks of Alexander came the first fero
cious Huns. To the Greeks what is now Russia
and Siberia, Seven Rivers Land and Russian Central
Asia, was vaguely Scythia. They fumbled northward
and eastward as in a great darkness, and they were
rather afraid to go on. Yet we know that even before
the records of Greek history there was an Eastern
trade on the Volga and from the Caspian to the Baltic.
The merchants of Persia and India traded with the
Russia of those days. The Persians ruled from the
Oxus to the Danube, and in the wilderness stretching
from the Oxus to the Great WaU of China dwelt the
primeval nomads.
South of the Altai Mountains was the fount of the

v THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES 51
mysterious Huns, who, some centuries before the birth
of Christ, ravaged China to the Pacific and extended
their dominion northward, down the Irtish River to
the tundra of the Arctic Circle. These were not a
Mongol people, but Turkish, though eventually they
were beaten by the Tartars, and the MongoUan and
Turkish tended to blend. The reason for their turning
westward was an eventual failure against China. The
Chinese built their fifteen-hundred-mile wall against
the Huns, but the waU did not avail them ; they were
beaten, and were forced to pay an enormous tribute of
silk, gold, and women. Then the Chmese reorganised
their armies, turned upon their enemies, and crushed
them. Their monarch became a vassal of the Emperor.
Fifty-eight hordes entered the service of China — a
horde was about four thousand men. The remainder
of the Huns, coming to the conclusion that China
was too strong for them, resolved to fight somewhere
else, and set off westward towards the Oxus and the
Volga. They expended themselves on the eastern
shores of the Volga, where they remain to this day as
the Kalmeeks. Visitors to the Southern Ural and the
district of Astrakhan will have pointed out to them
the Kalmeeks, a low-browed, broad-nosed type of
men, sun-browned, wizened, and squat, the ughest in
Russia ; these are the original Huns, ferocious in their
day, very peaceful and stupid now, and below even
the level of the Kirghiz in inteUigence.

52 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA v
The chief Turkish tribes to-day are the Yakuts,
on the Lena, the Kirghiz, the Uzbeks, of whom there
are a considerable number in Bokhara and Khiva, the
Turkomans, and Osmanh, the Turks themselves, and
they have aU something of the Hun about them.
Their history is Hunnish history. A deformed and
brutal people were the hordes of the Huns; there
were many cripples among them and people of distorted
features, many dwarfs. They were the crueUest
people that have ever been, and probably that is
why they have such a name for ugliness. Cruelty
and ugliness of feature go together. Even the most
refined torturers of the Spanish Inquisition must
have been ugly. There is something terrifying in
the aspect of cruelty. It is an aspect of mania, and
when it comes out in the race must be caUed racial
mania or aberration.
Successive hordes of pagans rolled forward, and the
story of each forward movement of this kind is the
same. Each wave, however, seemed to roll farther
than the one before and gather in power and volume
to the point where it multitudinously broke. The
Asiatic heathen were soon over the Volga and across
Russia ; it was they who set the North German tribes
moving and gave an impetus to the plundering and
ransacking of the Western world. They astonished
even the Goths by their ferocity and ughness, and in
a.d. 376 the Goths had to appeal to the Romans

v THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES 53
for protection. The Emperor Valens delayed to
answer, and a milUon Goths crossed the Danube and
began the conquest of Roman territory. The Huns
joined with the Alani, a wild Finnish tribe supposed
by some to be the present Ossetini of the Northern
Caucasus, and together they obtained glimpses of the
splendour of the South and came into touch with the
people who would ultimately give them their rehgion
— the Saracens.
Away in the background of Central Asia, however,
Mongol tribes were faUing on those Huns who had
remained behind and ever setting new hordes going
westward, and the impact from China was felt all
the way to Germany, and hordes of barbarians began
to appear before the gates of Rome itself. Soon the
Goths burned the capital of the world (a.d. 410). A
quarter of a century later the Huns found a new leader
in AttUa (a.d. 433-453), and became once more the
scourge and terror of aU existent civiUsation. The
Huns of Attila were not just the old Huns who came
out of Mongoha and fought with the Chinese, but a
mixture of all the Turkish tribes of the East. They
worshipped the sword, stuck in the ground, and prayed
before it as others prayed before the Cross. Attila
claimed to have discovered the actual sword of the
God Mars, and through the possession claimed domin
ion over the whole world. He conquered Russia
and Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, the islands of

54 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA v
the Baltic. He crushed the Chinese and Tartars
who were afflicting the rearguard of his nation in the
depths of Asia, negotiating on equal terms with the
Emperor of China. He traversed Persia and Armenia
and what is now Turkey in Asia, broke through to
Syria, and, in alliance with the Vandals, took posses
sion of "Africa." His foUowers crossed the Mediter
ranean, devastating the cities of Greece, Italy, and
Gaul. Rome abandoned her Eastern Empire to the
Huns in a.d. 446 ; and, after Attila's death, the Van
dals, a people of Slavonic origin, sacked Rome once
more. Western civilisation seemed to be extinguished,
and a barbarian became King of Italy.
What was happening in Central Asia is but vaguely
known. The people who lived on the horse at the
time of Herodotus still Uved on the horse as they do
at this day, on mare's milk, koumis, and horseflesh,
camping amidst great herds of horses, the same breed
as the Siberian ponies which the Cossacks ride now.
There were feuds of the hordes, raids, massacres;
the Chinese are said to have attempted to introduce
Buddhism, though without much success. There
was much intermarriage of Turks and Mongols.
On the other hand, the conquering Huns returned
with wives of the races of the West, and with a smat
tering of Western ideas, bringing even with them the
name of Christianity, and some Christian ideas.
Christians began to appear in the ranks of the pagans.

v THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES 55
In the seventh century Mahomet was born, and the
characteristic reUgion of the East took its start, and was
soon conquering adherents by the sword; armies of
Arabs and Semitic tribes, initiating the propaganda of
Islam, conquered Persia, Syria, and portions of North
ern Africa and of Spain. In the eighth century they
crossed the Oxus, drove hordes of Huns back into the
depths of Asia, captured the rich cities of Bokhara and
Samarkand, and made Mohammedans of aU the people
aU the way to the Indus. So Uzbeks and Turkomans
and Kirghiz and Afghans and the others obtained a
religion which suited their temperament, and there
was comparative peace and trade throughout aU
Turkestan and Persia for many a long year. The next
great disturbance was caused by the ferment of the
Tartars and the mongrel Mongohan Huns, which came
to a head under the leadership of Chingiz Khan (a.d.
1206-1227), who was the next conqueror of the world
springing out of Asia. He made for himself an enor
mous empire, extending from the Sea of Japan to the
River Nieman in Germany, and from the tundras of the
Arctic Circle to the wastes of India and Mesopotamia.
There were in his army idolaters and Judaic, Moham
medan, and Christian converts. He was the Emperor
of the "Moguls" — the word Mogul is the same as
Mongol. Among his feats he laid siege to Pekin, and
starved the Chinese to such a point that they were
forced to kiU and eat every tenth man within the city.

56 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA V
He conquered Bokhara and Samarkand again, crushed
the Russians and the Poles, took Liublin and Cracow,
and, at the battle of Lignitz, defeated the Germans,
filling nine sacks with the right ears of the slain.
Because of Chingiz Khan aU Western Europe trembled.
The manners of the hordes of Chingiz Khan and
his successors were very hke the manners of the old
Huns, and they also brought their flocks with them,
and Uved on roast sheep and roast horse and koumis
as the majority of the dweUers of Central Asia seem
to have ever Uved.
The splendour of the successors of Chingiz Khan
decayed, and Russia and the East gasped and waited
tiU Asia produced another monster — a new conqueror
of the world. In the fourteenth century he arose, the
worst of aU, Tamerlane the Great, caUed Timour the
Lame, who conquered everything that had ever been
conquered before by Tartar or Hun. Under him
Mohammedanism reached a great splendour and came
nearest to world-domination.
Both Bokhara and Samarkand fell to Tamerlane.
He conquered great stretches of Persia, Syria, Turkey,
the Caucasus, India, Russia and Siberia, besieged
Moscow and Delhi in two successive years, dethroned
twenty-seven kings, harnessed kings to his chariot
instead of horses.
I spent the May of this year in what is particu
larly the land of Tamerlane, a sort of Russian India

Central Asian Jewesses

V THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES 57
on the northern side of Hindu Kush, a country with
a majestic past but with Uttle present. Tamerlane
the Tartar was once Emperor of Asia, and a poten
tate of greater fame than Alexander. At the head
of the Tartar hordes he conquered aU the nations
of the East and ravaged every land, committing every
where deeds of splendour and of barbaric cruelty. The
cruelty that is in the Cossack and the Russian, and the
taste for barbaric splendour, comes directly from his
Tartars. But the greatness of the Tartars has passed
away — they are aU tradesmen and waiters to-day —
and the greatness of the Russians has come about —
they are aU soldiers. "Is it not touching?" said a
Russian to me one day at dinner in a Petersburg
restaurant, pointing at the perfect Tartar waiters.
"These people under whose yoke we were are reaUy
stronger and more terrible than we are, but they are
now our servants, waiters, valets. If we had become
Mohammedans, the Tartars would stiU be greater
than we. It is the Christian idea that has triumphed
in us."
There stand among the deserts of Turkestan and
beside the irrigated cotton fields of a new civilisation,
the remains and ruins of a mediaeval glory, the mosques
and tombs and palaces of the days of Timour and of
his loved wife, Bibi Khanum. The Russians are not
touched by archaeology, and have no interest in
pagans, even splendid pagans. English people have

58 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA v
considerable difficulty in obtaining permission to enter
the country. So Tamerlane is Uttle thought of. But
in England, in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries,
he had a tremendous fame — you feel that fame in
Marlowe's great drama :
Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia !
What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day,
And have so proud a chariot at your heels
And such a coachman as great Tamerlane ?
Shakespeare burlesqued this through the mouth of
Pistol : Shall packhorses
And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia,
Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,
Compare with Caesars, and with Cannibals,
And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with
King Cerberus.
England's opinion was the same as Pistol's, and
the grandeur of Tamerlane was forgotten. Yet in
two successive years he conquered India and Eastern
Russia. He wore what was traditionally held to be
the armour of King David. And, to-day, who so
poor as to do him reverence? Only the beautiful
name of Timour and the ruins of his tombs and mosques
remain, giving a strange atmosphere of mystery and
melancholy to the youngest of Russian colonies.
It is possible now to Unger in the romantic idea
of aU the splendour that has passed away, and to feel

THE HISTORY OF THE TRIBES

59

a strange beauty in Samarkand. I remember reading
some years ago a beautiful prose poem in modern
"impressionist" style, written by Zoe Pavlovska,
who is, I suppose, a Russian, — perhaps a Cossack. It
was the story of pilgrimage to the tomb of Tamer
lane's most loved princess :
I shall go to the tomb of the Emperor's daughter. It will
be night, but a night when the moon is full ; its clear light will
guide me through the mazes of the streets of the city. These
will be narrow. At dark corners I shall be afraid — muffled
forms will glide past me in the deep shadows of the walls.
Now and then a light will shine from some open window.
I shall stop and hear the chanting of poems, and will wait to
listen, swaying in time with the rhythm.
I shall hear 
" Who will converse with me now that the yellow camels are
gone? There is no friend for the stranger, save the stranger."
Then I shall creep out of the town by a turquoise-tiled gate.
There they will ask me, "Where do you go?" I shall answer,
showing them my box of jade, " I go to the tomb of Bibi Khanum,
to lay this at her feet." I will then show them the flower in my
box. When I have reached the place I shall stand below the
broken arches, and will see that they are bluer than the blue
night-sky beyond them ; the moon will make strange shadows.
It will seem as if giant warriors are guarding her. Coming to
the place where her body lies I shall say, "O beloved of Timour"
— he who sleeps under a deep green sea of jade — "I have
brought for you a flower." Then, though in a cloudless sky,
the moon will slowly hide herself, the purple shadows will
lengthen till all is black save where she lies ; there each jewel

60 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA v
on her tomb will glow into its own colour, as if lighted from
within, and by this faint light I shall see the pale hands and
faces of four Tartar warriors who will lift the stone which covers
her. As they put it on the ground they will once more become
one with the darkness.
"Brothers, I am afraid; stay near me." Thus shall I cry
to them. There will be no answer, only a silence made more
desolate by the continuous throbbing round of a distant drum.
Slowly from the mingled light of the jewels a form will
rise in garments of the colour of ripe pomegranates worked with
flowers in gold; some apple-green ribbons will fall from her
shoulder, and under her breasts will be a sash of vivid crimson.
She will wear on her head a crown of jewels and flowers and dull
gold leaves ; jade and amethyst drops will fall from this crown
on either side of her face, which will be painted tulip-pink and
her lips scarlet; her eyes will be rimmed with black jewels
ground into powder.
Then, gazing at her, I shall lay at her feet the flower from
my garden, and, smiling, she will give me an amber poppy.
She will say, looking into my eyes, "You ask for sleep — I
would give my eternity of slumber for one moment of that
sorrow I called life."
The Great War of to-day makes the past more
melancholy, and, as the centuries roll out with ever
newer sorrows and calamities and strifes, the faces
in history seem paler, sadder. The twiUght of obliv
ion deepens. The history of man becomes more mel
ancholy.

VI
TO TASHKENT
The country east of Samarkand is much greener
than the country west of it. It was interesting to
note that the farther east I went from the shores
of the Caspian the less did the desert predominate.
There was abundant hfe on the plains; many horses
grazing, many camels carrying grey marble for the
building of new palaces, many sheep. At the rail
way stations were Sarts, Kirghiz, Afghans, occasional
Hindus, Jews — not Russian Jews, but polygamous
Eastern Jews, a rich, secluded, conservative tribe,
who wiU not own their Russian brethren or sit down
with them at meat — at least, so a Jew in the train
informed me.
Samarkand is outside the protectorate of Bokhara,
and takes its stand now as a city of the Russian Em
pire. It is also a great Mohammedan centre, as
much by tradition and history as by present fact ; but
it is now completely under Russian influence, and the
future which it has is one which will show itseU more
and more purely Russian. Already there are 25,000
Russians there. The city is divided by one long
boulevard into two parts, native and Russian, and it
61

62 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vi
may be surmised that the present state of Samarkand
foreshadows the future state of Bokhara, and that
those three or four houses which form the Russian
part of Bokhara wiU at length find themselves the
centre of a great Russian city, standing face to face
with the Eastern and ancient town. What a history
has Samarkand, both in legend and in history! It
was founded by a fabulous person in 4000 B.C., but
only emerged into history as a place conquered by
Alexander of Macedon. It was successively conquered
by the various monarchs of the Huns and the Tartars
and by proselytising Arabs and by the Uzbeks, and
at last by the Russians in 1868. Its whole history is
one of being conquered. Its people to-day are the
most gentle in the world, wear no weapons, commit
no violence, never even seem to get angry — I refer,
of course, to the native Sarts.
A fine chain of cities — Askhabad, Merv, Bokhara,
Samarkand, Tashkent — and strange to reaUse them
to be aU on the railway and in direct economic com
munication with Europe ; it is possible to take a train
from Petersburg to Tashkent, or to Bokhara, or to
the Persian frontier without change. During the
week in which I was at Bokhara and Samarkand work
was begun on the new railway which is to run from
Tashkent to Kuldzha, in Chinese Tartary, and in a
Uttle whUe, perhaps, we may see an agreement made
and work begun in the construction of the raUway to

Fine-Looking Sarts in Old Tashkent

vi TO TASHKENT 63
India through Persia. Russia, stopped in the Far East
by the emergence of modern Japan, and thwarted in
the Balkans, seemed in the time just before the Great
War to be concentrating her attention on what may
be caUed the Middle East. How open Europe is
becoming to the East, and how easy of access is the
East becoming to us! The friendship of Enghsh
and Russians in Central Asia must mean a larger,
stronger Ufe for both Empires. And the development
of Asia can mean much to the home Russians; they,
as we, are inclined to take their own land and their
capital cities as the only places of interest in the world.
Already, reading some of the Moscow and Peters
burg newspapers, you may alter Kipling's phrase and
ask : "What do they know of Russia who only Mos
cow know?"
Tashkent is the capital of Russian Central Asia,
and is a weU-buUt city extending over an enormous
area. It occupies a space something hke a fifth of
that which London occupies. There is no crowding
anywhere. The houses, for fear of earthquakes, have
in no case more than two storeys, and seldom that.
There are many public gardens, where you may sit
at white-spread tables and drink narzan or koumis in
the dense shade of thickly foliaged trees. Tashkent
is a city on an oasis. It has wonderful vegetation.
Along aU the streets run brisk streams of fresh water,
conducted on the irrigation system from the river.

64 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vi
There is a noise aU day and aU night of running water,
so that if you wake in the hush of night and listen
to it, you may imagine for a moment that you are
Uving in a vUlage among hUls aleak with thousands
of cascades and rivulets. How useful is this water
supply to Tashkent! There is no need for water-
carts; strong natives are employed with buckets to
scoop water from the streams and fling it across the
cobbles aU day. So effectual is their work that there
is never a whiff of dust, and, indeed, it is occasionally
necessary to wear galoshes, the streets having been
made so muddy. The streams freshen the air, keep
down the dust, give hfe to the lofty poplars of the
many avenues, and they are the convenient element
for thousands of Mohammedans to wash in before
saying their prayers. The streams make the town
into the country. As you walk down the pavemented
High Street, and look in at the truly fine shops of
Tashkent, your attention may stiU be diverted by the
dainty water wagtail that is nesting near by, and as
you wait for the electric tram you observe the small
heath butterfly flitting along, as much at home as
upon the mountains. At night, whilst aU the Rus
sians, in white clothes, parade up and down and gossip,
and the moon looks down from above the gigantic
trees of the gardens and the main streets, the streams
stiU take attention, for there proceeds from them a
tumultuous, everlasting, raging chorus of frog-caUing.

vi TO TASHKENT 65
Up the many long streets from the old town to
the new come strings of gentle-looking camels —
low-backed, single-humped, long-necked camels, with
sometimes as many as twenty necklaces of blue beads
from below their ears. The horses, too, are much
adorned with carpet cloths and coloured strings that
keep the flies away. The high-wheeled carts of Bok
hara have become too common in Tashkent to attract
attention. Altogether, indeed, the Orient strikes one
less romantically here than in Bokhara. The native
population of 200,000 is very dirty and disorderly ; the
women, behind their veUs, not nearly so strict or so
careful ; the houses not so weU kept — aU in dirt and
ruin. On the roofs of the mosques are thousands of
red poppies in bloom, and occasionally the crane's
nest is to be seen on the tops of the towers whence the
muezzin caUs to prayer. There are booths of copper
smiths and carpet-makers and silk-workers, and cara
vanserai where aU manner of picturesque Moslems are
to be seen lying on divans and carpets or squatting
over basins of tea; but aU is second-hand and down-
at-heel after Bokhara. With the coming of the
Russians the angel of death has breathed on all that
was once the grandeur of the Orient at Tashkent.
Once there were np Russians in the land, and then
what is now old Tashkent was the only Tashkent ; it
was a great Moslem city that could be pointed to
geographically as such. But as the fine Russian

66 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vi
streets were laid down, and the large shops opened,
and the cathedrals were buUt, and the gardens laid
out, the old uphUl-and-down-dale labyrinth of the
Eastern city slowly changed to a curiosity and an
anachronism. It faded before the eyes. The next
year the Russians were to celebrate the fiftieth anni
versary of the conquest of the town — only the fiftieth !
Poor old Tashkent, shpping into the sere and yeUow
leaf, passing away even as one looked, always decreas
ing whilst the new town is always increasing — there
is much pathos in its destiny.
The natives are mostly Sarts, an absolutely un
ambitious people, honest, quiet, sober. Scarcely any
crime ever takes place among them. A week in the
year they are said to go off on a spree and get rid
of the sin in them. For the rest of the time they
are Uke lambs. They are uninterested in every
thing except smaU deals in the wares they make or
seU. Their wives have rings in their nostrils for
adornment — so I observed when the sun shone brightly
on their black veUs. A strange sight the electric
tram which goes from the old town to the new and
back again — crowded with men in white turbans and
long robes and with Eastern women in their veUs.
The foundation of the society of new Tashkent is laid
by the regiments quartered there, and the fine shops
exist chiefly for the custom of officers and their wives.
A Grand Duke, who was banished for giving a Crown

Outside a German Shop in Old Tashkent

The Russian Teacher: A Native School in Tashkent

vi TO TASHKENT 67
jewel to a favourite lady, lives here in exile, but he
is an aged man now and receives few guests. High
official personages constantly visit the colony, and
consequently stay at Tashkent. The whole atmos
phere is military, and there is an unusual smartness
everywhere. Especially do you notice how well
dressed the women are at the theatres and in the
gardens, and the men accompanying them nearly all
wear the sword. The middle-class Russian is out
of sight, and the peasant labourer is rare, owing to
the fact that the Sarts work at gd. a day, but the
Russian at is. or is. 3d. There is, however, a dandy
Armenian element; young hawkers and shoeblacks
and barbers who appear in the evening in white col
lars and cheap serges, with combed locks under felt
hats, with canes in their hands.
Tashkent has now many schools, from the impor
tant Corpus, the military college where officers' sons
are educated, to the Uttle native school where the
Russian schoolmaster tries to give Russian to the Sart.
I visited the splendid miUtary school, and was only
sorry to be too late in the season to see an hour of
Russian football, the game being very popular with
the boys. Most of the professors at this school are
officers, and I met a charming staff-captain who had
known several English correspondents during the
war in Manchuria. The teacher of French gave me
some interesting photographs.

68 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vi
There are six cinema shows at Tashkent, two
theatres, an open-air theatre, a skating rink, and many
smaU diversions. The native turns up in the cinema,
and there are generally long Unes of turbaned figures
in the front of the theatre. At the real theatres it is
necessarily those who know Russian who take the seats.
At the open-air theatre they play The Taming of the
Shrew, at the Coliseum the Doll's House and Artsi-
basheff's Jealousy. The town has two newspapers,
and on the day on which I arrived I found that the
leading article of the Courier of Turkestan was entitled
"The State of Affairs in Ulster." All Europe seemed
to have its eyes on our politics, and Europe extends
now as far east as Tashkent, though it is of " Central
Asia" that that city claims to be the capital.
A wonderful place Tashkent. Cherries ripen there
by the ist of May, strawberries are seven copecks a
pound in mid-May. Everything ripens three weeks
earUer than in Russia proper. It is a fresh, fragrant
city — an interesting curiosity among the cities of the
world. The Russians have in it a city worth possess
ing. It must be said they have done their best to
possess it, not merely in the letter of the law, but
jby improving it and governing it and giving it a
Russian atmosphere. Despite camels and mosques,
and natives in their turbans, and the sad caU of the
muezzin, you feel all the time as you go up and down
the streets of Tashkent that you are in Russia.

Tashkent: A Football Match at the College

.Pleasant Country Outside Tashkent

VI TO TASHKENT 69
The Kaufmann Square is, I suppose, the noblest
position in the new city, aU the avenues and pros
pects being used to frame the monument which stands
there. This is the statue of General Kaufmann,
who took possession of the land for the Russians.
On one side of the monument is a fierce, dark, enor
mous, two-headed eagle in stone. But between its
claws this year a dove had its nest. From behind
the eagle General von Kaufmann stands and looks
over his new-conquered country. On the other side
of the monument there is the following inscription:
"I pray you bury me here that everyone may know that
here is true Russian earth in which no Russian need be ashamed
to lie." {From a letter of General Kaufmann, 1878.)
Rather interesting that this should be said by a
Russian with a German name.

VII
THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST
The Russian princes, Yaroslaf Vsevolodovitch and
his son, Alexander Nevsky, did homage to the Mongol
khans in the thirteenth century. Timour brought
back thousands of Russian slaves after his conquests,
and Russia lay under the yoke of the Tartars. The
Empire of Asia lasted only a Uttle while in the hands
of the dynasty of Tamerlane, and the Uzbek and the
Kirghiz Cossacks appeared, waging a holy war for
Islam. At the present moment there are one mU-
Uon Uzbeks in the province of Bokhara, three hun
dred and fifty thousand in Khiva, and five hundred
thousand spread over the rest of Russian Turkestan,
and a sprinkhng in Afghanistan. The Uzbeks formed
three kingdoms, Bokhara, Khiva, and Kokand.
The Emirs of these states are to this day Uzbeks,
but are now httle more than Russian civU servants.
A dependence of Kokand was Pamir, where the Kara-
kirghiz wandered with their flocks — people now
wandering on the Thian-Shan mountains in Ferghan
and Seven Rivers Land, also in parts of Sirdaria and
70

vh THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST 71
Eastern Turkestan. The Kirghiz Cossacks came south
from what is now the Akmolinsk Steppe in Siberia.
This race, a sort of mongrehsation of Huns and Tar
tars, diffused^itself over the whole desert from Lake
Balkhash to the Ural. In the seventeenth century
they were an organised and powerful nation, with a
Khan at Tashkent; but in the succeeding century
there was faction and dissension, and the nation
divided off into three large hordes. The great horde
went to Seven Rivers Land in the Northern Ural,
the middle horde to the Steppes of Akmolinsk, and
the Uttle horde to Sirdaria and the Ural. From that
day their miUtary spirit seems to have steadily waned.
To-day they are as peaceful as their herds. During
the years 1846 to 1854, the Russians began to pene
trate the deserts of Seven Rivers Land and take the
Kirghiz over as subjects. There was very Uttle actual
fighting tiU the Russians came into contact with the
Uzbeks of Kokand, whom, however, they fought and
overthrew with considerable slaughter. Verney fell
in 1854, Pishpek and Tokmak in 1862. Then the
Russians turned westward, and took AuUe Ata, Chim-
kent, and Tashkent. In 1867 Seven Rivers Land
was made into a Russian province, and the stream of
Russian colonisation turned out of Siberia southward
toward India.
One stream of colonists was moving southward
from Siberia, another was moving eastward from the

72 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vn
Volga. One observes the rise of the Russian power.
In the sixteenth century the Russian had begun to
take the upper hand, and Kazan and Astrakhan,
though predominantly Tartar cities, feU to the as
saults of Christian arms. In the eighteenth century
the peasant colonists had already come into contact
with the Kirghiz Cossacks, and boundary Unes had
to be drawn. Orenburg feU into Russian hands in
1743, and peaceful penetration foUowed miUtary
success. In 1847 the great horde of the Kirghiz
became Russian subjects, and aU the races of Central
Asia began to talk about the coming advance of the
Russians and the need to fight them. The Russian
war of conquest was consummated in the East. From
Tashkent the Russians proceeded to make war on
the Bokharese. In vain did the Emir of Bokhara
demand the evacuation of Tashkent by the Russians.
In 1866 the Bokharese were defeated at the battle of
Irdzhar, and Khodzkent was taken by storm. After
heavy fighting with Uzbeks and Turkomans and great
slaughter of the Mohammedans, they approached
Samarkand, which at last they occupied at the invita
tion of the inhabitants. In 1868 a treaty was made
between the Emir of Bokhara and the Tsar, whereby
Samarkand and district passed to Russia.
In 1869 a Russian army crossed the Caspian and
laid siege to Krasnovodsk, and attempts were made
to push across the desert along the northern frontier

vn THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST 73
of Persia. The Turkomans, however, offered an heroic
resistance, and it was not until 1880, when Skobelef
was given charge of the task of subduing the tribes,
that Russia made progress. At the beginning of
December, 1880, the army of Turkestan, under Colo
nel Kuropatkin, made over five hundred miles prog
ress across the flying sands and took the fortress
of Dengil-Tepe. Askhabad was taken, and all the
fortified points in Transcaspia. Transcaspia was
made into a Russian province in 1881.
In 1884 there was a short struggle, and then the
ancient city of Merv feU into Russian hands, and
the Enghsh began to view the Russian progress with
uneasiness. There was even such a word coined as
"mervousness," and Russophobes had Merv on the
brain. It must be admitted we were rather backward
not to treat with the Russians and obtain definite
trade treaties at that time. For we lost and Ger
many gained a great deal of trade which we might
still have retained.
Bokhara and Khiva came under Russian protec
tion. The Central Asian Railway was built, and
Russia became the most important Power in the
Moslem world of Central Asia, owning as subjects so
many milUons of Kirghiz, Sarts, Uzbeks, Turkomans,
Tekintsi, Tartars, and being neighbours of Turks,
Persians, Afghans and what not. Never was such a
stretch of territory, so many new subjects, or so

74 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vn
much trade and interest won with so httle trouble.
It was won almost by mUitary processions. It must
be remembered that it could not have been held, nor
would Russia have any real footing there to-day, but
for the peasant pioneers who foUowed the armies
and began settling the land. And the peasants
would not have remained if the Government of
Russia had not helped them with loans, found them
suitable plots for their viUages, and irrigated the
desert. Now Turkestan and Russian Central Asia are
extremely loyal, peaceful and happy Russian colonies.
RebeUion was put down with such severity by the
Russians, the defeats were with such slaughter, that
the Asiatic tribesmen learned that Russia was too
powerful to be trifled with; they knew they had
found their masters, and submitted absolutely. The
Russians overcowed their spirits, they felt there was
some magic power behind them, and that human
resistance was vain. Then fear gave way to placid
acceptance of mastery, and the Russians began build
ing churches and schools and fortresses and barracks,
shops, towns, viUages, and no one said them nay.
Trade passed into the hands of Russian merchants,
and new towns sprang up beside the old ones — new
Bokhara beside old Bokhara, new Tashkent beside old
Tashkent, and the Moslems saw unveiled the wUl of
God. They could not have been a very warlike

vn THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST 75
people reaUy. They are not Uke the Mohammedans
under our rule or the Turks, though it is quite possible
that if, as a result of this war, a great quantity of
Armenia and Turkey fell into Russian hands, the
Mohammedans there would accept their fate as destiny
and settle down to hve as peacefully as their fellow-
beUevers of Russian Central Asia. These are meek.
During the past winter the Germans have been en
deavouring to stir up Islam to fight England, France
and Russia. Germany and Turkey have found a
common ground. The Arabs in Mesopotamia are
fighting a holy war against us. Persia has wavered;
there has been ferment in India, there might have
been a rising in Afghanistan, but there has been no
chance of a rising of those Mohammedans who are
Russian subjects. AU the aborigines of Russian
Central Asia are devoted to peace, and none have
any quarrel with the Russian Empire.
Russia, of course, has considerable control over
her Mohammedan subjects because of the railways.
The development of the lines in Central Asia has
undoubtedly been a wise Imperial measure on Russia's
part, and they are the best fruits of her conquest.
The construction afforded certain interesting engineer
ing problems, though it may be remarked that Russian
engineers generally succeed in building railways over
plains, even over deserts, but fail when they come to
mountains.

76 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vn
The Central Asian RaUway had for its original
object the pacification of the Tekintsi, and was a
strategic line from the Transcaspian post of Kras
novodsk to the oasis of Kizil Arvat. It was built
over the desert, and was at first regarded as of a
temporary military character. It cannot now be
regarded as a weU-built railway, is very loose, and
trains are forced to go very slowly, and it is con
stantly in danger of sand obstruction through storms.
In the progress of the miUtary operations against the
Tekintsi, Geok-Tepe was stormed in January, 1881,
and the first train went through to Kizil Arvat in
December of the same year. Kizil Arvat remained
the terminus until the fray with the Afghans, on
March 30th, 1885, when the prolongation was under
taken seriously. In June, 1885, the Tsar decided to
continue the railway towards the frontier of Afghan
istan, and by December nth, 1885, the Russian
mihtary railway gangs had taken the rails 136 miles ,
on to Askhabad, at the northern Umit of Persia.
Merv was annexed, the rails went on to Merv. By
December, 1886, the railway had gone on to Chard
zhui, on the Oxus. The red river was bridged, and
the railway went on to Bokhara and Samarkand.
A state service of steamers was started on the Oxus
between Chardzhui and Khiva. In 1888 the com
pletion of the Une to Samarkand was celebrated,
and the raUway was consecrated with ecclesiastical

vn THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST 77
pomp. The Russians have always given the impres
sion that they did not intend to develop their rail
ways, and yet they have gone on developing them
aU the same. They have gone south from Merv to
the River Kush, on the Afghanistan frontier, and
east from Khodgent to Andigan and Kokand. They
have brought a main line from Petrograd, by way of
Orenburg, over the deserts of Sirdaria, to the cities
of Turkestan and Tashkent, and have thus a railway
aU the way from the Baltic to within a few hundred
mUes of India. In February, 1916, trains were first
run on the first reach of the new railway that is to
join Russia and Western China. It is now possible
to go to Chimkent by train, and possibly next year
to Auhe Ata. If EngUsh were in charge of this ter
ritory there would probably be more railways by
now. In any case, the chief value of the railways has
been the means they afforded of bloodless pacification
of tribes. But their future is not so much a military
future as one of trade and Imperial development.
Russia has made her Imperial conquests bv force
oiarms, ancrsaleguarded them by railways and col
onisation. m It should be remembered that before and
alter ana aU the time runs the natural stream of
colonisation. The ultimate bond of unity is that
which comes from the national family ties of coloni
sation. Nothing stands in Russia's way, and she is
always quietly colonising the empty East.

78 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vn
An interesting yearly chart might be issued by the
Russian Government showing the waves of coloni
sation : the new spots in forests and deserts that
have been given names, the new farms, the thicken
ing of the population in the nearer-in districts, the
efflorescence of Russian enterprise at the farthest-
out points whither they have gone. Several hun
dred Russian famiUes are settled in Northern Persia,
several hundred also in Mongoha and China. The
movement goes on, and it is not primarily due to
the density of population in European Russia. AU
Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under
rather than over-populated. There is plenty of
room. Why, then, should Russia increase? or why
not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia.
The old world is hoUow at the core, and Russia has
access to that great, wide hoUowness, stands at the
door of it and stares into the great emptiness. Then
her people are wanderers; they have the wandering
spirit. A cross wind blows over them, and they are
gipsies — the roving heart rules the mind. They love
the road and the quest. They are seekers. Even
the most materialistic of them, the least reUgious in
their outward expression, nourish dreams of success
and ideas of golden climes to be found "beyond the
horizon." We should caU many of them ne'er-do-
weUs, though as a matter of fact they are all intent
to do weU somewhere. They take up farms and give

vn THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST 79
up farms with too Uttle scruple, and then go farther,
disgusting the official eye in one district, but know
ing they wUl deUght other official eyes farther on
when they turn up with carts and cattle and belong
ings, at some verdant, empty wilderness stiU farther
away from the centre of Russia.

VIII
ON THE ROAD
There was some difficulty in getting on from Tash
kent. I had two British notes, but no bank would
change them. The clerks held the paper upside
down, took it to their coUeagues, who were supping
tea whilst they worked at their ledgers, took it to
the manager to show him a curiosity, and finally
returned it to me "with much regret." "Don't
think we are savages," said one bank clerk, "because
we do not accept your money. The fact is, we've
never seen it before and cannot even read what is
written on it." Another clerk, a sympathiser, ad
vised me that there was an Enghshman in Tashkent,
a merchant who did much business and had an account
in the bank, bade me go to him, for he would know
what the notes were worth, and would no doubt
accommodate a fellow-countryman. I obtained the
address and sought out my compatriot. His name
was something Uke KeUerman — not very promising.
Behold one of the funniest Enghshmen I ever met —
as clear a German Jew as I'd ever seen in my Ufe,
scarcely speaking Enghsh, and making aU the comic
mistakes which Germans make with our tongue, a
80

vin ON THE ROAD 81
fat, iU-shaven, coUarless old man of a greasy complex
ion, a middleman buying wool and horsehair and
oilcakes and seed from the native Sarts and Jews and
Tartars and Kirghiz. He professed to be very pleased
to meet a feUow-countrymari, and to be yearning for
his "native land" — "a nice house in Kentish Town,
all fog and wet in the streets, a nice fire, puU the
blinds down, and read the 'Daily Telegraaf.'" Every
night in Tashkent he repaired to the public gardens,
took a seat beside the skating rink, and watched the
violent whirl of Armenian youths and their lady friends
on roUer-skates. Each night between ten and twelve
KeUerman might be found in his place, chuckling
to himself at the sight of accidents. "Causts naw^
thing," said he, "and it's such a pleasure to see other
people break their necks or their legs."
Needless to say, he would not touch my notes;
at first thought they might be false, and then offered
me three pounds ten each for them. He said he
wouldn't change them, but would be wiUing to make
a deal and treat it as a matter of business. So I had
to post my money to Moscow.
The next obstruction was from the pohce, who
doubted whether I had permission to wander about
in Central Asia, and it was only after I had myself
looked through the books at the police-station that I
found my name, almost unrecognisably spelt, in the
list of those who had permission. At last I got both

82 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
my money in Russian change and my vise, and was
free to go. So I started my long journey from the
limits of the railway to the frontier of China.
I took train to Kabul Sai, a Uttle station north
of Tashkent, and thence set out across the grass-
covered downs to Chimkent, the first point of im
portance on my journey. I was a Uttle anxious
lest I should be stopped by the station gendarme,
for it was not to be thought that every local pohce
authority would have my name legibly inscribed, and
I did not want to be delayed waiting while Kabul
Sai and a hundred other places wrote to Tashkent
for information. However, I escaped attention, and,
having made a good country dinner (big dinner, I
should rather say) at the station buffet, I lounged
about tiU the train went out of the station, and then,
considering compass and map, I cut across country
and found the road — without questions.
So I got on to my feet in Sirdaria, the land of the
httle horde of the Kirghiz. The plain was dusty
and vast, with a great sky overhead. There were
long-legged beetles that scampered through the dust
of the road, tortoises and their famUies eating grass
and dandehons, and very much taken aback when
picked up and examined. Father Tortoise is big
and green; his children are wee, hke young crabs.
There was no cultivation anywhere in sight ; the first

vm ON THE ROAD 83
grass had already seeded and withered, but thousands
of blue irises were in blossom, and the tah sheaves of
their leaves contrasted strangely with the dying grass
below. The sun was hot, but a fresh, traveUing
wind fairly lifted me as I walked. A chorus of larks
overhead made the prelude to my journey.
The only people on the road were Kirghiz. Far
away on the hiUs I noticed their great flocks of cattle
and the circular tents of the nomads. There were no
viUages. No viUages, because it was hardly "white
man's country"; there was no water to drink. I
thought to make myseU tea, but I reckoned without
my host. Where there should have been streams
there was only a broken parquet of dry mud. No
trees, no shade, no shelter, and, if I should find water,
no fuel. The five post-wagons, drawn each by three
horses and driven by enormously fat Kirghiz drivers
with faces the colour of duU mahogany, went past me
in a cloud of dust, and I watched them away as the
sun was setting. Three-quarters of a mile away they
aU stopped by a wooden bridge. There was evidently
water; perhaps the drivers wanted a drink. I was
very joyful at the prospect of tea. When I got nearer
I found that aU the drivers were saying their Mo
hammedan prayers, and had stopped at the stream
to have the conventional wash. The water was
reddish-brown, with mingled mud ; light could not be
seen through a glass of it.

84 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
I resolved to see what could be obtained at the
Kirghiz tents, put my pack down by the side of the
road, and set off, with a pot in one hand and a bit
of silver in the other. There were three tents on a
hUl, and near them many cows and goats and horses.
I arrived in a whirlwind of dogs, three or four cattle
dogs showing their teeth and barking and snarUng as
they tore round me in circles. Several women were
employed tending immense pans of milk which they
were boihng over bonfires made of roots. They
seemed a trifle scared at first, but when I showed
them the pot and pointed to the bit of silver they
understood, and I was quickly put in possession of
a potful of hot, smoky milk. I carried it carefully
back to the place where I had slung my pack, and
there I sat down, feehng rather lost or accidental,
and I drank the hot milk and munched a bit of bread
which I had brought from the town. The dogs
foUowed me aU the way to my resting-place, but
when they saw me sit down and take things calmly
they retired a distance and kept up a desultory chorus.
So I made my first meal out of doors by the road
side. The next thing was to find a place for the
night. There was no variety in the country, and I
could only choose a place where insects were fewer
and one not over a tortoise's burrow. I had a Ught,
home-made sleeping-sack and a plaid. The sack was
made by sewing two sheets together on three sides.

A Tent oe Lonely Nomads on a Summer Pasture in
Central Asia

Russians and Kirghiz Living Side by Side at the Foot oe the
Mountains

vm ON THE ROAD 85
The sack is a useful institution; it keeps insects
out and is much warmer than open clothing. I had
also a mosquito net, for there are more flies here
than in other parts of the world. Before making
my spread I removed an elegant oak-eggar cater-
piUar. I am always disindined to injure the creep
ing things of the earth, especiaUy on a long journey.
I feel that to a certain extent I am in their charge.
This is a sort of natural superstition. Directly you
kiU something superfluously, horror thriUs you as it
thriUed the ancient mariner who shot the albatross.
I lay down in such a position as to see the sunset
in the evening and the sunrise in the morning. Sunset
was stormy, but somewhere among the rose-tinged
clouds a late lark sang the day out. Then stars ap
peared behind cloud curtains, and the night breeze
carried his messages along the heath. The first breath
of night was cool and pleasant, but about an hour after
sunset the weather changed entirely. It became very
hot and airless, and lightnings shot across all horizons.
A shower of rain came down, and the stars disap
peared. As I lay considering the sky I heard far off
the chattering of children — chattering, laughing, and
occasional bursts of singing. The sounds came
nearer, and presently there emerged a troop of camels,
twelve huge camels stalking out of the night, and on
their backs men, women and children, tents, goods.
A Uttle family of wanderers crossing the wilderness

86 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
in the night ! They came so near to me that the first
camel snorted as he passed, and it was necessary for
me to sit up and warn the others off. I had not an
ticipated that there might be people traveUing across
country in the night. They passed, and the quietness
of night resumed its sway. The clouds thickened,
and lightning shimmered under them; it began to
rain again, and then stopped, and the stars once more
came up, and then the clouds thickened once more,
and once more rain came down on me with rapid tap
ping. So the whole night, and it was a pleasant tem
pering of the heat. I slept happily, and it was a
long while before I wakened.
When I reopened my eyes it was to look at the
seven stars standing over a blue-grey, vaporous cloud,
and looking hke some uncanny Asiatic frying-pan
over a fire. There was scarcely a star but for them,
and south and east and west were all dark. It did
not occur to me that it was near dawn. But sud
denly a voice of hquid melody burst from the sky,
and after it, as at a signal, a whole chorus of larks
sang together away high up in the rain-wet vault of
the sky.
I slept an hour longer, and it was morning. For
my breakfast I visited another Kirghiz tent, and this
time obtained a pot of mare's milk. A dwarf-like old
woman was squatting on a carpet in the middle of
the tent, and when I said "koumis" she at once

vm ON THE ROAD 87
got up and brought me a taU wooden jar. I held
my pot, she tipped up the jar, and poured out the
koumis. Good that Kirghiz women are not so strictly
hidden as other Mohammedans of their sex !
About ten o'clock I fell in with two soldiers walk
ing to Verney (some six hundred miles), their guns
and knapsacks having gone before by wagon. They
reckoned they would be more than a month on the
road. No doubt they would march the journey in
better style with a whole column, but as it was they
were inclined to stop every two hundred yards and
take off their boots; one wore jackboots, and rags
for stockings, and the other Kirghiz sandals tied with
string over bare feet. He told me hght shoes were
better than heavy boots, but I knew better.
"Heavy going?" said I.
"Yes, heavy. No water, and no one understands
us in the Kirghiz tents."
We shared what remained of my koumis.
"Where do you come from?"
"Voronezh fort. And you?"
"From England."
"Have you served in the army?"
"No. We don't need to unless we want to, you
know; our soldiers receive wages."
"How much?"
"Fifty copecks a day," said I, "and a premium
when they retire."

88 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
"And they only give us seventy copecks a month.
There's a difference! How long do you have to
serve? Ah! We have only three years to serve.
But I've seen your soldiers," said the Russian.
"Where?"
"At Teheran. We stood side by side with them
there. But afterwards it was found we were not
necessary, and they moved us back."
One of the soldiers was inclined to talk, the other
not. Suddenly the silent one asked : "What are you
doing here — making plans?"
"No," said I apprehensively; "I am just walking
along through the country to see what it is Uke. After
wards I write about it."
"For a Ubrary, so to speak?"
"That's it."
After much self-questioning on the subject of where
water was to be found next, we came at last to a
brook where there was clear water. It was warm
and salt to the taste, but I decided to make tea. The
soldiers sat by and grinned incredulously. I should
not have been able to Ught a fire, but that, Uke the
cunning younger brother in the fairy-tale, I had
been picking up every bit of wood that I chanced to
see along the roadway. I had early reahsed how
difficult it was to find fuel and how precious any
stray bit of wood reaUy was. By the stream there
was nothing to burn but hay. "Now shift your-

vm ON THE ROAD 89
selves," said I, "and go and find some dry hay, the
driest ; we shaU need aU the fuel we can get." They
obeyed Uke good soldiers, and the fire burned and the
kettle boiled and the tea was made. What tea ! No
one would have touched it in Tashkent, but out here
on the road we drank it to the last drop and left the
tea-leaves parched.
The soldiers then stretched themselves out to
sleep, and I went on. A mile on I met a Kirghiz
lad carrying a scythe on his back, and he rejoiced in
my company and talked to me exuberantly in his
native tongue. I rephed to him in Russian, but as
he did not understand that, but stiU went on talking,
I reverted for amusement to EngUsh. One thing was
clear — he admired my ring very much, and several
times he took up my hand as we walked and looked
at the ring and exclaimed.
When we got to his tent I bade him fetch me some
mare's milk, and so I got my evening meal. I had
never tasted koumis before this day, and had gener
aUy regarded it as more in the nature of medicine
than food. I knew that Russians suffering from
catarrh of the stomach and internal troubles were
ordered by doctors to go to Kirghiz country and Uve
exclusively on koumis. Now it seemed I had to hve
on it, more or less, for several weeks. Some say it
is as invigorating as champagne ; I do not know. It
is certainly a pleasant drink and good food.

90 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
That night I slept out tiU ten, and then thunder
and the rain forced me to pack up and search for
shelter. EventuaUy a Uttle old man whom I met in
the dark conducted me to a Kirghiz caravanserai.
Sarai is Russian for a shed or barn, and the caravan
serai is the shed where the caravan puts in, otherwise
an inn. I was accommodated on an old carpet on a
dried mud floor. There were a score of men in the
room. Some were snoring, some were smoking hook
ahs, one was playing a three-stringed guitar, and
the rest were squatting round a httle kerosene lamp
on the floor, dealing out grimy cards, caUing out
numbers, gathering in copecks.
The roof of the inn was aU canes and earth, and
I surmised that grass was growing above it. The
waUs were tattered and old, and occasionally a fat
scorpion wandered along them. There was a black
and white duck in one corner sitting on a basket of
eggs. I lay away from the walls. "Not good to
sleep indoors," I reflected; "fresher and quieter on
the heath ; but I don't want to get soaked."
After my night in the Kirghiz caravanserai I was
regaled in the morning with miUet bread and tea.
My host charged me 2d. for bed and breakfast, and
I resumed my journey. It was over a moorland
country, high and windswept. AU day I was chmb
ing uphiU to view points, or plunging downhiU into
the rough pits that lay between them. The sun was

vm ON THE ROAD 91
a ghost in the haze of the sky; there was a tem
pering of the Ught, and even now and then a cloud
shadow cast over the fields, and it was dehcious to
look at the myriads of crimson poppies set in
meadows of rank grass.
I was in better country; there were more streams,
more people, more cattle. There were snowy moun
tains on the horizon. Some freshness from the snow
came from them. I sat on a sun-bathed crown of the
downs and watched the lambs playing ; white, brown,
yeUow, black lambs, very pretty to look at, very
Uvely. And immense camel herds came stalking up
to me as if released from some pen, groaning, whin
ing, grunting, lying in the dust and roUing over,
getting up again convulsively, tolling the lugubriously
sounding beUs that hang under their necks. There
were many baby camels no bigger than donkeys; as
they came along they indulged in ungainly scamper
ing, which made it look as if their hind legs were
fighting their fore legs.
Pleasant for me to sit and watch them idly ! How
different the feelings of a dozen prisoners whom I
saw being marched along my road by two armed
guards, a pitiful httle troop of men, some of them
stripped to the waist, because they thought it cooler
so, aU very dusty and limp, and all carrying in their
hands blue, empty kettles which they hoped to fill
at springs or streams by the way. Alas ! there was

92 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
no water fit to drink anywhere along that road !
Poor prisoners. What to them were poppy fields,
or camel herds, or beautiful views ! There was prob
ably just one thought in each and every one's head :
"When shaU I get a drink?" or "When shaU we
come to a piece of shade?"
The prisoners went on in the dust; I remained
behind in the free air. In the afternoon I saw a
samovar steaming outside a mud hut, and so went up
and was aUowed to have tea with a Kirghiz family.
Not nomads these Kirghiz, but settled inhabitants
with passports or papers. The Russian Government
is very anxious to get these wandering folk out of
tents into immovable dweUings. There squatted
down to tea the owner of the hut, in a rust-coloured
cloak; his wife, in a bright yeUow "cover-aU" —
hold-aU, you might almost say; a boy, in white
cotton slops; and a httle dusky girl, naked to the
waist, but wearing cotton trousers, having a silver
chain round her neck, and her black hair in twelve
long and slender plaits, each loaded at the end with
a httle silver weight that kept them from getting
mixed up and looking untidy. The mother, in yel
low, had a sort of wire puzzle in her ears for ear
rings, on her head a high, white turban. She was by
no means a beauty. She looked as if originaUy she
had been made without a mouth, and a neighbour
had opened a place for it with a blunt knife. The

vm ON THE ROAD 93
Kirghiz women are not by any means feminine or
attractive in appearance. As we squatted, each with
a basin in our hands, in came a neighbour from the
fields. She wore a white turban and a white gown.
Her face was deep oak-stain. She had a sash of
scarlet at her middle, wore jackboots, and had on
her wrists three bracelets of the serviette-holder type.
She was a woman cowherd, just in from the fields.
In her hands she carried a little spinning stick with
circular leaden weight at the bottom of it, and on to
this she dexterously puUed camel hair out of one hand
whilst with the other she twirled it into thread. She
was evidently persona grata in the hut. She had
the face of a pirate — a great, big, tanned, joUy,
horse-like sort of face.
After tea the boy and girl ran off to the flocks,
the women went on spinning, and the father brought
out a bull with a ring through his nose and a chain
and rope hanging from it. He put a bit of hide on
the beast's back, and then, to my astonishment,
mounted and rode away over the hills. I sat in a
shady corner and watched the afternoon turn to
evening. Presently out of the blue sky came a hurricane
shower of hail and rain, flashing through the dazzhng
sunshine and yet never obscuring it. It was big,
stinging haU, but none of the Kirghiz seemed to
mind it. I could see aU the children of the viUage

94 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
disporting themselves with the lambs and the calves
on the hUl opposite. Not tiU twUight did they return
— and then there was for me one of the prettiest
sights. AU the chUdren came in riding bareback on
calves or sheep, and driving them forward with kicks
of their httle bare feet. The Uttle dusky girl sat
astride of a golden-brown lamb, and her brother on
an unwUling brown caU. Following the lamb came
the anxious mother ewe, and following the calf a
bellowing old black cow. Many children came up,
and there was a gay gathering and a deUcious noise
of mirth and joUity at the end of the day. As a
reward to the ewes and the lambs the children brought
them millet bread and fed them from their hands.
The ewes did aU but speak to the children, and the
way they took the miUet bread from them spoke
of an unusual intimacy between children and ani
mals. The sheep were not worried or stupefied by
the children's pranks ; they were watchful, wilful, and
almost as mischievous as the children themselves. In
these wild places of the world, where there is no civil
isation and no pretension on the part of man to be
more than an animal himself — where, moreover, man
Uves in the midst of great herds where aU business
and doing seems to be the breeding of young — the
children of men and the children of the herds are
much more akin. The birth of children synchronises
with the birth of lambs and foals, and is associated in

vm ON THE ROAD 95
the aboriginal mind. One understands how the eyes
of the ancient IsraeUtes and Egyptians, those prime
val shepherd and nomadic peoples, were fixed upon
the process of birth. They hved also in the midst of
the animal world.
At nightfaU carpets were spread outside the hut for
the people to sleep on. They also Uved the night
with the stars. But the children stayed long with
the lambs, and I imagine in some cases slept with
them. I, for my part, decided to push on for Chimkent1
in the cool of the evening, and I got into the httle
town about ten o'clock at night. Chimkent is a
miniature of Tashkent, but without the great build
ings and shops in the Russian half. The same wide
town — when you come to it you are not there ; it is
necessary to go on and on. The same guUies running
along every street — only the water in them is less
muddy than at Tashkent. The Sartish shops again.
The dazzhng cinema shows once more. I made for a
brilhant iUumination, thinking it might be an hotel,
but it was the cinema theatre "Light." Cinema
theatres aU have names in Russia, none more common
than this one of "The Light."
I found an inn at length, and a room. Next morn
ing I went out for provisions. Chimkent has a httle
reputation as a watering-place, and chiefly because
1 Connected by rail with Tashkent since my tramp across the country.

96 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
of the supply of koumis ! Russians are very fond
of going to outlandish places in order to be "cured,"
and koumis is the cure of Chimkent. It is a beauti
ful httle town, however. Chimkent has its moun
tain background, its white-stemmed, magnificent pop
lars, its old ruins, its fortifications. The Russians
hve more freely than usual. No passport was asked
of me at the inn where I stayed. There was no Gov
ernment monopoly of the sale of vodka.1 There
seemed to be fewer pohce about.
The Sartish bazaar was fuU of Ufe and colour;
carpenters, smiths and metal workers doing their
work at open booths; koumis merchants standing
behind gaUon bottles and little glasses, inviting you to
sit down there and then and drink a glass, the white
of the milk gleaming suggestively through the gloomy
green of the bottle; silk and cotton vendors exposing
marveUously gaudy wares to veiled females who tried
to look at the stuff without exposing their faces, a
difficult manoeuvre ; strawberry hawkers ; hawkers of
lepeshka; carpet vendors; saddle vendors. There
were high stacks of gaily coloured wooden saddles.
A Kirghiz woman, riding astride of a pony, and yet
having a dusky baby at her open breast, came and
bought just such a saddle.
1 As the Government never exercised a monopoly of the sale of vodka
in Russian Central Asia the Tsar's edict did not apply to these regions.
However, I believe the sale of intoxicating liquor has been greatly restricted
by the local authorities.

Sarts Selling Bread: The Lepeshka Stall

The Native Orchestra : See the Men with the Ten-Foot Horns,
" Trumpets oe Jericho," as the Russians call Them

vm ON THE ROAD 97
What remains most brightly in my mind was a
long row of silvery-grey wolf skins exhibited at one
shop. It was almost as if the animals themselves
were looking at you. It reminded me of what win
ter must be hke in this land — not mUd, as one might
expect, but intensely cold as long as it lasts. The
moors are fuU of dangers from wolves. It was here
abouts, some years ago, that a whole wedding party
of thirty or forty people perished on their way from
the church to the bride's house. The distance was
only twenty mUes, and in that time the wolves tore
down aU the horses and all the people except one
Kirghiz driver, who by sacrificing the last-left couple,
the bride and groom, and throwing them to the wolves,
escaped to tell the tale and not feel shame. The
Kirghiz would not feel shame at such an act — they
are somehow outside codes of honour and chivalry
and rehgion. They are not savages, but they are not
civiUsed. I spent a day altogether at Chimkent. Before
resuming my tramp I bought myself a bottle in which
to keep water or milk against a thirsty hour on the
road. At the shop where I bought it a strange va
riety of wares was exposed; first Caucasian wine,
then local wine — vodka, caUed here table wine —
cognac, liqueurs, then ikons, flowers for your grave,
matches and tobacco. Very suggestive, I thought.
The landlady was rather taken aback at my remarks,

98 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
and said that in a smaU place hke Chimkent one
could not have a separate shop for ikons or for flowers
or for vodka, and her brother was a joiner, and she
could take orders for coffins.
At Chimkent I struck colonial country, the main
stretch of Russian colonisation extending eastward
from Tashkent. I set out over a very worn switchback
road, through irrigated fields of barley, through hay-
fields, where Russians were at work, past Russian
farmhouses, into a country entirely different from
that which I had been traversing. For the time being
the Kirghiz was out of sight and I was in a Russian
colonial district, a sort of Southern Siberia, fuU of
interest and promise. At dusk I came to an encamp
ment of fifty or sixty emigrants, with their wagons
and horses. Many fires were burning, and iron paUs
fuU of soup were simmering over them; samovars
were steaming, chUdren were skirUng and playing,
someone was playing a concertina, and many drunk
ards were singing. FamiUar Russian songs rent
the air — the old songs which Russians never seem
to abandon, and perhaps never wUl abandon, even
when everybody knows the latest music-haU catch.
I slept the night on a hUlock overlooking the road,
and it was better than at the inn, even though there
was a thunder-shower. The larks sang the day out
again. I Ustened to the cuckoo caUing and to the
conversation of the blue crows that kept visiting

vm ON THE ROAD 99
me, finding out something, flying away, and then
returning with brethren; watched the stars and the
clouds, and slept.
I had now struck the main road from Tashkent
to the Chinese frontier, and the prospect of my jour
ney changed from one of solitary wandering over
sandy wastes to one fuU of Ufe and interest in the
company of Russian colonists and Oriental traffickers.
From the moment I wakened up on the hiU-side on
my first morning after leaving Chimkent, I was not
out of the hearing of songs and laughter and chatter
ing, nor out of the sight of wagons, carts, camel trains
and people.
The road was reaUy four roads, each separated by
streaks of trampled grass-grown mud, now dried or
drying after many thunder-showers. On the southern
side you are accompanied by snowy mountains for
hundreds of mUes. You would think that you could
walk to them in half an hour and get a handful of
snow, so clear is the atmosphere that shows them,
but they are at least twenty miles distant. They
are, first, the Alai Tau, and then the Alexandrovsky
Motmtains, and then what is known as the Trans-
Hian Alai Tau, and many of their peaks are over
ten thousand feet high, but are not named and httle
known. On the north side of the road stretches
the desert in spring, now green to the horizon, but

ioo THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
already turning yellow here and there under the blaze
of the sun. On either hand one sees far away clusters
of grey tents of the Kirghiz, and near them their
herds of cattle — black patches that are horses, red
patches that are cows, grey, white and brown masses
Uke many maggots, and they are sheep. There are
also many camels far away on the hiUs, looking hke
httle twists of thick rope with knots in the middle.
Nearly all the traffic at this season is going east
ward, and each morning, when the horses are put in
and the wagoners make up the caravan once more, it
is with eyes and faces toward the dawn.
The emigrant caravan starts an hour before sun
rise; the camp breaks up and the oxen and horses
are put to, and the long day of creaking and blunder
ing and toiling onward commences. I was regularly
wakened up by the road which had wakened before
me, the moving caravans and the traders' carts.
The stars are setting and the caravan
Starts for the dawn of nothing. Oh ! make haste I
I generaUy slept at a distance of about a hundred
yards from the actual highway, in order to avoid
being run over at night. Even so, I was frequently
in some danger of being trodden on before dawn,
and at least sure to be wakened early by the traffic
on the road. Upon occasion there were whole hordes
and patriarchal famiUes on the roads, with their

vm ON THE ROAD ioi
camels and sheep and horses, their white-turbaned
women riding on buUs, and pretty girl-brides on ca
parisoned palfreys.
We journeyed from village to village, and each
was an artificial oasis made by the Russian colonists
and irrigation engineers. Every ten, fifteen or twenty
miles there was a substantial Russian village; the
farther I went the more distance there was between
these settlements, but still the actual chain was kept up
unbroken to the far east of the colony, and the maps
which we have of these deserts are unrepresentative in
that they show blank spaces with a scattering of Tar
tar names of places. The map should now be well
marked with Russian names. Each village is a shady
shelter, ahve with the running water of the irrigation
canals, wherein are trailing families of ducks. There
are long hnes of splendid poplar trees, sohd houses,
schools, shops, a church, post office, municipal buUd
ings, and so on. A notice-board tells the number
of souls and the date of the foundation of the viUage.
When the long caravans of new colonists came to
a settlement they tied their horses and oxen to trees,
repaired to inns, sought out people who had come
from their part of Russia, and made merry with
them. The vUlage was a great sight when one of the
long caravans had come in.
A httle respite from the hot road, and then on
once more. I- see a Kirghiz riding with reins in one

102 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
hand and a hawk in the other. The Kirghiz are great
hawkers, using different hawks for different game. I
meet a Sartish cart in which are five soldiers coming
home from Verney, where they have received their
discharge — several hundred miles from a railway
station — and they have hired a native cart, and are
asleep in the bottom of it. At last I come to a tum
bhng mountain stream, and it is good to have a swim
and make myseU tea in the shadow of the great bridge
which takes the high road across the water. When
a great band of colonists arrives here, there is an
astonishing scene of peasant men and women bath
ing. They take to the water as if their very bodies
were thirsty.
We pass through Mankent, one of the few native
towns remaining, and that tending to be swallowed
up by Russia also ; and there, at a Sartish shop,
stay for koumis — very bad koumis compared with
what the Kirghiz gave me in their tents. Coming
out of Mankent I feU in with a band of rich emi
grants going from Stavropol, in South Russia, to
beyond Kopal. They had twenty-four ox-drawn carts
and twelve drawn by horses, and in the carts were
their household goods — tables, chairs, beds and
bedding — agricultural implements, reaping and bind
ing machines, ploughs, grindstones, saws, axes, even
metal baths, barrels, guns, pots and what not in such
misceUaneity and promiscuity, mixed with mothers

vm ON THE ROAD 103
and babies, that it was touching to see. The oxen,
in their wooden yokes, were fine beasts, and the
emigrants tended them on foot. Every wagon was
accompanied by one or two on foot, who flicked off
the flies and encouraged the oxen along, sang songs,
and shouted to one another. Every wagon had
buckets swinging at the side. One wagon had sev
eral cages of doves fixed on to it; to another a poor
old dog was tied, and came along unwillingly. In
short, everything they could bring from Mother
Russia to the new land the emigrants had brought.
I accompanied them up on to a wild moorland,
on to a great plateau, where we spent the night after
passing out of Mankent.
As I tramped thus across Russian Central Asia the
great event that should change everything was hidden
behind the screens of the future. The gentle and
innocent present was more interesting than past or
future. It is touching to go over my diary and see
how guilelessly and unsuspectingly I and everyone was
walking the time road that led so soon — if we only
could have known it — to the precipice of war. The
every-day was friendly, even though it contained
storm or adventure or privation. We were familiar
with mornings and evenings as with long known and
trusted friends. As we look back at them they have
a sinister aspect as of pohce conducting us by stages

104 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
to some frontier. It is with these feelings that I look
back now to my long tramp to the mysterious city
of Auhe Ata, a famous shrine in the days of Tamer
lane. Each night I slept under the stars, each day
journeyed pleasantly forward under a tropical sun.
One night, near the new Russian viUage of Anto-
novka, there was an appalling sunset — through a bar
rel-shaped thundercloud into a sea of fire ; and directly
the sun went below the horizon the lightning be
came visible in the cloud, and I watched it running
through the dark veils of vapour in ropes and loops
and flying lassoes of silver. The thunder rolled lu
gubriously, and far away I could see the rain pouring
in continuous flood, the black fringe of the cloud
torn from heaven down to earth. I wondered had
I not better pack up and go down to the viUage.
But a Uttle wisp of clear sky, containing one pale
star, expanded itself slowly and drove away the great
lightning-riven barrel and banished every cloud, and
it was clear and the thunder was not, and the night
was dry and starry. Dawn next morning was clear
and cold, and at the sound of cart-wheels on the
highway below me I gladly took the road again —
quick march to get warm. In an hour, however, the
sun was already too ardent a friend, and I took shel
ter in a caravanserai, a cubical mud hut with neither
chair nor table, and from the samovar steaming on
the floor I prepared my morning tea — put some tea

vm ON THE ROAD 105
from a packet in my knapsack into my pot, and then
fiUed up with boiling water from the samovar. The
viUage street outside was full of Ufe, crowded with
wagons and wagoners standing half in the bright
new hght of day and half in the deep, damp shadow of
mud walls and banks. I sat down opposite the vil
lage school. The school door was wide open, and I
saw aU the viUage children sitting in desks round the
mud-built room. There were about thirty children,
and they were a pretty sight, the boys in turkey-red
cotton trousers, the girls in red frocks, with their
black hair in plaits. There was only one row of
desks, but it went right round the room. In the
middle space were two teachers squatting on a carpet
spread on the floor. Each and every child was say
ing his lessons at the top of his voice, and sing-song
— but not the same thing, aU different, according
to the page the boy or girl was at, some far behind,
another far in front. These were aU Sart children.
I walked aU day after this with a damp towel hang
ing from under my hat, and as fast as the towel dried
I made it wet again from my water-bottle. Every
one on the road was thirsty and hungry, and I said
to myself: "The next village is called Cornucula;
let's hope it will turn out to be Cornucopia!" And
it was indeed a horn of plenty, and I shared there a
roast chicken and a pitcher of milk with a companion
of the road, a poor old horseman who had a horse

106 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
but who had no money, and was begging his way
home to Auhe Ata.
"How much did you give for your horse?" said I.
"It cost thirty-five roubles originally, with saddle
and bridle and bags. I don't know what it's worth
now. It's peaceful, that's the main thing, and it
hves on grass."
This is reaUy the country where wishes are horses,
for you see beggars riding. What a lot of wishes
astray on these mountains !
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"Looking for a job."
"Where?"
"On the new railway."
"Couldn't you get one?"
"No; there were thousands waiting, . and they
only took on two hundred, and these at the lowest
wage piece-work." He mentioned some figure the
cubic foot.
"How much can a man earn in a month if he goes
at it hard?" I asked.
"Twenty roubles (two guineas), not more," said
my acquaintance.
Imagine it — for a job of ten shilUngs a week,
bestial labour, in the desert, under the Central Asian
sun, something like a twenty to one excess of supply
over demand of labour, and the people waiting weeks,
months, on the chance. Surely nowhere but in

vm ON THE ROAD 107
Russia could such a phenomenon be noted. There,
as nowhere else in the world, is a tremendous super
fluity of white men's hands. A firm of contractors
has this job from the Government ; according to their
schedule, labour was to be paid for at a certain rate
— a very low rate — but, seeing the expectancy and
the sad plight of the mobs of unemployed waitmg
at the starting-point of the new line, they quite cheer
fully make a handsome reduction in favour of them
selves. After our meal the beggar horseman went off on
his nag, and I wandered through the village on foot.
Among other establishments in the village was a
photographer's, and outside his little house was a
notice : THOSE WISHING TO HAVE THEIR PHOTO
GRAPHS TAKEN MAY HAVE A SHAVE FREE
I went in to the photographer, and saw many photo
graphs of shaven colonists, aU very stiff and serious
looking. These were chiefly pioneers and passers-by,
the people of the caravans. It is strange how un
happy everyone looks in a provincial portrait. The
photographer, however, did a good business.
I settled down for the evening and the night in
the sight of lovely mountains. The sky cleared of
wisps of cloud and discovered the stars. The new
moon, born surely that day, was but a hair of silver

108 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
in the west, and sank an hour after sunset, foUowed
by a beautiful attendant star. As I lay on the heath
and looked upward, the first consteUation just formed,
and it was the seven stars, deUcate and lovely in the
haU-night, as dainty as a maiden's ornament. Showers
of meteors, hah observed, shpped out of the dark
into the dark; long single meteors left, as it were,
phosphorescent traUs of Ught behind them. The
Asiatic mountains drew their cloaks round them,
hardened their faces, and slept as they stood away in
the background. It became a night of countless
stars, each star a jewel set in the darkness. The night
wind came waving over the grass, full of health,
gentleness and warmth. It was never stiU aU night,
but never cold, and never a cloud touched the vast
glittering sky.
Next night before falling asleep I witnessed an
unusual phenomenon. Away in the north a strange
black ribbon seemed to be let down from a cloud,
and it fluttered in the air. I thought of America
and advertisement devices and of aeroplanes aU in a
second, and then remembered I was in Central Asia,
far away from the inventions of civihsation. The
ribbon came nearer, and as it passed overhead took
a wedge-shaped formation, and I saw it was composed
entirely of birds. They were flying across the heaven
at a breathless speed, now in the clouds, now out,
and never breaking up their ranks, the big birds

vm ON THE ROAD 109
seeming to be thick on top of one another in the
front. On approaching the line of snow peaks in
the south, they defiled into a long, single hne, look
ing like some aerial train, and then easily, rapidly,
passed over Talas Tau and Hindu Kush to India, as
I surmised, just four hundred miles as they fly. The
moon that night was a crescent of pearl, and stayed
a Uttle longer in the sky. I watched her night by
night tiU she was fuU grown, and rose in the east
the time the sun was setting, and reigned in the sky
the whole night. How pleasant and serene the night
weather remained ! All night long the breeze rippled
and flapped in my sleeping-sack and crooned in the
neck of my water-bottle. Far up on the hills lights
twinkled in Kirghiz tents, and in the Ulumination of
moonlight I faintly discerned black masses of cattle
beside which boys watched all night, playing their
wooden pipes and singing their native songs to one
another. As far as High Village (Visokoe) the road remains
with the Russians, and their villages abound. After
Visokoe there is forty miles of moorland to Grosnoe,
and then for a hundred miles there is not a Russian
settlement except the town of Auhe Ata. Journey
ing became very difficult when the road was over
deserted, empty moorland. The sun poured down,
there was not a gUmpse of shade anywhere, seldom
any water, and seldom anything to eat. Even the

no THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
grass was disappearing, and the Kirghiz everywhere
were moving, following the spring, with their tents
and their cattle and their camels, away from the
scorched plains up to the fresher slopes of the moun
tains. Often I rigged up my plaid as a tent, often
sat in the pale grey shadow of an ancient ruin or a
tomb. The emigrants who tended the oxen on the
road were fain to climb into the canvas-covered
wagons and sleep, leaving the slow cattle to trudge
with the extra load through the dust. Russian
Ascension Day came, and the road was perfectly
empty — for no one would travel on a festival. AU
day long I met but one man, a native on a camel.
For a long time we walked within sight of one an
other, he allowing the camel to graze when it felt
incUned, but every now and then giving it a kick,
to which it responded by a plaintive groan and a
jangling of the beU round its neck.
One might ask where is Tamerlane, where the
warriors, the robbers, the camp foUowers of the hordes?
The Easterns you meet are aU gentle as children.
No one needs to carry a weapon. Where is the old
spirit of fighting? The answer might be found, I
suppose, in the thousands of Cossacks and Russians
who, later in the same year, returned along these
roads to fight against the Germans.
The day before reaching Auhe Ata, in the heat
of noon, I came in sight of a green patch on the moors,

vm ON THE ROAD in
and sought and found a bubbhng spring of clear
water. "Here is the place," thought I, "to make
my long-deferred cup of tea," and I cast my knap
sack on the moor and looked around for a spot on
which to make a fire. I had gathered a few sticks
along the road in case of need, so I had the founda
tion of a httle blaze. With what trouble did I keep
that fire going tUl the kettle boiled, rushing about
for wisps of withered weed, hunting for roots, for a
straw, for anything that would burn, and aU the time
anxious lest in my absence the pot should capsize.
At last, as I stood over the fire, there were symp
toms of boihng, and I was just rejoicing. Then
suddenly all grew black around me, and I lost control
of my body and feU down. Such was the effect of
the burning sun on my neck and head. Perhaps this
was something in the nature of a sunstroke. Be that
as it may, even at the moment of falling I got up
again. For what was my vexation to realise, even at
the moment that I fell, that my kettle had capsized.
The fact brought me to my senses. I hardly touched
the ground before I started up again to save the water
and the fire. No luck; the water was aU spilt, the
fire out, and the kettle lying in the ashes. I did not
trouble to pick the kettle up. I sat down by the
spring, soaked a handkerchief, put it on my head,
took out my mug, and drank water — such a lot of
water.

112 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
What a day ! I was to feel the effects of my sun
stroke. A great thirst took possession of me, and
when I got to Aulie Ata a touch of fever, which I
had to fight.
Auhe Ata the ancient, the tomb of the Holy One,
is a mysterious and umbrageous city. I became
aware of its trees on my outward horizon early one
afternoon, when the mighty sun had just passed the
zenith and was beginning to beat on my shoulders.
I had made my siesta at noon in a tent I contrived
with my plaid. I tied one corner to a telegraph pole
and tied stones to the other corners, and somehow
made a canopy, and I lay in a blaze of diffused hght
on the hard, dry, sandy steppe. Though the wind
blew, it was burning hot, and my right hand was
swoUen and smarting, for I hold a strap of my knap
sack with it as I march. I drank the last drain of
water in my water-bottle and made the melancholy
reflection that Central Asia is not a land to tramp
in. I heard the jun-jun-jun of camels, but did not
care to put out my head to look at them. I wished
I had a tent, or a stout and voluminous umbrella.
StiU, one couldn't stay in this spot aU day, so I
untied my blanket from the telegraph pole and the
stones, packed my knapsack, and set off again into
the dazzling brilliance of the open country. In about
half an hour I espied an old ruin in the wilderness,
and ran along to it, and found at the foot of the

vm ON THE ROAD 113
blanched wall three feet of intense shadow, in which
it was just possible to sit and keep in. A villainous-
looking scorpion seemed to be of the same opinion
as I was, but I was too lazy to kiU him, so I just flicked
him off into the sun. Oh for some water, or some
milk, or some koumis, but not a Kirghiz tent was to
be seen all around. The Kirghiz were twenty miles
away up in the green valleys of the Alexander moun
tains, where was pasture for their herds.
On the road once more ! And then like a mirage
I saw the long dark streak of Auhe Ata on the eastern
horizon. It was twelve to fifteen miles away, but I
thought it to be quite near. So clear is the atmos
phere, so prominent in the wide emptiness of the
desert are the trees of the Russian settlements, that
one is constantly deceived as to the distance of the
place in front of one. And I greatly rejoiced when
I saw Auhe Ata ; and although I was tired I resolved
to get there without further resting by the way. I
walked and walked and my shadow grew longer as
the sun went down in the west behind me; but stiU
the line of trees seemed as remote as ever. Several
times I asked my seh: "Am I not nearer?" and I
was obUged to confess that I seemed no nearer. It
was like walking towards the horizon. "There is
something of magic about this city," I thought.
It was long before I came even to the irrigated
fields of the settlers, and only late in the dusk I

ii4 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
arrived at the first outlying streets of the town, and
went in with the procession of cows returning from
the steppe to be milked in the yards of the colonists.
In the midst of the clamour and dust I arrived. As
I hadn't had anything to drink since noon, and I
daren't touch the water of the irrigation canals,
I was just about as thirsty as it is possible to be. I
determined to stop at the first caravanserai, and there
I had a big teapot and five or six httle basins of tea
and a bottle of koumis, and I stopped at the next
caravanserai and had a bottle of lemonade and seltzer
water. Tired as I was, however, I did not seek a
night's lodging, but went first to the post office, about
two mUes from the entrance to the town, and I ob
tained the telegram I knew would be waiting for me
from Russia. I had arranged a httle code so that
certain things I wanted to know could easily be told
me "by wire." Letters take weeks. It had been
pleasant to look at the wires by the roadway as I
walked and reflect that a message to me was, per
haps, winging its way past me. And, sure enough,
at the Uttle post office my telegram was waiting.
After the post office I found a place at which to
stay, a Russian inn caUed the Hotel London ; and so,
to justify its name, took a room in it and felt glad
to have reached a city, even Auhe Ata the ancient.
Auhe Ata is a strange town hid behind the foli
age of its long lines of trees. The running water

vm ON THE ROAD 115
courses along the canals, and, as at Chimkent and
Tashkent, buU-frogs croak in chorus. The foundation
of the settlement is Mohammedan. It was once a
great holy place of the Moslems, the shrine of some
antique teacher. But Russia has taken the upper
hand and given a different aspect. There are scores
of mosques hfting their slender minarets above the
verdure of the trees, but most of the houses are Rus
sian houses. And there are hotels, cinema-shows,
restaurants, theatres, as well as farmhouses, shops,
sarais, mud dweUings, and fixed Kirghiz tents.
Darkness had long since settled down on the town
when I went forth to find a restaurant. Here every
restaurant is a sad, or garden. It is fenced with
bamboo; the tables are set among flower-beds and
gravel paths, and there is trelhs-work with festoons
of greenery hangmg from it, strange light and shade
betwixt the moonhght and the lamphght and the
darkness. I found a garden kept by an Armenian, and had
dinner by myself at a table under a fruit-laden cherry
tree luridly iUumined and yet only partiaUy iUumined
by the blaze of a huge spirit lamp. Moths whirred
into vision and descended towards the white table
cloth, and heavy beetles and locusts stunned them
selves against the spirit lamp, and all manner of
winged vermin and midget danced in the light which
seemed to hang like drapery from the tree.

116 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
A waiter had taken my order, and a cook far away
was cooking what I had ordered, and I sat and rested
and considered the day which at noon had been
ablaze in my improvised tent on the steppe and at
night was here in a hghted but shadowy restaurant-
garden in a city.
My dinner was brought, and aU the time I was
eating my shashleek (bits of lamb roasted on a skewer
over charcoal) I hstened to an unearthly hubbub
of bands — or of fire hooters, I could not tell which.
Every ten minutes there was an awesome silence,
and then there outbroke the blast of a horn, three
times repeated, that sounded hke the trump of doom,
terumm, ter umm, ter umm; then came the sound of
bagpipes and a throbbing of many drums, the horns
breaking through the lesser music at intervals and
hfting the roof of the sky. This was an appalling
accompaniment to my meal. I had never heard
anything like the sound of that horn :
Terum — m — m,
Terum — m — m,
Terum — m — m.
It was like the blast Of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
Which to King Charles did come,
When Roland brave and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died !

vm ON THE ROAD 117
Like the horn of Roland blown in the desert and
heard three hundred leagues away. After dinner,
I went off to find by ear the origin of this hubbub.
I went along towards the sound, and found it pro
ceeded from a native orchestra standing on the roof
of a circus building. Here two tall Sarts held in
their hands horns ten feet long. They hfted these
horns to the sky and balanced them on their hps ; they
lowered them and blasted their music over the roofs
of the houses of the city ; they presented them at the
heads of the crowd of sightseers, and made many
put their fingers to their ears and walk away: it was
a terrifying and astonishing noise. It was wonderful,
however, the effect of the three angles at which the
horns were blown. You felt the first one went right
over the town, it was a voice from the stars, it leapt
from the dark emptiness of the desert on one side
to the dark emptiness of the desert on the other side
of the city ; the second, blown at the people's heads,
was in the town and at the town, and caused the
houses to tremble; the third was blown, as it were,
to the dead.
These horns are traditional instruments of the
Sarts, though it is said there are only a few men ahve
who can blow them. It needs great strength, and the
degenerating race does not produce such fine men as
it did. The Russians call them the "trumpets of
Jericho."

118 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
An astonishing advertisement for a circus. The
sound of these horns was too much for my tempera
ment, and I fought shy of the show, though I should
otherwise have liked to go in. StiU, a new stage in
my journeying had been reached, and I sought diver
sion, found a theatre, and bought a seat to see a
romance of ideal love. There were seven people in
the theatre, and after an hour we were aU given our
money back and told that the company had gone to
see the circus. I then went to the cinema to see the
much-advertised "spectacle" of "A Prisoner of the
Caucasus," but I was informed that the "machine"
was broken, and that the next performance would
be "on Friday, if God grant" — a dark cinema-
house where by the hght of an oil lamp, which seemed
strangely out of place, one discerned a refreshment bar,
a cashier's box, where should have been a girl seUing
tickets, curtains separating the waiting-room from the
theatre, and finaUy three or four hopeful or disap
pointed would-be customers. I asked a Russian present
if he did not find in the noise of the horns something
very horrifying and suggestive, and he replied testily :
"Oh, a great deal of noise, that's aU. Very trying
for those who would rather not hear it."
He did not feel as I did about the music at aU,
and his matter-of-factness rather surprised me. The
horns had to me the sense of caUing someone, some
thing, and they were hteraUy terrifying.

vm ON THE ROAD 119
In a depressed state of mind I wandered back to
the Hotel London, and found the landlady having a
nail-to-naU fight with a woman lodger. Both sides at
once claimed me as a witness — the pohce were com
ing, and I would testify. The landlady had broken
into the lodger's room and told her to leave at
once; the latter, a great, big, hysterical Russian
woman, had rephed with fisticuffs and sobs and
clamour. The landlady gave a very disparaging account of
the woman lodger's present behaviour and past career.
The woman lodger, under the strange impression
that she possessed good looks, tried to ingratiate me
to be on her side by giving me saucy looks and know
ing smiles. The yard porter had been sent for the
pohce, and aU the whUe there were strident cries of
"the pohce are coming" — and the horns kept up
their rumpus over the city, terumm, terumm, terumm.
I was sorry my room had no key and that the
window was shuttered from the outside. The pohce
came and ordered that the woman be aUowed to re
main tiU the morning, and a silence settled down
on the inn — sUence broken only by the sound of the
horns of the orchestra a mile away. All sorts of
fancies possessed my mind and wrought me to a state
of terror, so that I was afraid of my dreams.
What I dreamed that night has probably little to
do with Russian Central Asia, and yet I shaU never

120 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
think of my journey across this wUd and empty land
without half recaUing it involuntarUy. Even if I
beUeved that dreams had never any definite prophecy
or foreboding in them, this one is one I should take
to a dream interpreter. Now that I know that aU
this summer a great war was in preparation and the
dogs of lust and hate were being unloosed, I can say
to myself that I at least had warning that the DevU
was at large, that an evil spirit had escaped into the
world. I ought, perhaps, to teU first the dream which my
friend G  told me before I left Vladikavkaz, when
he warned me of a great impending world calamity.
G  said that one night, after an arduous day's
work teaching in class and coaching private pupils at
home, he lay down on his couch and dozed. Hardly
had he faUen asleep, when three men of Eastern
aspect, dark faced, bright eyed, brown handed, with
white robes from their shoulders and white turbans
on their heads, appeared to him and pronounced six
words in a loud, oracular voice and disappeared. A
second time they appeared and did the same. A third
time they appeared and pronounced them, and this
time one of them took up a pen and made as if to
write. The words were not Russian, or, indeed, any
language which G  knew, but after the third
apparition and disappearance he wakened up with a
start and at once picked up an exercise-book and

vm ON THE ROAD 121
wrote the words down. They were : Imaktur nites
oides ilvena varen cevertae. G  had never been a
student of the occult before, but this caused him to
consider. I begged G  to write them down for
me and let me see how they looked in black and
white. "WeU, what do they mean?" I asked.
"I cannot yet be sure," said G  "They are
certainly part of a language. Of that I am convinced.
I have consulted many great Unguists, and whilst they
cannot say what language it is or where its lingual
affinities are to be found, they aU agree that it has
the nature of real language. I have thought, as I
lived in the Caucasus in the midst of so many Eastern
tribes, that it might conceivably be intelligible to
one or other of them. I have questioned Ingooshi,
Ossetini, Khevsuri, but none recognised any likeness
to any tongue they had ever heard in the mountains.
I have been to Petersburg, BerUn, Paris to try and
find out what the words meant, and all to no avail.
Specialists were most sympathetic, but could teU me
nothing. However, since then I have made a pro
found study of occult language, and have arrived at
some understanding of the significance of the dream.
AU I can teU you is that a world calamity is coming,
a great cataclysm or natural subversion. We may
expect great earthquakes. Germany certainly is in
danger."

122 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
The dream I had in Auhe Ata was certainly much
worse than this. I thought G  rather crazy
about this dream of his at the time, and I Ustened
incredulously to his prophecies. But if I regarded
them flippantly perhaps I was wrong. Certainly, if
I held there was no such verity as the occult I was
wrong. They say that Fear stands on the threshold of the
occult world, and as my dream consciousness impinged
upon it I experienced abject terror, a terror that
creeps through the marrow of the bones and hfts the
roots of one's hair at a thought.
I lay down in my dark room at the Hotel London
at Auhe Ata after the fight between landlady and
lodger had ceased but whilst the Sart orchestra still
blew their horns over the city. The bed was a foot
short for my tired body; the shutters of the room
were barred ; I had no lamp, but only a bit of candle
of my own. After a fortnight spent under the stars
and in the immense open house of earth and heaven,
it was sufficiently oppressing and depressing in this
shuttered chamber. But I was tired with the tired
ness of one who has tramped under a sub-tropical
sun from dawn to sunset and has added an evening
of town excitement to the weariness of a long journey.
I had hardly lain down before I fell asleep. At
once I began to dream. I had been invited to a
friend's house, and was for a moment by myself in

vm ON THE ROAD 123
his dining-room ; there was nothing on the table but
the cruet. I was terribly thirsty, and I rushed to one
of the bottles and began to drink from it, but, my
host coming along the corridor and into the room, I
at once put the bottle back and pretended that I had
been doing nothing of the kind. This awoke me.
My eyes opened, and I thought to myself: "What
an absurd dream ! What a dreadful thing pretending
is. Why cannot we be as we are? Manners is, in a
way, pretence. Every pohte man who comes up to
you to shake hands, if we only knew it, has been doing
something the moment before as impossible as drink
ing the contents of the cruet. Mankind are pretenders.
The spirit is truth, but the incarnation is a mask. The
whole aspect of humanity is a pretending to be what
it is not. ..."
I was rather struck by the thought, but lapsed into
sleep again. And then came my terrible dream. In
the depths of my sleep a voice suddenly cried out the
most terrifying words I think I have ever heard, and
they were: "A great dissimulator has escaped, shut in
prison from everlasting."
At that I started up from my bed with the per
spiration on my brow and the most hideous fear
of the Devil. I felt that some new evil spirit was at
large and was seeking a home in a man. My earher
thought came back to me — aU spirits are dissimulators,
whether they be devils or angels, and we men and

124 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
women are aU angels pretending to be men and women.
But now I knew that some devil from which the world
had mercifuUy been preserved (from everlasting)
had escaped into our hfe, and would take the form
and the appearance of a man somewhere. I had
inteUigence of the Antichrist. And now that we are
aU in the depths of this war I ask myself sometimes
is there a genius of evil in all this, has the Antichrist
perhaps appeared ? Does not the fact that St. George
and the angels (the angels, at least, of Mons) are fight
ing on our side suggest that the evil powers incarnate
are on the other side?
It was two in the morning; the Sarts had stopped
blowing their horns, there was a breathless stillness.
I wakened up the hotel porter and bade him open
the shutters of my windows. I ht my candle, took
up pen and paper, and wrote a long letter home.
I took out Vera's ikon of Martha and Mary, and
put it in front of me. I looked at it and wrote —
wrote, wrote. I told all the happenings of the long
day past, the tramping, the sun, the far away vision
of Auhe Ata, the strange town, the Sart orchestra,
the Armenian garden restaurant, the Hotel London,
the fight of the two women, the dream of the dissimu
lator. I was afraid the candle would go out before
dawn. Dawn seemed a long time coming. But at
last the nightingales began to sing, p-r-r-r-r . . .
sweet, sweet, sweet. A muezzin was caUing through

vm ON THE ROAD 125
the dark night. How resonant his voice ! Somehow
it went with the nightingale's song.
A muezzin from the dark tower cries
Fools, your reward is neither here nor there.
Again muezzins from the dark mosques of the city.
Suddenly the cocks gave an extraordinary chorus, and
I knew it must be near dawn, and a cart came lumber
ing by. Pale rents appeared through the wiUow
trees that hid the sky. My candle grew httle and
yeUow and flickering, but it lasted, and I wrote on
and on, page after page, tiU it was bright morning.
Then I lay down and slept an hour, and I had saved
myself, perhaps, from fever. In any case, I had hved
through a waking nightmare.
By day Auhe Ata was, perhaps, less mysterious,
but there stiU remained a sense of remoteness. It
was difficult to imagine European people Uving there
aU the year round and calling it "home." It is an
oasis, it is true, but it might be truer to call it a sub
tropical swamp. It is fed by a mountain river, the
Talass, which flows off and loses itself in the desert.
But there is plenty of water and a great deal of verdure
is possible, a very large settlement.
Auhe Ata has its cathedral standing in the midst
of a pleasant shadowy garden. It has its bazaar, and
its trotting-ground for a horse fair and cattle market.
Here were numbers of Sartish shops where bread

126 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
and hot meat-pies were sold. Scores of Kirghiz on
horseback or on buUs blundered about amidst cattle
and mud. Young men were trying horses and show
ing their paces; others were making deals in sheep
and goats. The sheep for sale were tied in long or
short knots, threaded by the heads as Russians thread
onions. As a general rule a sheep was reckoned as being
equivalent in value to a three-rouble note, and many
of the Kirghiz had brought up their sheep merely as
money, and when they bought six shillings' worth
of stuff at some shop they detached a sheep from
their coU and passed him on to the shopman. So
I saw for the first time in my life the hteral
significance of pecunia as the Romans understood
it.1 Auhe Ata is subject to earthquakes, and my land
lady explained how one morning she was washing
the floor of her estabhshment, bending down over
her floorcloth with her legs apart, and suddenly she
felt her legs going farther apart — by which hvely
figure she meant to explain how earthquakes are felt.
The chief sights of the city were the caravans of
emigrants toihng onwards towards the farther East.
Here were no farms for them, no encouragement
given to settle. For there is now no particular poht
ical need for the colonisation of Sirdaria ; the Rus
sians are far more powerful than the native popu-
1 Pecus = a head of cattle, a beast of the field.

viii ON THE ROAD 127
lation, and could never be overthrown by an uprising
or mutiny. The Government encourages emigration
to the points where it is politically most advantageous
— that is, on the very frontier hnes. The most
vigorous irrigation and settlement work goes on on
the frontiers of China, Afghanistan and Persia. The
colonists have a long road in front of them even after
they have reached Auhe Ata. I myself went on with
them. The weather changed whilst I was at Auhe Ata;
torrential rain came down, rain brought down by the
mountains, and only deluging their own slopes and
the country in the immediate vicinity. The desert
twenty miles away remained, no doubt, as parched as
ever. The River Talass, in flood outside the town,
presented an unwonted spectacle; the wide, black,
diversified, shingly river, the lowering clouds over
head, the restless wind from the mountains spitting
and promising rain, the emptiness and dreariness of
the world aU around, except at the place where the
bridge should have been — but from which it had
been lately washed away — and there, an ever-increas
ing coUection of straw or canvas tilted wagons and
carts, and of oxen, camels and horses, aU the caravans
of the emigrants, waiting, as it were, for a ferryman
to take them to another world.
I got over at last on a Kirghiz horse, and was pretty
nearly soaked in the passage. On the other side was

128 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
a more desolate country. It was wilder, more broken,
perhaps a httle greener, but there were very few
farms. Even the Kirghiz seemed of a poorer and
dirtier type. I bought milk at the Kirghiz tents
and bread and eggs at the post stations. At one
post-house I had a chicken cooked for me. The
heat was not so trying on this road, for clouds had
come over and rain had laid the dust. I had a sense
of travelling in the opposite direction of the way of
the seasons. It had been Uke June in Tashkent,
but here it was early May. StiU, the temperature
in the shade must have reached 900 Fahr.
I slept three nights in the open and tramped three
days before I finally passed out of the province of
Sirdaria and entered the Semiretchenskaya Oblast,
Seven Rivers Land, the remotest of the Tsar's do
minions, remoter than the Far East, because there
is no communication either by rail or river. On my
right the great chain of mountains with snowy sum
mits stiU stretched on, and on my left the everlasting
moorland. More birds appeared on my way, par
tridges, bustards, snipe, eagles, cranes. Straying off
the road and up to the first rising ground of the moun
tains were a species of httle deer, caUed here kosuli.
Marmots popped in and out of sand burrows, occa
sionaUy faUing a prey to day-flying owls. The
jerboa, with long taU and dainty, bird-Uke legs, was
a pretty visitor, and among insects the green pray-

vm ON THE ROAD 129
ing-mantis was noticeable, the cicada a nuisance,
and various spiders and beetles the bane of night-
tide. I was constantly warned against the hairy-
legged falanga and a black spider (the karakurt),
both of which were said to have a mortal bite, though
sheep could eat them without harm. Along the road
laborious and stupid-looking beetles rolled their glob
ular homes of gathered dirt.
Slow traveUing out here is very featureless, and
I grew tired of tramping aU day, the emptiness of
the Ufe, and the dullness of mere sun and road as
companions. What was my disappointment the sec
ond noon to lose a hft that would have taken me
thirty versts on at the cost of a rouble. I had just
got up from a siesta under my plaid tent when a
countryman came along with a cart full of clover —
food for his horse — and I bargained with him and got
a seat UteraUy "in clover." We proceeded thus for
a mile when we came to a mud-built caravanserai, and
stopped to have tea. Up to this inn came presently
another cart from the other direction. It contained
aU his wife's family, the people he had been setting
out to see. They had had a similar impulse to come
and visit him. In that way I lost my hft, and could
hardly share their joy at the happy meeting.
At Merke, however, the second colonial settlement
in Seven Rivers Land, I hired a troika to Pishpek,
three horses yoked to an arba (a native cart), the

130 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
driver a Kirghiz. This is the usual mode of traveUing
for Russians on business in Central Asia. The troika
stands instead of the train. But what an impression !
The Kirghiz driver, in rags and tatters, sitting on
one hip on his bare wooden driving-seat, lounging to
and fro, one shoulder up, one down, flicking the three
gaUoping horses with his whip, whistling, shouting.
The horses bounding along, neck by neck, over
bump, over crevice, over chasm; up hiU, down dale,
never slackening (there is no brake to the wooden
arba) ; coming with a great splash on to a stream,
the arba just floating on it as the horses plunge through
it; out again, up the bank; what matter stones —
even milestones? What a contrast to the way I
crawled along when walking !
We go along roads that are Uke dried-up river
beds, over roads Uttle better than mountain tracks.
Ever and anon I am nearly shot out of the cup of
dry clover and hay on which I am sitting. I am
flung against the sides, I grasp at the stained Joseph
coat of the Kirghiz, I clasp him round the shoulders.
But the Kirghiz smiles and whistles and shouts
again. The horses whisper hurried secrets to one
another in their rhythmical threefold devouring of
space. We go not by versts or by miles, but by
leagues. There are no steamboats, trains, motor
cars, aeroplanes in Seven Rivers Land, but the troika
combines these aU in one.

vm ON THE ROAD 131
As we go along the level highroad the whole country
behind us is blotted out from view by clouds of our
dust. We never hesitate as we dash through market
places and thronged colonial vUlages. What matter
who is in the way ; the troika goes on straight ahead,
always seeming hkely to colhde as we dash towards
other carts or charge into passing horsemen, the
averted horses' faces breathing into my face as we pass.
The way is always in the view of the snowy moun
tains and comparatively seldom in view of houses.
It is the land of the tent dwellers, and the moors are
dotted with grey pyramids and columns, the tem
porary dwelling-places of the nomads. Now and then
a whole patriarchal family of the wanderers crosses
the road on its journey from the parched plains up to
the greener pasture lands of the hills. They have
their tents and aU their goods on camels ' backs ; they
drive with them hundreds of head of sheep and goats
and cows and mares. They ride themselves on camels,
horses, buUs ; their white-turbaned wives, often four to
each man, ride astride of bulls, their faces uncovered,
babies at their bare breasts. Brides — girls of thirteen
or fourteen — ride in extraordinary state in their midst,
seated on palfreys with scarlet horsecloths, them
selves clad in bright cottons, their hair in many glisten
ing black plaits, each loaded with a silver buUet to keep
it from entangling with sister plaits. They also sit
astride, and ride with wonderful grace, as if conscious

132 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
of being the treasure of the whole caravan. They are
good to look upon.
We pass endless Unes of wagons drawn by toiling
oxen or Uttle, jaded ponies, and tended by burly
Russian peasants and their plump, laughing, perspiring
womenkind — emigrants going to settle in the youngest
of Russian colonies a thousand miles or more from a
railway station. We have to turn off the road and
tumble over the rough moorland in order to circumvent
hundreds of such emigrant wagons. We overtake
and pass the equivalent of whole goods trains — long
strings of lorries and pack-carts and camels, piled with
consignments of goods to be dehvered aU along the
way from Southern Siberia on the one hand and from
Orenberg and Tashkent on the other to the Umits of
the Himalaya Mountains. We pass, or, as it happens,
get entangled in a mile of camels, each having on its
back a mountain of horsehair or wool, some twenty
couples of dirty camels in a company, each company
led by a Chinese Mohammedan on an ass, a Dunkan.
We pass the mud-walled, mud-domed, ace-of-spade-
like tombs of the Kirghiz; we pass ruins of ancient
towers, battered caravanserais. We escape from the
desert into a sort of artificial oasis made by irrigation —
the Russian viUage or Cossack stanitza. We change
horses. At nightfaU I overtake a lady going to the town
where her sweetheart lives. She is in a hurry that

"Past the Ruins of Ancient Towers"

vni ON THE ROAD 133
brooks no delay. There are only horses for one, so
I offer her a place in my arba. She is accompanied by
many boxes and bags. She wants to go on all night,
no matter 
Twilight turns to darkness, the moon comes out fair
and large, opposite the setting sun. The clouds are
Ut with gentle Ught and a faint colouring. The troika
goes on and on. I Ue fuU length in the arba, my head
on a piUow which my companion has lent me, and I
look up at the sky. The night is gentle and touching.
The Kirghiz is silhouetted above us ; the moon is now
shining fuU upon us ; in a moment it is cut off by the
black line of the roof of the cart, but even then the sky
is the more beautiful for a hidden presence. We sit
up and look into the night landscape.
The moon gives glimmering Ulumination to squads
of poplars, waving cornfields, silver streams, the
thatched roofs of cottages, mud huts. The nightin
gale sings the short night through, owls hoot, dogs
rush out at us as if they were fired from farmyards, but
the laconic driver flicks them with his long whip when
they get near the horses' legs, and they fall each into
the rear and slink back to the dark yards whence they
came. We leave behind populous villages, and issue on to
the moors. Night hides the scarlet poppies, but the
air contains their odours. The moon no longer
stands over the black mound of the horizon, but has

134 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
climbed over the zenith. The cocks are crowing, my
companion is sleeping, the beUs of the troika are chingle-
dingling, chingle-dangling aU the time.
We have to change horses, however. We get a
samovar in the waiting time, and Zinaida — such is
her name — becomes an excited chatterbox. It is
only fifty mUes to her goal and her sweetheart. She
teUs me how she met him, what sort of hfe they will
lead when they are married, the name of their first boy,
should they have one.
Two scalding glasses of tea, and then into the arba
once more, with fresh horses, and a new Kirghiz driver
wakened up to take us. Zinaida's boxes are corded on
securely, her bandboxes are better bestowed away, she
makes a more comfortable arrangement of quilts and
piUows, and we Ue back and both faU asleep.
When next we change horses sun pales the stars.
It is the last change. Twenty miles more and our
winged chariot flies up the courtyard of the town post-
house. I am stiff. Zinaida, however, is as fresh and
nimble as a young deer. A young man with a paUid
face is waiting for her on the post-house steps, and she
jumps down to him in a trice, and he folds her in his
arms and kisses her.
We passed through Bielovodsk and Novy Troitsky,
the latter being an extensive Cossack station, where
aU the vUlage men have red stripes on their trousers,
and where even the Uttle boys riding the horses in

vm ON THE ROAD 135
from the steppe have red-striped breeches cut down
from father's. The Cossacks are soldiers first and
peasants only second or third. Whilst farming they
are understood to be "on leave," and when war breaks
out they are at once at the direct service of the Tsar
on the field of battle. Novy Troitsky was a Cossack
camp in the days of the conquest of Central Asia,
and when pacification was consummated the Cossacks
were invited to send for their sweethearts, wives,
mothers, famihes, and settle on the pick of the land
chosen out for them by the Government. There are
many such settlements; they are caUed stantsi, or
stations, whereas the other settlements are caUed
derevnyi, viUages.
On the whole, Seven Rivers Land seemed to be more
fruitful than Northern Sirdaria. The settlements
were very large ones; there were many enormous
villages with schools, churches, big general stores and
several thousand inhabitants. Pishpek, however, was
not quite so large as Auhe Ata. The populations of
the colonial towns on my route may give an idea of
these growing agricultural communities :
Inhabitants.
Chimkent  64 versts from railway station 15,756
Aulie Ata  242 versts from railway station 19,052
Pishpek  505 versts from railway station 16,419
Verney  743 versts from railway station 31,317
Kopal  1,102 versts from railway station 3,966
Sergiopol  1,352 versts from railway station 2,261

136 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
These figures are taken some years ago, and probably
twenty per cent, should be added to the numbers now.
These are the biggest.
The towns of this colony are not connected with
Western Europe either by rail or waterway, and
there is an unexampled provincialism in the country.
r The people are far away by themselves, and they have
consequently developed a distinctive local patriotism.
The Central Asian pioneers are great talkers about
their own country, and they are proud of everything
that marks it out as different from Russia and the rest of
the world. They are proud of its vast empty spaces,
its mountains, its wild beasts and birds, its tigers,
wild boars, aurochs, wild goats, its falcons, flamingos,
partridges ; proud of the Kirghiz, of the tortoises, of
the camels — in fact, of anything and everything
that seems to mark the country as original. Its
people are aU hunters. The engineer, the "topo
graph," the "hydro-technic," the land surveyor,
the Cossack, the peasant colonist, all carry the gun.
The towel-hooks and hat-pegs in their houses are
goat horns and antlers. The words of the colonists'
mouths run out in hunting-stories. AU journeys are
made on horseback or by post-horses, and the people
are always moving to and fro. Even the colonists
shift about from one settlement to another — by
arrangement with the colonisation authorities.

viii ON THE ROAD 137
I met many people on my journey : two khodoki,
foot messengers from a village in Kursk government,
sent by the viUagers to spy out the land and choose
a plot for colonisation, but now hastening back in
order to be home by St. Peter's Day and the cutting
of the barley. Land was scarce with them ; aU in
the hands of the landowners. The population in
creases — so many chUdren always are born — but
the free land does not increase. The two khodoki had
not, however, found what they wanted in Semiretchie,
and were returning to Kursk with a tale of disiUusion-
ment. "They told us it was heaven out here, and
you reaped harvests just after throwing out the seed.
But it appears there is as much work here as there,"
said they.
I met a commercial traveUer, a "voyageur, the
representative of a certain firm," as he called himself.
He was travelling post-horses, and had a large chest of
traveUing samples, which was roped on to the back
of his britchka. He was carrying Moscow cottons in
bright assortments of colours and patterns, and when
he came to a town where there were ten cotton shops
he went into each rapidly and deposited a complete
set of his samples, and left them with the shopkeepers
for an hour or so while he had his dinner and had a
shave and a bath. In that way he met me, resting
while the shopowners and their friends discussed his
goods. Commercial travellers in tea, sugar, cotton,

138 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
china, ironware and other dry goods were very frequent
on the road, but were mostly Tartars or Armenians.
I also met a boy going home from the University
of Kief, going home to Verney, and in a tremendous
hurry to get back to his mother and the girl he left
behind him a year ago. He was "agin the Govern
ment," and imagined that England was ahead of
Russia in every way, and wondered what the Enghsh
would not have done with Central Asia had it been
theirs. " Just think of the wealth in these mountains,"
said he. "Just imagine it; we have not one mine in
this vast territory twice the size of Germany. We
have only one factory — a lemonade factory."
"Its destiny seems to be agricultural," said I.
"What is student hfe like at Kief?" I asked. "Do
you meet together much ? Are there debates, hterary
discussions? What's in the air?"
He could not teU me if there was anything in the
air. Life was duUer there than formerly. The stu
dents kept more to themselves ; but they had a Semi-
retchinsky club. AU students from Seven Rivers lived
together, and they had musical evenings and dances.
It was pleasant; the Semir-retchenski were great
patriots in their way.
At Pishpek I had a dehghtful meeting with a Govern
ment topographer — Nazimof , a man of thirty, of
gentle birth, elegant, graceful, old-fashioned. I met
him at an inn. I had been put into his room by a

vm ON THE ROAD 139
grasping landlady who would not confess she was full
up and could take no more visitors. After somewhat
of a "scandal," raised by the topographer, it was
agreed that I should share his room. Every corner
was occupied with his professional equipment — long
iron map cases with padlocks, chests of instruments,
tent poles, carpet chairs, roUs of canvas, boxes of books,
papers and clothes.
"Excuse aU this," said he. "I am taking it up into
the mountains as soon as I get news that the snow
has melted a little."
He explained that he was on Government service,
charting maps. He was going to live the whole summer
up among the mountain passes and literaUy bathe in
snow. He would rig up his tents by the aid of the
Kirghiz, hunt, shoot, survey, chart, discover, without
any other feUow-European with whom to share feUow-
ship. We spent two days together in Pishpek, and talked
of many things. His brother had been sent to Jerusa
lem this year by the Orthodox Palestine Society to
inquire into the conditions under which the peasants
journeyed and the exploitation of the aged pilgrims
by the steamship company and the Greek monks. He
had brought back just such a tale of woe and of happi
ness as I had myself to tell after my pilgrimage. A
good deal is going to be done to better the conditions
of the pilgrims' journey, and there is even a proposal

i4o THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
that the Government take the pilgrims on then-
own boats. I wondered whether it was worth whUe
interfering, and I told my own experiences on that
journey and gave my impression; the telling intro
duced me.
My new friend told me how much he wanted to get
away from Seven Rivers Land and see the world.
Once, as a boy on a Russian training-ship, he had
landed at Newcastle, and had seen something of
England — had even slept in a sailors' rest. He would
Uke to see England, to come and Uve there, and under
stand the country and the nation, to see America, also
Austraha. He hked being up in the mountains,
working by himseU in the fresh mountain air, talking
to chance-met Kirghiz, shooting wild goats and par
tridges. But by the end of the summer he would be
terribly bored. He would come down from the moun
tains, rush into Verney, complete his maps, and then
bolt for Petersburg. He thirsted for human society aU
the summer through.
He was always dressed in white, and wore a fez
on his shaved head. He sat with me hours in a bamboo
palatka in the one garden restaurant of Pishpek, and
we talked over koumis, over roast chicken, over tea,
over wine. At night, too, when he lay on a broken-
down bedstead and I on a dusty divan, he prattled
of his wffe and children that he was sick to leave behind,
and of the boy in himself which made him always

vm ON THE ROAD 141
seek loneliness and adventures, however much his heart
bade him remain at home.
"I wouldn't change my lot, but still it is wrong to
marry at twenty, as I did. There are so many part
ings and it is a great pain. A young man has things
to do in the world, and he is bound to put his wife and
family in the background ; his ties are his pains. Most
happy marriages are made of men of middle years, when
they have made a httle fortune and can take things
more easfly. When a stout, old man marries a
young girl, moreover, there is generaUy a happy,
healthy family."
"But surely you don't mean to say that old men are
better fathers than young men ? " I urged.
"Yes; they have fewer stakes in the world. They
are not called on to go and chart the valleys and peaks
of the Thian Shan Mountains. They know they will
not be called on to fight for their country. They know
they've got enough money to educate their children and
keep up a good home. They are not so fretful, not so
irritable as young men, but good natured, easy going,
and a pretty girl can make one do what she desires."
I surmised he must have quarrelled with his wife a
httle just before leaving, and be sick at heart to get
back home and make it up.
Pishpek, though four hundred miles from a railway
station, is a promising town. The climate seemed

142 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
to be a hot and dry one, though, of course, it is easy
to be misled by the chances of the weather. There
are long, white streets, with ranks of poplars on each
side, a big market-place, a highroad of shops and
colonial stores, many places where Kvass and aerated
waters are sold, garden restaurants. There is not the
atmosphere of mystery that Auhe Ata has. It is
more colonial and less Eastern, though, of course, there
are the inevitable Oriental hawkers and the native
bazaar. Pishpek has a camel ambulance, a roughly
shaped wood-sleigh with enormously long shafts, to
which a Bactrian camel is yoked. Pishpek also has its
lepers, and, as in aU these Eastern towns, there is a
great deal of skin disease, though chiefly among the
natives. The colonists seemed fairly weU-to-do, though there
was httle evidence of culture, few books, no pianos;
the cinema, it is true, but that is rather a sign of
poverty. But the Russians seemed thriving and every
one seemed to have plenty of horses and cattle. In
this country, where wishes are horses, even the hawker
of bootlaces in the bazaar has his nag tied to a poplar
tree near by.
The Kirghiz going from the parched plains up into
the mountains let me understand the changing of the
season. The road out from Pishpek led into desolate
country, and I was troubled by the heat and the diffi
culty of obtaining food and drink. I carried four

viii ON THE ROAD 143
pounds of bread with me out of Pishpek, but that very
quickly vanished, some eaten by myself, some by
ants. Ants got into my bread at night and riddled it
so that I could not break off a fragment without
an ant appearing in it. I carried two water-bottles
with me, and filled them with milk or water when I
could. Neither milk nor water seemed to be very good
to drink. The best thing out here is the aerated water,
apricot or pineapple; it is very thirst-quenching and
a good corrective to the stomach. When my European
bread gave out I had to eat lepeshka, which I cannot
recommend. It seems a possible diet when one is
hungry, and if you have wine to wash it down you feel
you are making a beautiful meal. One afternoon,
however, I had a tres mauvais quart d'heure after
lepeshka. A lump of it stuck in my gullet and would
not go down and could not come up. I thought I was
choked. A melancholy native stands with a tray of lepeshki
in the road, and you buy three for five copecks — three
roUs for five farthings. No matter how hard they are,
they can be soaked and softened in tea. But I often
wondered what gave the cement-like quahty to them.
On the road I have often felt that my diet was un
suitable, but never have I had such indigestion as on a
diet of mare's milk and lepeshka. It is claimed that
mare's milk is the best thing in the world for the
stomach. Koumis cleanses and fortifies and freshens

144 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
everything ; it is the mother of the inside. But it does
not dissolve lepeshka. I was told that it was difficult
to teU the difference between champagne and mare's
milk. "But, to start with, one is white," said I.
" Oh, it's not the colour ; it's the quality."
" It is best when it is thick."
"It's not a matter of being thick or thin, but in the
tingling taste and the exuberance and happiness you
feel after it."
"WeU, I've nothing to say against koumis."
I kept a diary of on what and how I spent my
money on the road, and the entries run Uke this :
Monday. Copecks.
Boiling water  5
Koumis  10
15
Tuesday. Boiling water  3
Lepeshka  5
Milk  5
13
Wednesday. Koumis  10
Pilgrim  5
Beggar  2
Milk  10
Kvass  3
30

I
A Settled Kirghiz: One of the Characters of Pishpek

vm ON THE ROAD 145
Thursday. Copecks.
Lepeshka . „  5
Sheep's milk  5
Koumis  10
20
And so on ; a poor budget. The greatest disappoint
ments of this journey were the absence of fuel and
the great difficulty of making a fire. It took some
thing like two hours to coUect enough straw and
withered grass and sphnters of wood to make a fire.
And the dried camel-dung blocks would not burn.
As I tramped I made it a golden rule to pick up and
put in my knapsack every bit of combustible material
that my eye hghted upon on the road, but even so it
often happened that I had to buy hot water at some
dusty, broken-down caravanserai or in a Russian inn or
from some Tartar draper.
Night in an inn or post-house or under the resplendent
Asian stars ! Hot day toiling over empty moors and
across half-empty deserts, staying in shady Russian
viUages, going up the yards of the farmhouses with my
pot in hand asking for milk, drinking about a pint of
milk, and filling my two bottles so that I might have
something better than water with which to quench
my thirst when I was out on the road again ; talking
to the farmers; riding behind the reckless Kirghiz
and his three horses; and then night again and its
problems and charms !

146 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA vm
Seventeen versts beyond Pishpek is Constantinovka,
and seventy-one versts, Kurdai. Russian settlement
is rather sparse until Kazanskaya Bogoroditsa and
Linbovinskaya are reached, and these are in the urban
district of Verney, the capital of the colony. There
is an enormous amount of room for human beings here,
and, when the railway comes along and puts stations
every twenty mUes or so from European Russia, aU the
way to Kuldja, in China.
After the Cossack viUage of Linbovinskaya, with its
shops and bazaar, comes the approach to Verney, and
the high road is worn into many tracks and is broad
and deep in dust. Along these come many equipages
and picnic carts with pleasure parties of Russians, and
for the first time since leaving Tashkent there was a
suggestion of the hfe of a large provincial town. But,
after aU, Verney was only a larger Pishpek.

IX
THE PIONEERS
All the way to Verney the carts are traveUing east
ward, but on the road to Kopal two processions meet
one another; the colonists coming from Tashkent
meet the colonists coming from Omsk and Semi-
palatinsk. It struck me that those coming from the
North were a poorer, harder, more jaded people than
those who had accompanied me from the West. Per
haps that was because the journey from Siberia was
more trying and there was less to eat on the way, or
because the people who came by way of the northern
road were from provinces of Russia where the standard
of Uving and the average of health were lower.
The pioneers were a rugged sort of folk. They
walked with their oxen and horses, they wandered all
over the sandy wastes looking for roots and straws,
and fifty people would spend hours getting enough
fuel to make a fire to boil their pots. They got covered
in white dust; their boots were through; their feet
blistered; their carts broke down or cattle died;
but stiU the band went on patiently, cheerily. They
went very slowly, and I overtook many bands as I
147

148 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA ix
walked. I would faU in with the caravan at evening,
and hsten with an involuntary thrill to the great
choruses these people sang as they went. They chaffed
one another, gossiped, shouted to the cattle, sang with
as much easy-going cheerfulness as if they were in
their native province and driving the cattle in from their
own pasture lands, and not threading the road across
the silent deserts of Central Asia. I would see another
party afar off at ten in the morning, a grey-brown mass
on the horizon, and catch it up by twelve noon. And
there would be a strange sight : not a single peasant
walking or in sight. Only the creaking, slowly moving,
patient carts and the clumsy, straining oxen or httle
ponies, going on by themselves without the flick of a
whip or the whisper of a master's voice. And, coming
close up to the wagons, I would hear snoring. The
whole caravan would be sleeping and snoring in the
shelter of the tarpauhn tilts, and yet going ever slowly
on, slowly on, through the blaze of the Asian noon-day,
over the desert, toward the happy valleys of the East.
I suppose that, but for the instinctive movements
of the Russian people and the seeking spirit, it would
be difficult for the Government to settle these remote
tracts of the Russian Empire. People would not go
simply because of the grants they obtain. It is the
wandering spirit that is the foundation of the Empire.
In Central Asia the officials complain that the people
who come are not hke those who remain behind in

rx THE PIONEERS 149
Russia; they are the most restless of aU Russians.
They have wandered thus far, but they have no wish
to settle down even now. They take up land, build
viUages, tiU the soil, but sure enough after a few years
they are itching to move on farther. The majority of
colonists are people who have come not direct from
Russia, but from some less remote farm or homestead
in Turkestan, Seven Rivers Land, or Siberia. And
these people do not recognise the arbitrary limits of
the Russian Empire, but stray over in considerable
numbers into Persia, Mongoha, and Chinese Tartary.
It is true that the Government exercises considerable
control upon the movements of the pioneers. It
indicates each year what tracts of territory are open
to colonisation, what developments have been made
in the irrigation system, and shows spots where villages
may be built. The colonial village is not a haphazard
growth such as is the ordinary European village. It
does not simply grow; it is planned by the Govern
ment engineers and indicated in a schedule before ever
a single inhabitant has set eyes on it.
When the harvest has been taken in in Russia many
peasants go on pUgrimage to shrines and many go out
in quest of new land. The khodoki, or walkers, set out.
A viUage or a family sends out a messenger to seek
new land; this messenger is called a khodok. The
khodoki are speciaUy encouraged by the Government.
The pohce wiU not aUow a whole viUage to take to the

ISO THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA k
road and go off aU together in quest of land ; they in
sist on the khodok going first and booking something in
advance. Very great reductions are made in raUway
fares and great facUities are given to the khodoki, who
go forth and look at aU the vaUeys and irrigated levels
at the disposal of the colonists during the year in
question. They travel in twos and threes, one khodok
being required for each three famihes.
When the khodoki come back, after three weeks,
or it may be three months, or three years, there is
necessarily tremendous excitement in the viUage.
They cannot then disclaim the khodok's authority to
have taken land in their name, or in any case they
very seldom do disclaim it. It often happens, of course,
that the khodoki return saying that they have found
nothing better than their own land and their own vil
lage, and that, consequently, they do not recommend
a move. Many of the khodoki I met on the road were
weU-to-do peasants who had a stake in the old country
and would not readUy advise their constituent viUagers
to seU out and come to Central Asia. StiU, more than
haU of the messengers sent out come back with a
positive message. They have found and taken land.
Whether the khodok has done weU or iU, the famihes
set out. It happens occasionally that the messengers
choose death-traps and places of eternal desolation,
and they are terribly blamed. But it ought to be
remembered that Government engineers and agricul-

rx THE PIONEERS 151
tural speciaUsts have indicated the sites as possible
before ever the khodoki set eyes on them ; or a Russian
general, visiting a district, has said, " Plant fifteen
viUages on the eastern slopes of this range of hills,"
or " twenty vUlages along this valley," and it has
been done simply because he wanted Russian viUagers
for strategical considerations.
The manner of settling the Empire is so interesting to
us that I append a summary of the information given
to all Russians desirous to emigrate to the Russian
colonies. This is for the year 1 9 1 4 :
The provinces open to colonisation this year are
those of Uralsk, Turgaisk, Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk,
Seven Rivers, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenisei, Irkutsk, Trans-
baikal, Amur, and Primorsk. Also Yakutsk, Sak
halin, and Kamchatka.
The following people are aUowed to settle beyond the
Ural. — AU peasants and meshtchane, those engaged
exclusively in agriculture, and also artisans, workmen,
factory hands, merchants and shopkeepers. People
of other classes must, before emigrating, apply to the
governor of the province in which they live.
The Government invites no one to emigrate, and is
anxious only to show all possible help to those who have
decided to take that step, and to make the emigration laws
and the grants and privileges accorded to colonists clear
to everyone.

152 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA ix
Emigration of Agriculturists
All agriculturists thinking of crossing into Asia should
first think well: Is there not some way of improving the
home land and remaining on it?
Having become owners of your land at home (by
the completion of purchase after the Uberation from
serfdom), it is possible to let part of it out to others,
or by careful culture greatly increase the harvest, or
you can mortgage it to the Peasants' Bank and buy
other land, either in your own or in a neighbouring
province. It is another matter when the land you possess is so
Uttle that there is none to let out or mortgage, or when
it is difficult to buy suitable land at aU near, when the
land offered by Government or private owners becomes
year by year less and the prices year by year higher.
Then it is worth whUe considering the question of
emigration to Asiatic Russia, where there is stiU much
space. The Government assigns land to the extent
of 25-50 dessiatinas a farm or 8-15 dessiatinas for each
male soul. Or it is possible to settle in a viUage or
Cossack station by special arrangement, and lease land
cheaply from settled colonists. To enable people to
travel to such places the Government helps with cheap
tariffs and money grants.
During the past seven years more than three mil
Uon souls have firmly estabUshed themselves in this

rx THE PIONEERS 153
way, and in many places it may be said that the col
onists have become rich and hve in a more flourish
ing way than they did on the old lands at home.
But it must be remembered that such results are not
attained at once. It is not a httle heavy labour, grief
and poverty that have to be undergone during the
first years in the new place. Not every family has
the strength to bear such trial. It is reckoned that
of every hundred families going across the Ural fifteen
return to the old country after having failed to take
root in the new. It is hard for famihes where the
general health is weak, where there are not good work
ing hands, or where there is no money whatever to
start with. Such famihes would do better not to
stir ; better to work a bit more on the home lands tiU
they get some means to take up new land and try and
develop it.
The Emigration of Factory Hands and Artisans
The towns and viUages are greatly in need of peo
ple knowing trades. Especially great is the need
in the provinces of Amur, Primorsk, and Transbaikal,
where railways, fortresses, and barracks are being
built, and where mining, fishing and lumbering are
in fuU swing. More than a hundred thousand men
are employed annually on the Government works
alone, and private firms want more. UnskiUed
labourers, brickmakers, joiners, diggers, bricklayers,

154 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rx
sawyers, locksmiths, glaziers, miners, and anyone who
has any special knowledge or knack, wiUing hands
and a heart to work.
Wages are higher than in European Russia, and
aU manner of help is given in transport. There is a
great reduction of fares on the Siberian Railway, and
every artel of workmen contracted for the Govern
ment, and also for many private businesses in con
nection with lumbering and fisheries, is transported
to its field of work free of charge and taken back
at speciaUy cheap rates.
Many of those who go out with artels like the coun
try and the conditions so much that they prefer to
stay and take up plots of land and settle.
Where and How Is It Possible to Settle?
In the provinces open for colonisation there are a
great number of speciaUy chosen plots of Government
land at the disposal of individuals or of numbers
electing to farm and work together. The names of
peasants electing to see these or choose one of them
are gratuitously enroUed by the emigration officials.
In the more settled and inhabited places of Siberia,
Turkestan and Seven Rivers Land, where land has
now obtained a considerable value, there are also
special plots marked out by the Government, and
these may be bought. Also in many peasant settle
ments and Cossack stations there are wide stretches

rx THE PIONEERS 155
of land granted by the Government to the Cossacks
or sold in time past to freed serfs, and on these it is
possible to settle when arrangements can be made
privately with the peasants or the Cossacks, as the
case may be. FinaUy, it is also possible to lease land
or to buy it from private individuals.
To Whom Does The Government Give Help ?
Although emigration is permitted to aU who wish,
yet, in order to enjoy the advantages of Governmental
help and grants in aid, it is necessary that families
should first send out messengers, and should await
their return before setting out themselves. This is
only enforced by the Government in order to save
the people from the ruin which often foUows uncon
sidered and frivolous emigration. It should be re
membered that all who have not obtained land in
advance through their messengers {khodoki) will find
that they have to take their turn last in the selection
of plots of land.
The Sending of Messengers (Khodoki)
Any peasant or town family occupying itself with
agriculture can now send out a khodok, and it is now
allowed to send one khodok to represent several fam
iUes, but not more than five. What is more, any
working man, artisan or tradesman can obtain a

156 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rx
khodok's certificate without difficulty, and can make
the journey to the places of colonisation and become
acquainted with the local conditions.
The faithful khodok should make a thorough study
of conditions of hfe in the new places, consider care
fuUy aU the plots of land offered, and, choosing the
most suitable, inscribe his name for it according to
the regulations. The khodok must not set off with
out his certificate, for only by showing the certificate
can he travel at reduced rates or be recognised by the
officials in Turkestan or Siberia.
In Seven Rivers Land and the other provinces of
Turkestan no permission is given to people of other
than the Russian race or the Orthodox reUgion. In
the case of Old Behevers and other sects whose teach
ing forbids mUitary service, no permission can be
granted to settle — therefore, no Molokans, Bap
tists or Seventh Day Adventists are allowed to settle
anywhere in Turkestan.
The certificates, both for khodoki and emigrating
famihes, are given gratuitously. The khodok certifi
cate for 1913 is printed on yellow paper, the colonists'
on rose-coloured paper, and the tariff certificate on
green.1 The most convenient time for looking over the
plots of land is from April tiU June, but the best
1 This differentiation in hue is in case the persons holding the certificates
should be illiterate.

The Irrigated Desert — An Emblem of Russian Colonisation
in Central Asia

The Shady Village Street — One Long Line of Willows and
Poplars

rx THE PIONEERS 157
are taken up very quickly at the beginning of spring ;
many people of foresight get to the various points in
the winter in order to form an idea of the winter Ufe
of the district and to be on the spot when the new
plots are laid open in the early spring.
In order to make it easier for the messengers and
to decrease the expense, khodoki are advised to go
in groups and not alone. A party together always
fares better than separate people can, and more
trouble is necessarily taken for them.
Khodoki often take very httle money with them,
and, through poverty, are obhged to return without
having found the land they want. It is not possible
to find suitable land at once ; it is necessary to go to
various places and look at many farms. For that,
time and money are both necessary.
It is not thought wise to answer advertisements
or apply at offices where the promise of arranging
everything is made. It is impossible to take up land
except through apphcation to the emigration officials,
and they do their work without making any charge.
Every one who promises to obtain an option on a plot
of Government land after the payment of a fee is
practising deceit, and complaint should be lodged at
the emigration department in St. Petersburg. (Postal
address : St. Petersburg Emigration Department,
Morskaya 42. Telegraphic address: St. Petersburg,
Emigrant.)

158 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA jx
Khodoki should remember that many of the free
plots of land indicated in the booklet may have been
aUotted to other people before their arrival. So it
is, generaUy speaking, wise to take a wide view of
the possible places of settlement. Khodoki should
obtain the fuU Ust of plots offered by the Govern
ment. This hst can be obtained at Seezran station,
at Orenberg, Iletsk, Ak-bulak, Jurun, Arees, Tash
kent. The foUowing reductions are made in raUway and
steamer fares for messengers and colonists and their
famihes, and also in the charges for baggage :
i. People holding certificates as colonists or mes
sengers of colonists are taken on aU railways at a
reduced fare — at a fourth of the cost of a third-
class ticket — and they are accommodated in the grey
wagons of the fourth class, or, in the absence of these,
in goods trains. Children up to ten years of age are
carried free.
2. Baggage is taken on the same train as that by
which the colonists travel, and is charged at the rate
of one hundredth part of a farthing per pood per
verst, the first pood per ticket going free. Horses
and horned cattle are taken at hah a farthing per
head per verst, and smaU domestic animals at a quar
ter of a farthing per head per verst. Fowls and smaU
animals in cages or baskets are charged by weight as
if they were ordinary baggage.

rx THE PIONEERS 159
3. Baggage is divided into three categories.
First category. — Domestic goods and furniture in
packing cases; more than eight poods per person of
either sex cannot be taken at this rate.
Second category. — Animals, carts, agricultural ma
chinery, guns, provisions, can only be taken to the
number and extent shown on the back of the tariff
certificate. Third category. — Grain, flour, seed, trees, and
vines can only be taken up to ten poods per person.
Beyond these limits baggage must be taken at the
general commercial tariff.
In the case of loss the railway undertakes to pay
the owner forty roubles a pood for baggage in the
first category (though not more than 120 roubles for
each ticket), six roubles a pood for the second cate
gory, and a rouble and a half a pood for the third
category. Table of Distances
Approximate equivalent
,-, 0, t, , , Versts in miles
From St. Petersburg to —
Omsk  2,937 ^958
Semipalatinsk .... 3,666 2,444
Tashkent  3,727 2,484
Vladivostock  8,268 5,512
From Moscow to —
Omsk  2,681 1,794
Semipalatinsk .... 3,410 2,340
Tashkent  3,123 2,082
Vladivostock  8,012 5>34°

160 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA ix

Table of Distances (Continued)

From Odessa to —
Omsk  3,784
Semipalatinsk .... 4,513
Tashkent  4,536
Vladivostock  9," 5

Approximate equivalent in miles
2,522
3,0083,0246,076

Table of Railway Fares for Emigrants

No. of
versts 750
I,S°°2,250
3,0003,750
4,500 5,250
6,000 7,500
9,000

Equivalent in mUes

500
1,000l,5°02,0002,50O
3,0003,50O4,000 5,000
6,000

Cost of ticket
in roubles
rbls. copks.

I
2
34 5
6 7
8
1013

808065
45 SS
6565 75
9505

Equivalent
in skMingsi
1. d.

9 "
11 5
13 o
16 4
19 7

Baggage Tariff for Emigrants

To carry 3 poods (i.e. 1 cwt.) —
1,000 versts . . 30 copecks (i.e. about 6d.)
. 1 rouble 50 copecks (2s. 3d.).
. 2 roubles 70 copecks (4s.).
e. \ ton) —
. 3 roubles (4s. 6d.).
. 15 roubles (22s. 6d.).
. 27 roubles (40s. 6d.).

5,000 versts
9,000 versts
To carry 30 poods (•
1,000 versts
5,000 versts
9,000 versts

And other amounts and distances proportionately.
1 Counting the rouble as worth is. 6d. At the moment of writing it is
worth rather less than is. 4d., but it should improve somewhat.

rx THE PIONEERS 161
Charges on the Rivers
Fare in Baggage
roubles per pood
From Omsk to — rbis_ copks.
Pavlodar  3 20 20 copecks
Semipalatinsk .... 4 80 25 copecks
From Krasnoyarsk to —
Batenei  2 50 16 copecks
Minusinsk  2 80 18 copecks
At the larger stations and piers colonists' shelters
have been built; free medical aid is given, and hot
food is served out cheap (for instance, a plate of
len ten or of ordinary soup, four copecks — one penny).
To children up to ten years of age and to sick per
sons, hot food is given free. To small children (up
to three years), white bread and milk is given free.
People who become iU of infectious diseases are
removed to the Government hospitals and treated
free. At the great emigration stations beware of swin
dlers and charlatans, of whom there are not a few.
It goes without saying that even the poorest emi
grants have a httle money, and they stand to lose
even that if they are not careful. Beware of loiter
ers, card games with unknown persons, pickpockets,
robbers. Hide your money in a place where it can
not be stolen. Do not accept drinks of vodka or
beer from unknown people. It is a common trick
to scatter thorn-apple seed in vodka; the colonist

162 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rx
loses consciousness, and is robbed. Many people have
suffered in this way through lack of caution.
If on the road you purchase cattle or horses, ob
tain a certificate of purchase, or else the persons
from whom you have bought may come back and
declare that you have stolen what you bought.
Seven Rivers Province {Semiretchenskaya Oblast)
One of the most remote Central Asian possessions
of Russia, remarkable for its natural wealth and the
beauty of Nature.
The route thither is either by rail to Tashkent or
by rail to Omsk, and up the River Irtish to Semi
palatinsk, and then 500 to 1,000 versts or more by
road. It is bounded on the south and east by China,
on the north by the province of Semipalatinsk, on
the west by the provinces of Sirdaria and Ferghan.
The principal inhabitants are wandering Kirghiz,
of whom there are about one milUon. The Russians
number about 200,000, and there are about 200,000
of other races. Half the Russian population is Cos
sack. The province is divided into the jurisdictions
of Verney, Pishpek, Przhevalsk, Jarkent, Kopal and
Lepsinsk. The northern districts of Lepsinsk and Kopal are
speciaUy suitable for agricultural settlement, and there

rx THE PIONEERS 163
is much land there not needing irrigation, as there
is comparatively much water.
In the districts of Verney, Jarkent and Pishpek
irrigation is generaUy necessary. Free plots of land
are mostly in the district of Jarkent and on the fron
tier of China. When the railway has been brought
across to Verney, trade wiU certainly develop, so
the sale of products wiU be faciUtated and the condi
tions of farming very profitable.
Then the southern parts of the province are very
mountainous. Fruitful vaUeys are separated by great
ranges, but with time a road system wiU be developed
and this difficulty overcome.
A raUway wUl soon be built from Tashkent to
Verney. There are as yet no steamers. The largest river,
the Ih, crosses the centre of the province. Besides the
Ih there are many mountain streams and also large
lakes; among the latter may be named Balkhash,
Alakul, Issik-Kul.
The climate is very varied, there being levels of
eternal snow and of burning sand. The chief occu
pations of the colonists are cattle farming and all
branches of agriculture. A weU-watered farm gives,
as a rule, a rich and abundant harvest.
Wheat is sown (from 7 to 10 poods the dessia-
tina), rye oats (8 to 14 poods), miUet, peas, potatoes,
maize, sunflowers, mustard, flax, hemp, poppy, buck-

164 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA k

wheat, etc. And the harvest gives wheat up to 150
poods the dessiatina, oats give from 70 to 120 poods
the dessiatina, and barley 90 poods. In the districts
of Pishpek, Jarkent and Verney rice is sown, and
gives 100 roubles the dessiatina clear profit. Orchards
are cultivated almost everywhere with success.

Prices

Wheat . . .
Rye . . .
Oats . . .
Barley . . .
A horse costs
A cow costs .
A camel costs
A sheep costs
Labour costs

30 to 80 copecks the pood.
30 to 60 copecks the pood.
30 to 60 copecks the pood.
30 to 70 copecks the pood.
45 roubles.
25 to 30 roubles.
50 roubles.
3 to 5 roubles.
from 70 copecks to 1 rouble
50 copecks the day.

Government Grants
(a) In the measure of 100 roubles the family is
given in the districts of Pishpek and Verney, except
for certain special districts where colonisation pro
ceeds without loans. A hundred roubles are also given
to settlers in the district of Kopal, excepting the
survey of Altin-Emel and certain plots in the vaUey
of the River Chu and also in the neighbourhood of
the Lake Issik-Kul.
{b) In the measure of 200 roubles the family in
the northern parts of the district of Jarkent and in
the survey of Altin-Emel in the district of Kopal.

ix THE PIONEERS 165
In the southern and eastern frontier region half the
loan is reckoned as not returnable to the Government.
In the artificiaUy watered tracts in the districts of
Verney and Pishpek no grants are made.
Beyond personal loans special grants are made for
purposes of supplying general needs, for the buUding
of schools, churches, village barns, miUs, brick fac
tories and irrigation works. For the poorer districts
the Government takes upon itself the burden of
buUding schools and churches, and hundreds of thou
sands of roubles are spent annuaUy for this purpose.
The Government also sinks weUs for the colonists.
Personal loans are repayable by instalments after
five years. The first five years there is no need to
repay anything, but during the succeeding ten years
after that the whole should be cleared off.
General loans are repayable within ten years.
Taxes-
Settlers are free of all Governmental charges and
taxes for the first five years. During the second
five years half has to be paid, and after ten years
settlers take their stand with the estabhshed colonists.
Military Service
Settlers over 18 years at the time of settlement
are aUowed to postpone their starting service for
three years.

166 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA k
In Turkestan six years' grace is given to all over
15 years of age. Timber
When there is no timber, the Government pro
vides free wood for building purposes — from the
nearest Crown forest. Turkestan
Though, generally speaking, Turkestan is shut for
the purposes of immigration, nevertheless a great
number of people go there every year, there being
a great demand for labour of all kinds. Cotton
growers give even as much as two roubles fifty copecks
per day. Good wages are paid on the irrigation works.
Artisans are needed in the towns and viUages. Tur
kestan is rich, and can support any working man who
goes there. It is good to go there and make some
money before taking up land, and also to get some
experience of the climate and conditions. As regards
the taking up of land when allowed, grants in the
measure of 165 roubles are given in the provinces of
Sirdaria, Samarkand and Ferghan, and in the meas
ure of 250 roubles to settlers in the frontier regions
of Zaalaisk and Pamir, half of which is not returnable.
It is impossible to give the whole of this "com
bined circular" in extenso, but I think I have in
cluded or summarised aU that is vital. It indicates

rx THE PIONEERS 167
the scaffolding of empire building. The people at
home feel cramped or restless. They send out their
khodoki, the pioneer messengers. The messengers
select a portion of new land and return to Russia.
The famiUes of the emigrants foUow. But first they
must seU off or abandon aU manner of cumbersome
property; and good-bye has to be said to friends, to
the old viUage, to church and churchyard, and the
dead. Most difficult of aU for many Russians is the
leaving the dead behind. There is the whole agony
of separation, the being cut off from Russia and
going forth as a new child into Siberia or Central
Asia. Then the long, monotonous train journey, and
the road journey at the end of it ; the caravan on the
Central Asian road, and it is in the caravan that
the colonists begin to taste of new life, and many
feel they would hke to go on wandering so aU their
lives. But they reach the place the messenger has
found for them, and then commences the great work
of making a habitation of man where no habitation
has ever been before. Prayers and thanksgiving,
and then work. There is no possible hving with
out work, and the rather easy-going ways of the
old land have to be given up and a new hfe begun
of arduous labour and unflagging energy. To their
aid comes hope and the passion for making all things
new. No Russian would work so much were it
not interesting; it is real hfe, the wine of experience.

1 68 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA rx
First of all, trees are planted. How pathetic to
see the long rows of three-foot-high poplar shoots
and wiUow twigs ! A month on this sun-beaten road
leaves no doubt in the emigrant's mind as to what
is the first necessity — shade, shade. Trees are
planted aU along the main Government dyke. The
colonist chooses the place for his house; he digs a
trench aU round it and lets in water from the dyke, and
he plants trees along the trench. Then he buys stout
poplar trunks and willow trunks, and makes the
framework of his cottage. He interlaces little wUlow
twigs, and makes the sort of wilted green, shghtly
shady, shghtly sunny house that children might put
up in a wood in England. But that is only the be
ginning. To the wiUow house he slaps on mud pud
dings. This is the filthiest work. He makes a great
quantity of mud, and treads it up and down with
his bare feet till he gets the consistency he requires,
and then, with his hand, fetches out sloppy lumps
of it and builds his walls. In a few days the mud
hardens, and he has a shady and substantial dweU-
ing, and one that in an earthquake wiU swing but
wiU not coUapse. His roof he makes of prairie grass,
great reeds ten feet to fifteen feet in length and thick
and strong, or of willow twigs again and turf. In his
second year he has a httle hay harvest on his roof.
He ploughs his little bit of desert. He exchanges
some of his oxen for cows. He strives with aU his

rx THE PIONEERS 169
power — as does a transplanted flower — to take
root. He looks forlorn. You look at his poor estate
and say: "It is a poor experiment. The sun is too
strong for him ; he will just wither off, and the desert
wiU be as before." But you come another day and
you see a change, and exclaim: "He has taken root,
after aU; there is a shoot of young hfe there, tender
and green." Along the road I noticed villages of all
ages ; of this year, of last year, of four years gone, of
twenty years, forty years.
There are now several thousand Russian villages
in Central Asia — year by year scores of new names
creep into the map in faint italics. It is astonishing
to English eyes, because we are accustomed to think
that maps of Asia do not change. We like to pre
serve the old Asiatic names of places, and our
map-makers seem to have prejudice in favour of
Teuton nomenclature similar to the prejudice for
spelling the names of Russian places with German
pronunciation equivalents. Asia becomes predomi
nantly Russian, and not by virtue of troops stationed
at outlandish posts, but by virtue of this process of
settling. The process of colonisation is, however, slower
than the process of colonising the British Empire.
The population is said to increase at a greater rate,
but the organic development is slower. The facihties
for getting to Siberia and Central Asia are greater,

170 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA dc
but the prospect held out is not so aUuring, not so
fascinating. There is more work to be done by the
immigrant here than in Canada or Austraha or Africa.
There are no large fortunes to be made in a few years,
no speculative chances, no great whirling wheel of
Ufe set going. On the other hand, Russian coloni
sation is sounder colonisation, more sohd and lasting.
It has a better quahty and it promises more for the
future, unless we British are going to wake up to the
facts of our situation.

X
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
It is not necessary to say much about Verney, the
capital of Seven Rivers Land. It is so subject to
earthquakes that it is difficult to see in it a perma
nent capital. No houses of two storeys can with
safety be buUt, so it is more suited to remain a miU
tary centre and fortress than to be a great city. In
order to look imposing, shops and stores have fixed
up sham upper storeys; that is, they have window-
fronts up above, but no rooms behind the fronts.
Singer and the cinema are here, though an enor
mous number of Singer shops have been compul-
sorily closed all over the Russian Empire during the
war. Verney has its bazaar, its inns and doubt
ful houses, its baths, dance halls, clubs, restaurants.
Although it is so far from a raUway station and such
an enormous distance from the wicked West, it has
its frivohty and sin and smaU crime. It has no
electric cars. It has no Bond Street or West End.
One may say, however, that it has its Covent Garden.
Verney is a great market for fruit and vegetables.
Its native name means the city of apples, and for
171

172 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
apples it is famous. AU traveUers from China are
given Verney apples when they pass through. Carts
heaped high with giant red radishes are driven through
the town, and the strawberry hawkers make many
cries. Many horses are adorned with fancy garments,
and I noticed donkeys with trousers on. Women
ride about astride, and are evidently used to horse
back, tripping along leaning forward over the horse
as it springs to a gallop, sedately coming up the high
street at a walk, erect like little fat soldiers. Then,
Kirghiz women astride of bulls are to be seen, and
I saw one carrying twin babies and yet on bull-back,
dexterously holding the cord from the ring in the
animal's nose, and guiding it whither it should go.
Verney has its newspaper. It has some hope of
culture, and in the High School two dozen students
matriculate each year and go off to the Universi
ties of Kief, Moscow, and so on. Verney folk are
grumblers at home, but when they get to Russia
they develop great local patriotism and sigh for a
bit of Verney bread, even of the stale bread of Ver
ney. At the Universities the students of Seven
Rivers Land keep together, and know themselves as
a body having certain views and opinions of then-
own. Then, after their course, they come back to
their home land and bring tidings of Russia. I talked
with some students, and found them not unhke our
own colonial students in their outlook and their

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 173
attitude to the Empire. They help, but, of course,
a far away place hke this needs a lot of helping in
the matter of culture. They bring back books and
musical instruments. When I went out at night,
strolling through the moon-iUuminated city, I Ustened
to the tinkling of pianos, and it was interesting
to reflect that each instrument, besides coming
thousands of miles by train, had also come five
hundred mUes in a wagon along these Central Asian
roads. There is a suggestion of America in the hfe out
here. When you ask the way you are directed by
blocks, not by turnings, and you may be sure the
town is a planned one, with the streets running at
right angles to one another. Only Nature, with her
earthquakes, has tumbled it, given you chasms to
jump over, and made it dangerous to walk in the
outskirts of the town at night. There is much ad
vertisement of wares and of persons, and a keen
ness to prosper and get rich. "Getting rich flatters
your self-esteem," I read, and again, "Buy Indian
tea and get rich." It is quite clear to me that buy
ing Indian tea reaUy makes poorer, for it is altogether
inferior to Russian tea ; but, then, these people have
not our experience, they do not know the history of
tea-drinking in England ; how once we also had good
tea, but that, in the national passion for cheapness
and "getting rich," we have come to drink popu-

174 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
larly that vile thick stuff we now call tea. Verney
has its rich bourgeois — rich for Verney — men with
ten or twenty thousand pounds capital. Among such
is, or was (for perhaps he has been interned or expeUed),
a German sausage-maker, who started his career in
the market-place with five pounds of sausages on a
plate, and is now a respected merchant with shops and
branch shops and a fame for sausages throughout
Central Asia.
The local newspaper had made some sort of record
of the cinema films that were shown in the five towns
of Seven Rivers and analysed them in this way :
Scientific  2 per cent.
Historical  3 per cent.
Industrial  3 per cent.
Nature  4 per cent.
Farce  20 per cent.
Lurid drama  60 per cent.
Polite drama  8 per cent.
which seemed to give a fair account of its civilising
force. I visited three or four cinemas at various
remote places, and was astonished at the French and
Itahan horrors, German and Scandinavian bourgeois
funniosities, ghastly white-slave tragedies, and many
visualised penny dreadfuls. When you see the crowds
of Russians at these performances you realise that the
penny dreadful is by no means played out, that many
people did not in the old times read the penny dread
ful just because they did not know what lay between

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 175
the covers of those badly printed books, what enthraU-
ing rubbish. The business has changed hands com-
merciaUy, but the thing sold is the same. It is sold
in a more acceptable form — that is aU.
Astonishing to see the yeUow men of Asia staring
at the cinema : the turbaned Sart ; the new China
man, with cropped pigtail; the baby-like Kirghiz.
Whatever do they make of American business ro
mances and the WUd West and Red Rube and Max?
They seem engrossed, smile irrelevantly, stare, go
out, but always come again. The cinema is a queer
window on to Europe and the West.
The road from Verney to IUisk, on the River IU,
, seemed more deserted than the road to Verney had
been. Many parties of pioneers evidently turn south
at Verney, and not so many turn north-east towards
Ihisk. It is waste territory, overgrown with coarse
grass and thistles. There are occasional mountain
rivulets, bridged on the roadway with straw and mud
bridges much higher than the level of the road, so
that every bridge is a sort of hump. Behind me
and behind Verney immense steep mountains lifted
themselves up into the clouds. The road that I
walked was a slowly descending tableland.
I passed through the Uttle village of Karasbi, and
then through the more substantial settlements of Jarasai
and Nikolaevski. These are prolonged and atten-

176 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
uated viUages. The oldest houses are the biggest
and the deepest in trees, they have plenty of out
houses and farm buildings ; but the newest are bare
and wretched, with poplar shoots in front of them
but three feet high. There are some deserted hovels
— even a fine house was perhaps a hovel to begin
with, a temporary mud hut put up to give shelter
whUst the first work was done on the fields. I saw
many houses half buUt, showing their framework of
yet green wiUow and poplar twigs. I saw whole
famUies and villages at work on new settlements, and
also families living in tents. On the foundations of
the new dwellings or attached to the rude frame
work were Uttle crosses, only to be taken down when
there would be a place in the house for the ikons
brought from their old homes in Russia. Some
colonists, on being asked when they had arrived,
repUed, "Last week," others said, "During these
days"; the dust on their wagons was new. Every
one had a sort of Swiss Family Robinson air, as of
exploring an island, making natural discoveries, and
bringing things from a wreck. Some groups, how
ever, were aheady busy sowing their new fields, and
I understood that that was the first thing to do ; that
was the work, and the buUding the new cottages
was the play. They had nothing to fear from sleep
ing in the open every night of summer and early
autumn — a lesson to these Russians, who in their

Chinese Praying-House at Djarxent

The Cathedral of St. Sophia at Verney — After the
Earthquake of 1887

X FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 177
home cottages or in railway carriages are afraid of
fresh air as if it brought pestilence.
I spent two wonderful nights under the stars on
the road to IUisk, the first in a sort of natural cradle
in a copse, the second in a hollow which I made for
my body in the bare sand of the desert. I passed
out of the new land on to the waste of the Ih vaUey;
the road was visible twenty or thirty miles ahead,
and on it in front of me are telegraph poles unlimited,
at first with spaces between, but in the distance
thick, like black matches stuck close together in the
sand. I walked a long way in the evenings, and I
remember, as the sun set, an enormous and foohsh
bustard that was under the impression I was chas
ing it. It would fly the space of five telegraph poles,
I'd walk the space of three; then it would fly
three, I'd catch up ; and it would fly on ahead along
the track as if it dared not desert the poles. Finally,
however, just at the last rays of sunset, it flew cross-
ways over the desert and disappeared.
I was rather nervous at this time about the kara-
kurt, the black spider that sheep eat with pleasure,
but whose bite is mortal to men; and each night
when I made my fresh-air couch I took pains to keep
out of the way of flies, beetles, spiders, and snakes.
I never was troubled by the karakurt, but I had a
Uvely time with beetles and running flies, to say
nothing of snakes, whose sudden darts and writhings

178 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
gave me momentary horrors many times. The vaUey
of the IU is a wild place, with tigers and panthers; a
splendid district for study and sport, I should say.
However, no beasts came and snuffed my face in
the night.
Each night on the road I learned to expect the
moon later and later. It always seems unpunctual,
always late, but not worried, and having that irre
proachable beauty that excuses aU faults. She came
up late over the Hi desert in a wonderful orange hght,
and then, emerging into perfect brilUance, paled the
myriad stars, set them back in the sky,
Divesting herself of her golden shift and so
Emerging white and exquisite.
I lay looking eastward on the sand, and on my right,
in the vague night shadow, lay the tremendous pyra
mids of the Ala Tau mountains, the great chff tri
angles south of Verney, first vision of the mighty
Thian Shan. The clouds had hfted off them during
the night, and in the morning I saw them in their
true perspective, vague, smoke-like, shadow-based
and grey-white, sun-bathed, many-pointed rocky and
precipitous summits stretching a hundred miles and
more from east to west.
It was ten miles in to breakfast at IUisk. The
water in the httle lakes being salt, and my water-
bottles empty, I could not make tea. The lakes

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 179
and ponds remind you that you are between Issik-
Kul and Balkhash. It is, however, desert country
till you come to the thickets of the river, and there
the cuckoo is calhng, there are bees in the air, and
it is glorious, fresh, abundant summer. The bases
of the mountains are all deep blue as the sky, but
utterly soft and delicious to the gaze, and the colour
faints into the whiteness of the hunched-mile-long
line of snow.
IUisk is marked large on the map for convenience
sake. One must mark it large to indicate a town on
the River IU, but though there is a prospect of its
becoming an important trade centre, it is as yet
insignificant, no more than a viUage, a church, a
post-station, a market-place, and the dwelling-houses
of two thousand people. I noticed new colonists
here, using their horses to tramp great slops of mud
to the proper consistency of mud dough for making
the waUs of new cottages. So IUisk is increasing in
size, its population is growing. Most of the houses
here were mud huts of the swinging kind, built to
withstand earthquakes, and their roofs were very hght
and beautiful, being of jungle reeds of a golden colour,
each stem twelve feet long and ending in a broom
of soft plumage. The River Ih, from which these
reeds are cut, is a grateful sheet of silver, the breadth
of the Thames at Westminster, has pink cliffs, is
spanned by a wooden bridge, and has Uttle tree-

180 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
grown islets. Among the reeds on the banks lurk
the tiger and panther and many snakes. Little
steamers go to and fro out of China and into China,
doing trade in wool, but held up every now and then
by the Chinese for extra bribes. In the village wagons
and camels are being loaded with raw wool — indi
cating the future significance of the Uttle town as
a trade centre. The population is predominantly
Russian, though there are Tartars, Kirghiz, and
Chinese Mohammedans. Near the market-place is a
Tartar mosque with a green crescent on the top of it.
My road lay eastward toward Kopal, but before
taking it I had my breakfast at IUisk — sour milk and
stale bread — at a cottage, with Christ's blessing, and
how good !
The morning was very hot when I set out again,
and I took off my jacket and put it in my knapsack,
carrying the enlarged and weighty bundle on thinly
covered shoulders. The land was sandy and desolate,
being too high above the level of the River Ih to
aUow of simple irrigation. If it is to be opened up
for colonisation, the river must be tapped much
higher up, in Chinese territory, but this the Chinese
wiU not as yet aUow. I met no colonists on my road
out from Ihisk, not even any Kirghiz. Summer had
scorched away whatever grass the desert had yielded,
and the nomads had retired for the season and gone
to fresher pastures higher in the hUls. How fru-

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 181
gaUy it is necessary to lunch in these parts may be
guessed. It is no place to tramp for anyone who
must have dainties and must have change. On the
whole I do not recommend Central Asia for long
walking tours. For one thing, there is very little
opportunity of getting anything washed, including
oneself; no early morning dip, no freshness. It is
not as in the Caucasus :
The wild joy of hving, the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool, silver
shock
Of the plunge in the pool's hving water.
At night I was fain to discard my sleeping-sack,
those two sheets sewn together on three sides; but
the beetles and spiders and mosquitoes made that
impossible. On the other hand, the whiteness of the
sack, when the moon shone full on me, always made
it possible that some long-sighted Kirghiz might
bring his tribe along to find out what I was.
After a night in the desert above IUisk I came
to a place which was not a place and was caUed
ChingUdinsky, perhaps because of the sound of the
beUs on horses galloping through, for scarce anyone
ever stops there, but I suppose really after Chingiz
Khan. However, at the Zemsky post-station, to
which I had repaired to have tea, I made an inter
esting acquaintance, a M. Liamin, a Government
engineer, architect, and inspector of bridges. He

182 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
was traveUing on a long round through Seven Rivers
and Western China via Chugachak — a military-look
ing gentleman in the uniform of a colonel, but much
more sociable than a Russian officer is permitted
to be. He was riding in his own tarantass, with his
own petted horses, Vaska and Margarita. He asked
me if I would care to accompany him, and we trav
eUed a whole day together, all day and aU night.
Whenever we came in sight of any game the Kirghiz
coachman took his master's gun and had a shot at it.
In this way we brought down two pheasants and a
woodcock, to the delight of the Kirghiz and the not
unmingled pleasure of his master, who could not
bear to think of animals in pain. Liamin was in
specting Government buildings, chiefly bridges, and
of these chiefly bridges long since washed away. He
had to report annually to the governor of Semiretchie.
"There are two hundred bridges needing repair
or rebuilding. I make my report, and the governor
sets aside two hundred roubles. A rouble apiece,"
he explained, smihng. "But what is a rouble!"
We passed through remarkably empty country,
but it was on this second day out of Ihisk that I met
for the first time the colonists coming southwards
from Siberia. More than half my journey was done;
I was nearer Omsk than Tashkent.
In Liamin's tarantass were aU manner of boxes
and padlocked safes, map roUs, instruments, piUows,

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 183
quUts, weapons. There was a soft depth where one
sat and lolled on one's back whilst one's knees in
front were preposterously high. It was a jolly way
to travel, and we were both sick of solitude and glad
to hear the sound of our own voices. Liamin was
charming. We talked on aU manner of themes. His
favourite authors were Jack London, Kipling, and
Dickens. Wells depressed his soul, because he was
so pessimistic. It seemed to him very terrible that
it was necessary to kill so many people before Man
would make up his mind to live aright. The World
Repubhc was not worth the price paid. He had
read "The World Set Free" in a Russian transla
tion, and he could not bring himself to believe that
there would ever be such slaughter as a world-war
meant. Mankind was not so stupid.
Though he was a high-placed official, Liamin was
aU agamst the colonisation of Central Asia, which
he caUed a fashionable idea, and full of sympathy
for the wandering Kirghiz, who were being excluded
from all the good pasture lands and harried across
the frontier into China. At one village where we
stopped we met a land surveyor and an old, grizzled,
retired colonel who both held the opposite view,
and they belaboured Liamin as we sat round the
samovar. "The Kirghiz are animals, nothing more. The
Russians are men. The Kirghiz are going to China.

184 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
God be with them ! Let them go ! Are they not
pagans ? We should be well rid of them ! Just
think of their cruelty; they put a ring through a
bull's nose and tie him by that to a horse, and by his
tail to a camel ! If they want to stay with us, let
them remain in one spot, become civilised, and ob
tain proper passports; then their land wiU be se
cured to them. But if they must wander about
Uke wUd animals, here to-day and the other side of
the mountain to-morrow, then they must pay for
their liberty and wildness."
A grievous question, this, in Russian Central Asia.
Liamin could not make his way in his argument
against the colonel. The future of the Kirghiz tribes
is problematical, but I should say that they were
certain to go over the frontier into China in ever
greater numbers as Central Asia becomes civilised
by the Russians. What they will do when Mongoha
and China become civilised I do not know. But that
is looking a long way ahead.
At a place caUed Karachok we saw somewhat of
the festivity of a Kirghiz wedding. There was a
great crowd of men — the guests from the country
round about — and they all stood around the tent of
the bridegroom, while the womenfolk, apparently all
coUected together, sat within and improvised songs.
The felt was removed from the side of the tent and
the cane framework was exposed, so the girls and

Visitors at a Kirghiz Wedding

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 185
women within, aU in white and with white turbans
on their heads, looked as if they were in a cage. Kir
ghiz women are not veiled. They were all sitting
on the floor — that is, on carpets on the ground of
the tent. They sang as the Northern Russians sing
in the provinces of Vologda and Perm and Archangel,
in wild bursts and inharmonious keening. The men
joined occasionally in the songs, and occasionally
burst into laughter, for the words were full of funny
things invented by the girls. That seemed to be
the sum of the entertainment. A sheep had been
roasted whole. A race had been run for the prize
of a dead goat — the national baiga race. About
midnight the singing ended, and the guests prepared
to take their wives away and go home; the camels
and buUs and horses were led forth, also the wives.
And then broke out a quarrel. One of the guests
had stolen a sUver button off the coat of another
man's wife, had cut it off with the scissors as a keep
sake, and she had countenanced the theft. The wife,
being the personal property of the husband, had, of
course, no power to give the button on her own account.
There was likely to be an outrageous fight with cud
gels,, but Liamin appeared in the midst of the dis
pute and calmed it all away in the name of law and
order. The guests mounted and rode away, out
into the darkness, by various tracks, on horses, camels,
bulls, their wives with them. It was astonishing to

186 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
see the effect of the appearance of an officer among
the angry crowd. They forgot their differences at
one look and the recognition of a uniform. Even
the dogs ceased barking when they saw the sword
of my friend and they smelt his khaki trousers.
Our horses had been taken out of the shafts and
given three hours' rest and plenty of oats to eat.
We walked out over the wild and empty moor to
gether and chatted, came back and had tea, and
then got into the tarantass once more. It was the
depth of night before we moved on, and although
we had clambered in before the horses were brought
back, our object being to go to sleep before we started,
we went on comparing impressions. I told him
my hfe, he told me his, told me about his wife and
children and his home at Przhevalsk, of his horses
and his experiments in breeding, of the horse races
at Verney, of the joy of the Kirghiz in racing, the
one Russian pursuit and interest in which they fully
share, the common ground of the two peoples in the
colony. Liamin spent a great deal of the year in
China and on the frontier, and had evidently much
experience of the Chinese. He considered there
would be a quarrel with China sooner or later through
the progress of Russia in Central Asia. But the
Chinese would be beaten. He did not fear their
miUions. They were not equipped as the Japanese
were.

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 187
"What do you think of the Yellow PerU; is it
getting nearer?" I asked.
"There is no danger of it whatever," said he.
"Europe is far too warlike to be in any danger from
the Chinese."
"Do you think Europe is more or less warlike
than it was ; do you think it is getting less warlike?"
I asked. This was, of course, before the Great War.
"Yes, it's getting less warlike, I suppose," said
Liamin. "But it will be a long while before we are
too effeminate to withstand the Mongols. But woe
for us if there should ever come such a time ! They
are a devihsh people. At first glance they seem
artless and childlike, but you can never be sure what
they are up to; they are secret and mysterious. It
is an axiom with me that all Asiatics lie; but the
Chinese particularly. You remember when San Fran
cisco was destroyed by earthquake the Americans
discovered a hitherto unknown and underground city
run by the Chinese, and in it many white people
who had long since disappeared nobody knew whither,
people who had been advertised for and sought for
by relatives and pohce and what not. Wherever
the Chinese form colonies they turn to devilry of
one kind or another. I remember the ghastly things
the Chinese did in the Boxer insurrection, the origi
nality of the tortures they invented. Fancy this
as a torture! A Russian whom I knew feU into

188 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA x
their hands, and their way of killing him was to fasten
a corpse of a man to him, and day and night he Uved
with this corpse till the worms ate into him and he
died of madness ! The Russian viUagers don't mind
doing business with the Chinamen, but always remem
ber they are pagans, and many think they have direct
dealings with devUs. I was at Blagoveshtchensk
when the Chinese opened fire on us, and our Siberian
colonists drove aU the Chinese out of the city, thirty
thousand of them, and they were drowned in the river
like rats."
By this time the horses had been put in, Karachok
left, and we were jogging gently through the night.
The Kirghiz who drove slept; the horses also almost
slept as they walked. Liamin at last, tired or made
drowsy by the movement, nodded as he talked, and
feU asleep in the middle of a sentence. The road
climbed over high mountains, the moon bathed the
track and the wild and empty landscape with light.
How far on either hand stretched the uninhabited
world! It was hke posting across a new and habit
able planet where men might have been expected to
be hving, but where aU had died, or none but our
selves had ever come. The world itself poked up,
its great back was shyly hfted as if it were some
gigantic, timid animal that had never been disturbed.
It was a wonderful night ; quiet, gentle, and unusual.
Liamin, at my side, slept silently and intensely.

x FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 189
The Kirghiz looked as if cut out of wood. I lay
back and looked out, my fingers locked behind my
head. So the smaU hours passed. Night seemed to
move over us and be left behind, and I saw ahead
the creeping dawn, the morrow, the real morrow,
golden and lucent on the eastern horizon. The sun
rose and flooded into our sleepy and sleeping eyes
as we clattered over the brow of a hill. We came
to the Tartar hamlet of Kuan-Kuza, and it was
morning.

XI
ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER
At Kuan-Kuza I parted company with Liamin.
I went off for a walk on the hills; he went on with
Vaska and Margarita. I had now reached mountain
ous country and a region of fresh air. There were
green vaUeys and wild flowers, streams beside which
I could make a pleasant repast, and I had a most
enjoyable walk to Kopal. There were patches of
snow on the heights, and I clambered up and fin
gered it just for the joy of reahsing the contrast to
the heat of the deserts I had come through. The
road went high over a green tableland to Altin-Emel,
where I came to cross-roads for China. An enor
mous caravan of camels blocked all the ways here;
two or three hundred ranks of camels, roped three
in a rank, roped crossways and lengthways, bearing
huge panniers of wool, but no passengers. China
men and Uttle Chinese boys were in charge of them,
and ran among the camels' legs, cursing and caUing
as the strings of bewildered or purposely contrary
animals threatened to get into knots and inextricable
tangles. Sarts were doing a good business here,
seUing hot lunch from wooden cauldrons with three
igo

xi ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER 191
compartments, in which were meat pies, soups, po
tatoes, respectively, aU cooking at the same time
over charcoal. Altin-Emel is an interesting point
on the road. Here may be seen upon occasion Brit
ish sportsmen with Hindu servants, and two or three
britchkas fuU of trophies and large antlers done up
in linen and cotton-wool and fixed with rope. Be
fore the war four or five British officers passed through
Altin-Emel every year on their way to Chinese Tar
tary or India, or from those places, coining home.
Some were out here at the time the war broke out,
and were a long time in finding out exactly what
had happened in Europe.
It is very beautiful country, with snow peaks in
view in the distance and at your feet white iris, for
get-me-not, and brUhant Scotch roses, those yellow
blossoms thick on thorny stems. Then there are
fields of muUein as thick as stalks of corn after the
peasants' sickles have cut the harvest. There are
good-looking and frequent Russian viUages and Cos
sack stations, Kugalinskaya, Polovinka, Kruglenkoe.
I passed through a village started only in 191 1, very
clean, weU kept, and promising. Kugalinskaya
Stanitsa was an old settlement, the land probably
given to the Cossacks when the conquest took place.
This place was very drunken the time I stayed there,
though now, since the war and prohibition, that
characteristic must have vanished. The Cossacks

192 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xi
apparently found hfe rather boring; they had a
marionette show in the bazaar, lotto banks and rou
lette tables, where copecks were risked and bottles
of vodka staked. The pubhc-house was full of sing
ing drunkards. I can imagine how cheered up the
people were when war was declared.
After a wonderful night on a httle green table
land covered with muUeins, where when I spread my
bed I must crush mulleins, I went on to Tsaritsin-
skaya. There, on the pass over the mountains and
the Kok-sa River, I got my first soaking on this vaga
bondage, soaked to the skin by mist and drizzle;
but I did not seem much the worse for it, and dried
naturally in the sun on the morrow, visibly steam
ing. It was quite hke a Caucasus road now, steep,
wUd, magnificent with gorges and passes, foaming
rivulets, villages threaded with the hfe of running
water, the paradise of ducks and their broods. The
outward roads were marked by heaps of mud and
stones, and on these I went to Jangiz-Agatch, with
its fine trees, and Karabulak and Gavrilovka ; finaUy,
a day over great sweeps of country iUumined by
gorse in bloom and yeUow roses, over leagues of wolf-
hunted moorland to Kopal.
Kopal is 825 miles from a railway station, and one
of the last places on earth; a town without an inn,
without a barber; a place you could run round in
a quarter of an hour, and yet having jurisdiction

xi ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER 193
over an immense tract of territory along the Russian
frontier of China. It was late in the evening when
I arrived there, and when I went to the post-house
I found it crowded with Chinamen; Chinamen on
the two beds, on the floor, in the passage; chop
sticks on the table. They were all traveUers on the
road to Pekin, making their way slowly northward
to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
At once one of those who occupied a bed got up,
apologised, and vacated his sleeping-place, offer
ing it to me. Despite my refusal, he took off his
blanket and quilt and spread them on the floor in
stead. His humility was touching — especially in
contrast to my own instinctive loathing of a bed on
which Chinese had lain. Fortunately, I did not feel
tired. I do not carry a watch on my travels, so the idea
of what time it is gradually fades from the mind.
The hour is not a matter of anxiety ; dawn, noon, sun
set, night are the quarters of the clock and they suffice.
But in the post-station at Kopal, whilst the Chinese
were officiously effacing themselves, I found myseU
idly looking at the big clock hangmg in a shadowy
corner and trying to make out the hour. The face
of the clock was a tiger looking at a snake. When it
was twelve o'clock the hands were between the tiger's
eyes. At a quarter past seven the hands held the
serpent. The clock was very dusty, but imagine the

194 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xi
start I got when suddenly I saw that the eyes in the
tiger face were roUing at me. As I stared the pupUs
slowly moved across the whites of the eyes. The
pendulum made the eyes roll.
It was only nine o'clock, and I had noticed as I
came into the town a considerable flare of lights, a
large white tent, and a notice of a Chinese circus.
A Chinese circus was something not to be missed in
this empty and outlandish country, so I put down
my pack in the post-house and went out to see the
performance. It was something truly original, a
piquant diversion after a long day's journeying in the
wastes and wilds of the mountains of Alai Tau.
It was a circular tent, smaU enough for a circus
tent, having only three rows of seats around the
arena. The price to sit down was thirty copecks, to
stand behind, fifteen copecks. Soldiers came in free,
and there were some thirty of them, with their dull
peasant faces and dusty khaki uniforms. Near the
entrance there was a box covered with red bunting,
free for the chief of police and his friends. The
chief of pohce has a free box at nearly every local
entertainment in Russia — he can permit or forbid
the show. There were three musicians — Russian
peasants, paid a shilling a night, I understand — and
they gave value for money unceasingly on a con
certina, a violin, and a balalaika. The pubhc on
the bare, rickety forms ringed round the as yet empty

xi ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER 195
stage numbered from 100 to 120, and were a mixture
of Russians, Tartars, and Kirghiz. AU the Russian
officers and officials of the town seemed to be there,
and were accompanied by their smartly dressed wives
and daughters. The Tartar merchants looked grim
in their black skuU-caps, their women queenly, with
httle crowns on the tops of their heads and long veils
faUing over their hair and their backs. There was a
row of these crowned Tartar women together; a row
also of Kirghiz women, in high, white turbans wrapped
about their broad brows. There were colonists and
their babas — open-faced, simple-souled peasant women
who came to be petrified by the seeming devilry of the
heathen Chinee. To them the fact that the Chinese
are heathen — not Christian — is no joke, but a fierce
reahty. They look upon the Chinese as being com
paratively near akin to devils.
Naphtha lamps swung uneasily from the high
beams of the tent, and flung unequal volumes of
light from dangerous-looking ragged flames. The
sandy arena and all the eager people round were
brightly shown in the plenitude of Ught.
The first item on the programme was not par
ticularly striking. A beU was rung, and a Uttle
Chinaman in black came out and twirled and
juggled a tea-tray on a chopstick. Then followed a
Russian clown with painted face, old hat, and yellow
wig, who proceeded to be very serious and show the

196 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xi
pubUc various tricks. He had three Chinese servants,
and the fun consisted in their stealing his things and
spoiling his efforts. FinaUy, he took a big stick
and chased them round and round the arena — to
the great deUght of all the children present.
The clown's turn ended, there came forward a
very handsome Chinee in black satin knee-breeches,
tight stockings, scarlet jersey, and English coUar and
tie. He was rather taU, had a big, womanish face,
gleaming teeth, and long, black hair. He walked
jauntily in little slippers, and carried a handful of
ten knives. Another Chinaman came out with an
old tree trunk, which he held up on end. A child
came and stood up agamst the trunk. The handsome
Chinee then stood and flung the knives as if to pin
the boy to the wood, and he planted them between
the child's arm and his body, over his arm, between
his legs and beside his legs, on each side of his neck,
on each side of his ears, and over his head — and all
the time as he flung them he smiled. He repeated
his feat, placing aU the knives round about the boy's
head, never raising the skin.
Number four was the owner of the troupe, an old
feUow in a light blue, voluminous smock and long
pigtaU. He conjured a platter of biscuits and cakes,
glasses, a teapot, a steaming samovar, aU out of
nothingness, inviting the public to come and have tea
with him, and talking an amusing broken Russian :

xi ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER 197
"You laugh, you think this fine trick, but I show
you 'nother mighty juggle ; took me ten years to
learn this juggle ..." and so on.
As the applause dies down the beU rings again,
and out comes the "Chinaman with the cast-iron
head." All the time "the orchestra" plays Russian
dances, plays them very noisily. He with the iron
head lies down on the sand and puts two bricks on
his temple. At a distance of ten yards another China
man holds a brick and prepares to aim it at the head
of his prostrate feUow-player. He aims it, but the
iron-headed one pretends to lose his nerve and jumps
up with a terrible scream, pointing to the music. The
music must be calmed down. The audience holds
its breath as the trick is repeated to gentle luUaby
airs. This time the prostrate man receives the
bricks one by one as they are aimed — square on
the bricks lying on his temple — and, of course, is
none the worse, though he takes the risk of a bad
shot. The old conjurer came out again and danced to
the Russian Kamarinsky air, holding a bamboo as U
it were his partner, and doing aU manner of clever
and amusing turns. The young man who juggled
the tea-tray on the chopstick reappeared, and did a
difficult balancing trick, raising himself on a trestle
which rested on httle spheres on a table. Then came
two most original items, the dancing of an old man

198 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xi
in a five-yard hnen whip, and the roUing round the
body of a rusty eight-foot iron sceptre.
The man who danced made the long whip of linen
crack and roU out over the arena in splendid circles
and waves, and he was ever in the midst of it. The
juggler of the sceptre contrived to roll the strange-
looking implement aU over his body, about his back
and his shoulders and his stomach, and never let it
touch the ground and never touched it with his hand
— and at the same time to dance to the music. This
was a most attractive feat, and was as pleasant to
watch as anything I had ever seen ih a large city.
There was an interval and a great buzz of talking and
surmise. After the interval came wresthng matches
and trick-riding on bicycles. A clever httle Mongol
had no difficulty in disposing of those who offered to
wrestle with him, and a Russian cyclist who rode on
his handle-bars received great applause from the people
of Kopal, most of whom had not seen a bicycle before.
So the entertainment ended, and everyone was
weU pleased. The jugghng was a great mystification
to the simple Russians, and I heard many amusing
comments from those behind me and beside. The con
juring forth of the steaming samovar was especiaUy
troubling to the minds of the peasant women, and I
heard one say to another :
" God knows where he got it from."
And the other repUed seriously :

Lepers in a Frontier Town

xi ON THE CHINESE FRONTIER 199
"What has God got to do with it? It's the power
o' Satan."

I returned to my post-house in a pleasant frame
of mind ; it was one by the clock with the tiger face,
and I took out my sheets and blanket and slept in a
wagon in the yard. AU the Chinese were snoring.
I said Kopal had no barber, but next day I found
a Sart who shaved. I entered a dwelling in the
bazaar, half home, half cave. Picture me sitting on
a rag of carpet on the floor of a mud hut, a red hand
kerchief tied tightly round my neck. A bald-headed
old Mohammedan holds in his hand a broken mug
containing vinegar. He dips his thumb in the vine
gar, and then massages my cheeks and chin and neck.
It was queer to feel his broad thumb pounding against
my skin and chinbone. He made no lather, but he
thought that he softened my skin with his hard thumb
and the vinegar. Then he brandished a broken razor
over my head, and fairly tore the hair off my face
with it. He gave me no water with which to rinse,
but as he finished his job he put into my hand three
inches of broken mirror so that I could survey my
new countenance and judge whether he had done well.
The Chinese at the post-house behaved like Chris
tians, or, rather, as Christians should, with great humble
ness and altruism, giving up the samovar to Russian
visitors, fetching water to fiU the washing-bowls, clean-

200 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xi
ing and (hying the dishes after their breakfast, and
sweeping the post-room floor before they went away.
The postmaster's wife said there was a constant flow
of Chinese, and they always behaved in that way.
Kopal, four thousand feet above the sea level, is
in the midst of fine scenery, and the frontier all the
way to Chugachak and the shoulder of the Altai
mountains is wild and desolate. The boundary is
marked by numbered poles, but there are few soldiers
or excisemen to question you if you cross either way.
There is a certain amount of smuggUng done, one of the
articles brought through from China being Havana
cigars, of which the local bureaucracy is said to be fond.
Sportsmen on the road to Kuldja sometimes put up
at Kopal. They are given facilities to make such
journeys and receive honourable treatment, their names
being forwarded to aU the postmasters on the way and
instructions being posted in aU the post-houses along
the road. It was interesting to read on the post-house
waUs notices of the foUowing type :
"There wUl pass this way" (then would come an
EngUsh name) . " You are to give him horses and aU of
which he may stand in need. In the case of his being
hindered for any reason, you wiU be severely punished."
These Enghsh often possess their own tarantasses,
and sleep in them at night. In that way they avoid
the unpleasantness of sleeping in a room fuU of Chinese.
On the whole it is better to sleep out of doors than in.

XII
"MIDSUMMER NIGHT AMONG THE TENT-
DWELLERS"
I walked forth from Kopal on a broad moorland road,
and after several hours' upland tramping came to the
Cossack viUage of Arazan — a typical wiUow-shaded
settlement with irrigation streamlets rushing along
the channels between the roadway and the cottages.
Here, at the house of a herculean old soldier, I was
offered for dinner a dish of hot milk, ten Ughtly boiled
eggs, and a hunch of black bread — the typical meal
of the day for a wanderer in these parts. In the pleas
ant coolness of five o'clock sunshine I passed out at
the other end of the only street of the village and
climbed up into the hills beyond. I turned a neck in
the mountains, descended by httle green gorges into
strange vaUeys, and climbed out of them to high ridges
and cold, wind-swept heights. All about me grew
desolate and rugged. It was touching to look back at
the httle coUection of homes that I had left — the com
pact httle island of trees in the ocean of moorland
below me and behind me — and look forward to the
pass where all seemed dreadful and forbidding in front.

202 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
In such a view I spread my bed and slept. The hiU-
side was covered with muUein stalks, and as it grew
dark these stalks seemed to grow taUer and taUer and
blacker aU about me tiU they looked hke a great wood
of telegraph poles. The vast dark masses of the
mountains dreamed, and in the hghtly clouded heaven
stars peeped across the world, rain-laden winds blew
over me, and I had as Uef it rained as not, so dry was
everything after weeks of summer heat. But no rain
came, though the winds were cool and the night was
sweet. Next morning, with great difficulty, I coUected roots
and withered grass enough to boil a pot and make my
morning tea, and I sat and ate my breakfast in the
presence of Mrs. Stonechat and her four fluffy httle
youngsters, gurgling and chirping and not afraid to
sit on the same bank with me, while their mother
harangued them on "How to fly." While sitting there
the large raindrops came at last, and they made deep
black spots in the dust of the road, the lightning
flashed across my knife, the thunder rolled boulders
about the mountains, and I sped to a cave to avoid a
drenching shower.
I was in a somewhat celebrated district. The Pass
and the Gorge of Abakum are among the sights of
Seven Rivers Land, and are visited by Russian hohday-
makers and picnickers. AU the rocks are scrawled
with the names of bygone visitors, and by that fact

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 203
alone you know the place has a name and is accounted
beautiful. When the rain ceased, and I ventured out
of the cave again, I saw a Russian at work writing his
name. He had a stick dipped in the compound with
which the axles of his cart-wheels were oiled, and the
wheels of the cart were nearly off for him to get it. For
the first time I saw how these intensely black scrawls
of names and signatures are written on the rocks. We
are content to scratch our names with a bit of glass or a
nail, or to chalk them, or cut them with a pocket-knife ;
but the Russians are fond of bold, black signatures
two or three feet long, and they make them with this
pitch and oil from the wheels of their carts.
It was a pleasant noontide on the narrow road, be
tween crumbling indigo rocks and heaped debris. The
stony slopes were rain-washed, the air fresh, and all
along the way these dwarf rose bushes which I had seen
on the road to Kopal, thorny, but covered with scores
of bright yellow blossoms on little red stems. The
jagged highway climbed again high up — to the sky,
and gave me a vision of a new land, the vast dead plain
of Northern Semiretchie and of Southern Siberia.
Northward to the horizon lay deserts, salt marshes, and
vast lakes with uninhabited shores, withered moors and
wUted lowlands. I saw at a glance how uninteresting
my road was to become if I persevered straight ahead
towards Semipalatinsk, and I resolved to keep to the
mountains in which I found myseU, and foUow them

204 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
eastward and north-eastward to the remoter town of
Lepsinsk. From that height, which was evidently the famous
pass, I descended into the pretty gorge of Abakum.
The road was steep and narrow, the cliffs on each side
sheer. A httle foaming stream runs down from the
cliffs, over rubbish heaps of rocks, and accompanies
the highway in an artificiaUy devised channel. A
strange gateway has been formed in a thin partition
of rock, and through this runs the stream below and
the telegraph wire overhead; there is a footway, but
carts are obhged to make a detour. At this gateway
and on the rocks I saw a further intimation of commer
cial Siberia. Commercial travellers had scrawled :
Buy Provodnik Galoshes at Omsk
and Buy Indian Tea and Get Rich
which was almost as if I had seen in the midst of the
wilderness something hke "Owbridge's Lung Tonic:
4000 miles to London." StiU, these advertisements
of galoshes and tea were scrawled, not printed, and were
done voluntarily by enthusiastic traveUers who prob
ably received no fee for doing such a thing. In Eng
land you cut your Rosahnd's name on the tree; in
Russia your own name; in America you write what
O. Henry caUed "your especial Une of graft," and all

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 205
the New World is scrawled with hand-written adver
tisements of trade. So in the far-off gorge of Abakum
I saw a suggestion of the America of the future — great
commercial Siberia, to which perchance, some day,
Americans wiU emigrate for work as the Russians
emigrate to America to-day.
I felt this pass and gateway to be the entrance to
Siberia, though, politically, the frontier is about three
hundred miles distant. After six or seven turns the
road issued forth upon a level strand of green and grey
— the Siberian southern steppe. Lepsinsk, my next
point, was the first town with a name ending in "sk,"
and there are scarcely more than four towns in Siberia
not ending so. None of the emigrant carts that I now
met were coming from the south, but all from Siberia,
and many of the emigrants were Siberians discontented
with their northern holdings. They seemed poor
people, and the caravans were rather woebegone.
There is a good deal of land offered to the emigrants
in the neighbourhood of Lepsinsk, most of it contiguous
to the Chinese boundary ; but, though it is green and
fertile, it is as hard a land to settle as the plains in the
south. The Siberians missed the pine forests, the
shelter and the fuel of them, and it was a sight to see
the stragghng procession of women behind the dust-
covered wagons — they had to spread themselves
about the moor and the roadway, and search for roots
and spUnters of wood with which to make a fire at

206 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
the end of their day's journey. AU the women held
their aprons or petticoats up, and gathered the fuel
into their laps. It took them nearly aU day to get
enough for the fires to boil the nightly soup.
For me, however, it was a green and joyous road from
Abakum eastward to Sarkand, keeping to the moun
tain slopes and not faring forth upon the scorched plain
that Ues away northward. I did not repent that the
cross-roads tempted me to go eastward, hugging the
mountains. Long green grass waved on each side of
the road, and in the grass blue larkspur and immense
yeUow hoUyhocks. I was in the land where the Kirghiz
has his summer pasture, and often I came upon whole
clans that had just pitched their tents. It was a many-
coloured picture of camels, buUs and horses, of sheep
swarming among chUdren, of kittens playing with one
another's tails, of tents whose framework only was as
yet put up, of heaps of felt and carpet on the grass, of
old wooden chests and antediluvian pots and jugs of
sagging leather lying promiscuously together, while
the new home was not made. On this road the Chinese
jugglers overtook me and camped very near where I
slept one night. I was amused to see the old conjurer
who had juggled the steaming samovar out of thin air
hunting mournfuUy for bits of wood and roots to make
that same samovar boU in real earnest.
Next day I came to the village of Jaiman Terekti
and its remarkable scenery. The River Baskau flows

A Patriarchal Kirghiz Family

In Summer Pasture: Evening Outside the Kirghiz Tent

xii "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 207
between extraordinary banks, great bare- rocks, aU
squared and architectural in appearance, giving the
impression of immense ancient fortresses over the
stream. These squared and shelved rocks are char
acteristic of the country-side and the geological
formations, and they give much grandeur to what
otherwise were quiet corners. The gateway of Aba
kum itseU owes its impressiveness to this geological
rime. At a viUage hereabout I feU in with four boys going
up into the mountains to study for the summer. They
were students from some large engineering coUege,
and, as part of their training, they had been sent out
to study irrigation works and bridges in this colony.
At every bridge we came to on the road they stopped
and gave it their consideration, and made notes as to
its structure and its necessities, and at each viUage
they considered the control of the mountain streams,
the canahsation of the water, and the uses to which
the natural suppUes of water could be put. They
called themselves hydrotechnics, and would eventually
blossom, perhaps, into irrigation engineers. Their trip
was costing them no more than one hundred roubles —
say, ten pounds each for the three months of summer.
Their headquarters was to be a viUage on a river about
a hundred miles north of Lepsinsk ; there they would
pitch their tents and camp, cooking their meals,
arranging expeditions, and making good their study.

208 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
Altogether about three dozen young students would
turn up at their camping-ground, and make up the
equivalent of a summer class.
The four young men had in their protection a lady
in cotton trousers, a taU young woman of athletic
appearance and good looks. She and her two Uttle
chUdren were on their way to the husband, a Govern
ment engineer, who had charge of the building of the
new town of Lepsinsk — the nearest railway point to
Old Lepsinsk. She was a very striking figure in her
sharivari, and the natives collected round her and
stared in an absurd fashion. She told me she had
bought the print for i rouble 87 copecks, and made
them herself just before starting out; skirts were so
inconvenient for travelling in and collected the dirt so.
But she drew thereby an enormous amount of attention
to herseh, it must be said. She was rather a crazy
Kate. It tickled me to think how her husband would
pitch into her when she arrived at her destination.
But perhaps I was mistaken, and he was so homesick
that he would not even laugh when she appeared. She
was a regular scapegrace, with light blue, torn, open
work stockings, and button boots, one of which was
fastened with a safety-pin, the other with two shirt-
buttons. But she was very naive and had bunches of
smUes on her hps — the sort to which much is forgiven.
When she tried to smack her children, they went for
her tooth and nail, and the Uttle boy, aged two, con-

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 209
tinuaUy imitated someone, probably the father, and
addressed his mother thus :
" Akh tee somnoi ne zagovarivaisia" ("Don't stand
there talking to me ").
"Bross!" ("Stop it!")
" Pliun !"{" Spit \")
I was caUed upon to imitate cats and dogs and sheep
and pigeons and camels, and make-beheve generally
to an unhmited extent.
The lady told an amusing story of a banquet to which
the Kirghiz had invited her husband and herself. It
should be explained that the Russian for the head of
an animal is golovo, and for the head of an expedition
or band of workmen is glavny, the adjective derived
from golovo, a head. At this banquet in the Kirghiz
tent the engineer was put in the highest seat, and was
told that the dinner was coming. Suddenly a Kirghiz
appeared with a roast sheep's head, and carried it to
the Russian, saying :
"Please, eat!"
"What's this?" asked the engineer. "The head
for me; that won't do at aU. I don't want the
sheep's head; you must cut me something more
tasty." "No, please," said the Kirghiz. "You are the head
man, and you must eat the head."
"That wiU never do," said the Russian. But they
besought him to honour their custom and permit the

210 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
rest to eat, for until he had started on the head nobody
else might begin.
AU the engineer's workmen were Kirghiz, for he was
working in Kirghiz country, in a district as yet un
touched by Russian colonisation. The wife and her
babies turned off at a mountain track, and were taken
to her husband's camping-ground by a Kirghiz. We
were loath to let the woman go, for she had given
much gaiety to the road.
Lepsinsk is what the Russians caU a medvezhy
ugolok (a bear's corner), a place where in winter the
wolves roam the main street as if they did not dis
tinguish it from their pecuhar haunts. It is by post-
road 945 miles from Tashkent, on the one hand, and
1,040 miles from Omsk, on the other — roughly, 1,000
mUes from a railway station. It is high up on the
mountains on the Mongolian frontier, and lives a
Ufe of its own, almost completely unaware of what is
happening in Russia and in Europe — a window on
to Mongolia, as a local wit has caUed it.
In the course of the next five years a railway is to be
run from Semipalatinsk to Verney, and as Lepsinsk
is the largest town on the way, it should in justice pass
through it. But Lepsinsk is high. When the news
of the projected railway came, the burgesses made a
petition to the authorities asking to be informed
where exactly the railway would be, and they would

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 211
remove Lepsinsk thither. Everyone who had any
business would transfer his stock. They were in
formed, and in a year, or a year and a hah, Lepsinsk
promised to remove itself fifty miles westward. Build
ing operations were in fuU swing on the new site, land
having been allowed by the Government free ; and the
engineer whose wife we had met was in charge. If the
war does not preclude the continuation of the railway
construction, Old Lepsinsk will be abandoned.
I spent four days in the town in the company of
the young hydrotechnics. We were given rooms free
at the Zemsky guest-house, and I stayed three nights
there before resuming my journey toward the Irtish.
The students quickly found and made friends with
people in the town. We found a family that came from
the same country-side as one of the young men, and
spent the whole evening in a big farm-house, drinking
tea, trying musical instruments, and singing Russian
choruses. Next day we went to the colonists' informa
tion office, made friends with the young man in charge,
and went and played pyramid with him in the town
assembly rooms; several other folk came in, young
and old, and joined in the game of bilUards till we were
a dozen or more. After bilUards we aU sat down to a
crude lunch of boiled and undisguised beef, without
vegetables, but with jugs of creamy milk to drink.
The conversation went on cards, bilUards, the coming
Sunday-night dance. Couldn't an orchestra be made

212 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
up to supplant the usual gramophone to which the
people danced on Sunday evenings? Had the cine
matograph films come, and that had been so long
expected ? What would happen if one showed a cinema
film backward — wouldn't the story be often more
funny? Sunday morning we spent in the domain of the
colonists' information bureau, and interviewed, peasants
for the manager whilst he was stiU in bed. What a
htter there was everywhere — tea glasses, cigarette
boxes, picture post cards, electric lamps, old letters,
forms issued by the Government, maps — the same
in the bedroom as in the office. There was a type
writer, and I amused myself trying to write EngUsh
sentences with the Russian type, there being a fair
number of letters in the Russian language resembUng
our own. The people who came for information had
various pleas. One was ill, another had quarrelled
with her husband. An old man pushed in front of
him a rather downcast young woman, and commenced
his appeal to us in these words: "I recommend this
woman to your mercy. The land which is hers is being
stolen away from her." She had faUen out with her
husband, and had fled to her father's house. But
meanwhUe the husband was trying to seU the land or
raise money on it — at least, so the father said. But
we pointed out to him that that was nonsense ; the land
was not yet the unqualified property of the husband,

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 213
and he could not sell it ; . he could only give it back to
the Government, and so on and so on. On Sunday
evening we aU went to the assembly rooms, and saw
Lepsinsk in its Sunday best, talked vociferously in
crowds, Ustened to a gramophone, watched peasant
girls and young men dance melancholy waltzes — there
was no Russian dancing, but the people were glad to
think themselves "European." I made acquaintance
with the ispravnik, or whoever he was who ruled
Lepsinsk, and with the local rich men — a remote,
obtuse, provincial set, whose only interest was cards.
They were very keen on playing me at preference, a
complex Russian card game which I have generaUy
thought it worth while not to learn, and I was amused
to hear that they would teach me, and what I lost would
pay for my lesson. I talked a httle about England.
They got their daily papers three weeks after issue, as
a rule, but they read them as new when they came.
Their chief idea of our British activities was that the
suffragettes were assassinating, murdering, bombing,
expropriating, and they chuckled over the fact that our
men were not able to manage the women.
Lepsinsk is an out-of-the-way place, and, as far as
the road is concerned, a bhnd aUey among the moun
tains. I was much exercised to know which way I
should go next, and I did not want to retrace my steps
to Altin-Emel. The map and my route was another
topic of conversation among the worthies of Lepsinsk.

214 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
Everyone gave me a different account of the roads
and the ferries. EventuaUy I decided to cut across
country and take the risk of marshes or rushing water
lying in my path — a rash decision, as I might after a
day or so be forced to walk back to the town and try
some other way; but it turned out to be a perfectly
happy decision. On this track I saw more of the Cos
sacks and of the Kirghiz, two races in striking contrast,
and I spent Midsummer Night — always a festival night
— under very beautiful and unusual circumstances.
Lepsinsk is a Cossack settlement. AU the young
men are horsemen, have to serve their term in war,
and are hable to mihtary service without any exemp
tion or exception. AU Cossack famiUes and Cossack
viUages are brought up on these terms. The children
are taught to get on to horseback and ride as we teach
our children to walk. They learn the songs which
the regiment sings as it comes up the main street on
horseback, bearing the black pikes in their hands.
The women, whose children and husbands go to the
war, are patient as the mother of Taress Bulba. War is
the normal condition of hfe, and the mere manoeuvres
are taken so seriously that the opposing parties fre
quently forget that it is only a friendly test, and do one
another serious injury. "The Cossacks get so enraged,
and they can't stop themselves when they are called
upon to charge the sham enemy," said a Lepsinsk
boy to me.

xii "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 215
On the Monday morning I said good-bye to the
students, and, shouldering my knapsack, set off in a
north-westerly direction to find Sergiopol, forded
the Lepsa River, and climbed out of the green vaUey
where Lepsinsk Ues as in a cup. The mountain-sides
were rankly verdant, and the purple labiate was thick
as in spring-time. It may be remarked that straw
berries were not expected to ripen in Lepsinsk for three
weeks, whereas six weeks ago in Tashkent they had
been a penny a pound.
I passed over the fresh green hills and panted at the
gradient, plunged down through beautiful meadows,
slept at night in the Cossack station of Cherkask, lying
on some felt and being almost eaten up by mosquitoes
in what the soldier host caUed a garden. In this
vUlage I saw a pitiful sight — almost naked Kirghiz
women treading wet mud and manure into stuff for
fuel blocks. They looked astonishingly bestial and
degraded. You could not feel that they had any soul
or stood in any way above the animals. Yet as young
women they had probably been attractive and pretty
in their day, and might even have won the fancy of
white men. There was a question whether the wife
in Candida who soiled her lovely fingers putting kero
sene into the lamps was reaUy degraded by dirt, but
here was something nearer reahty.
I slept on the sand beside Gregoriefsky, and next day
went deep into the desert, into a land of snakes, eagles,

216 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
snipe, and hzards. On the Lepsa shore I saw forests
of the gigantic reeds with wliich the houses and
bridges are roofed. Here were leagues of ten-feet
rushes that waved boisterously in the wind as in a
cinema picture. I was warned here against the boa-
constrictor; but the worst I saw were intent-eyed
Uttle snakes gUding away from me, scared at the
sound of the footfaU. I got my noonday meal of
koumis in a Kirghiz yurt, borrowed a horse with
which to get across the difficult fords, one of black,
reed-grown mud, the other of swift-flowing water.
All day I ploughed through ankle-deep sand, and but
for the fact that the sun was obscured by cloud, I
should have suffered much from heat. As it was, the
dust and sand-laden wind was very trying. Early in
the evening I resolved to stop for the day, and found
shelter in one of twenty tents all pitched beside one
another in a pleasant green pasture-land which lay
between two bends of the river — a veritable oasis.
Even here, as I sat in the tent, I hstened to the constant
sifting of the sand on the felt sides and roof.
It was a good resting-place. An old man spread for
me carpets and rugs, and bade me sleep, and I lay down
for an hour, the sand settling on me aU the time, and
blowing into my eyes and my ears and my hps. In
the meantime tea was made for me from some chips
of Mongohan brick tea. The old Kirghiz took a black
block of tbis sohdified tea dust and cut it with an old

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 217
razor. The samovar was an original one. It had no
tap, and leaked as fast as it would pour. Consequently,
a bowl was set underneath to catch the drip. This
fiUed five or six times before boiUng-point was reached,
the contents of the bowl being each time returned to
the body of the samovar.
After tea I went out and sat on a mound among the
cattle, and watched the children drive in sheep and
goats and cows, and the wives milk them aU. It was
a scene of gaiety and beauty. There were many good-
looking wives, slender and dainty, though they were so
short in stature, had white turbans on their heads and
jackboots on their feet. As they went to and fro,
laughing among themselves and bending over the cattle,
their breasts hanging Uke large full pears at the holes
made in their cotton clothes for the convenience of
their babies, they looked a very gentle and innocent
creation. These women did aU the work of milking,
and I saw them handle with rapidity ewes, she-goats,
cows, mares, draining all except the last into common
receptacles. The mares' milk alone was kept separate,
to be made into koumis. I must say my taste rebeUed
against a mixture of sheep's milk, goats' milk and cows'
milk, even when made sour ; but the Kirghiz were not
worried with such fastidiousness.
When the milking was accompUshed fires were ht
in oblong holes dug in the earth outside the tents —
the Kirghiz stoves. Bits of mutton were cut up and

218 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
fixed on skewers and placed over the glowing ashes
in the holes. So supper was cooked. I was caUed
into a tent, and there made to sit on a high wooden
trunk, whUe eight or ten others sat below me on rugs.
"You are a barin," said the oldest man. "You must
have the highest seat." Seated up there, they brought
me about a dozen skewers of grilled mutton on a wooden
plate and bade me eat. I should not have been sur
prised to see a sheep's head brought in to me.
"Oh," I said, "it's far too much for me."
"You eat first," said the old man. "Then we will
eat." So I took a skewer and put them at their ease.
There were in the tent the old man, his son, two wives
of the latter, several children, an old woman, and a
minstrel. Outside and in other tents were many
sons-in-law and daughters-in-law and cousins, a whole
genealogical tree of a family. Among the Kirghiz
aU sons remain in the father's and father's father's
famUy ; only the girls change famihes, sold or arranged
for in marriage. The men aU wore hats, or, rather,
bonnets, trimmed with an edging of fox's fur, and the
foxes from whose thighs this fur had been taken had
been captured by trained eagles. The Kirghiz are
deeply versed in falconry, and have diverse birds for
various preys : hawks for cranes, for plovers, and for
hares. They hunt the fox, whose skin is very precious,
with eagles. They carry the hawks on their wrists

xn "AMONG THE TENT-DWELLERS" 219
when they ride, and for the support of heavy birds they
have stalls or rests coming up from their saddles to
hold the bird arm, whilst they hold the horse's reins
with the other. The most interesting man in the tent
in which I supped was the minstrel, a taU, gaunt
heathen in ragged cotton slops; he thrummed on a
two-stringed guitar and improvised Kirghiz songs till
the dusk grew dark and midsummer night came out
with countless stars over the desert and the tents and
the cattle and the wanderers.
Asked whether I would sleep inside the tent or out,
I preferred the open air, and my hosts made a couch
for me, a pile of rugs over an uneven thickness of
mown clover. And there I lay and watched the stars
come into their places in the sky as at the hfting of a
conductor's baton. It was St. John's Eve, a night of
mystery and of remembrances. A young moon looked
down on me. In the twenty tents around me were
singing and music and momentary strange illumina
tions. Inside the tents the Kirghiz set fire every now
and then to piles of weeds, which flared up, causing all
the felt walls and roofs of the tents to glow like strange,
enormous, shimmering paper lanterns, hke fire reflected
in silver. They would suddenly glimmer and glow and
glimmer again, the Ught would go, and the grey-white
tent would be opaque again.
AU night across the sleeping encampment came
volumes of music from young throats, the songs of the

220 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xn
children minding the cattle. The stillness of the night
reigned about this music, and was intensified by the
dun-dun of rusty camel-beUs, the jangle of the irons
on hobbled horses, the occasional sneeze of a sheep with
a cold, and the hullabaloo of dogs barking on false
alarms. I lay and was nibbled under by goats, trying to
get at the clover, and breathed at by ruminating cows.
So the night passed. Orion chased the Pleiades
across the sky. The eyes that stared or lay open and
were stared at by the stars drooped, and eyehds came
down over the Uttle windows. Sprites danced among
us, tiptoed where we slept, breathed devilry upon
our faces and dusty clothes, and I dreamed sweetly of
home and other days.
Next morning I felt the turn of the year and looked
forward to the glorious autumn and the new hfe coming
after the long journey and the much tramping.
I was up at the dawning and away before the hot
sun rose. The old man of the Kirghiz gave me my
breakfast himself, a pot of airann and a cake of lepeshka,
and came forward with me, showing me the track on
ward towards Sergiopol.

XIII
Over the Siberian Border
I crossed the Lepsa by a bridge made of old herring
barrels, struck the highway to Sergiopol at Roma-
novskaya, and pursued my journey along the sandy
wastes and salt swamps on the eastern borders of Lake
Balkhash. The Lepsa faUs into this great lake at
last. The wind blew up the sand so that there was
some chance of missing the way, and I sat some hours
on my knapsack and shut my eyes to keep the sand out.
It was dreary country, yeUow and inhospitable. The
odour of the bleached grasses and herbs was almost
overpowering, and food and palatable water were far
to seek. TaU, bleached and withered grasses and
white weeds and dust-laden, knobbly steppe ; wind and
racing sand, — sand in my eyes, in my mouth, on my
body, — I felt a most despicable creature, and ques
tioned my sanity in ever starting out on such an absurd
journey as this through Russian Central Asia. But I
saw ahead of me Sergiopol, Semipalatinsk, and a happier
chme. Sixty versts north of Romanovskaya the road,
gradually ascending a long moor, entered broken
country through black and rusty mountainettes, and

222 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xm
here was a httle crooked gorge with a stream through
it, and it was possible to sit by my own Uttle fire and
make tea for myself once more. Then more moorland,
and heavily scented grass, and enormous bustards,
the size of goats, and skinny httle brown marmots, and
withered muUein stalks, and comical blue jackdaws
perching on them and cocking their heads to one side
and peering at me as I passed. Then streams of
colonists and their carts. Then an official and his wife,
sleeping in their night attire in their slowly moving
tarantass, huge piUows for their heads, and sheets and
quUts and what not — an example of the Russians'
gift for making themselves at home. Near Ince-
Agatch I met two Germans going cheerfully along on
foot — as I was — a botanist and a geologist, neither
of them speaking Russian, but feehng pretty well as
much at home as in Germany, more so, perhaps. One
wonders what was their fortune at the outbreak of
war. There are certain international pursuits that
know no restriction of national or imperial ground. I
do not suppose the Russian grudges, the German making
a study of his flowers and rocks — if he is not spying
at the same time. Probably we ought not to lay so
much stress on purely national research in ornithology,
entomology, geology, botany, the ways of peoples, and
so forth. Individuals and their work are dedicated
to their nation and their empire, but that should not
keep our practical scientists, coUectors, prospectors,

xm OVER THE SIBERIAN BORDER 223
students to a mere portion of the surface of the globe.
Russian Central Asia and Siberia claims greater at
tention from our scientific men, hunters, and expert
collectors. Russians, on the whole, do little ; Germans
have done something ; but it does not matter by whom
it is explored, there Ues here a vast natural field for the
study of mankind. These domains are scarcely touched,
except by vulgar gold hunters and rock tappers, —
people of paltry greed and httle imagination. The
great era of research has not even begun, and libraries
of books have yet to be written on the natural wonders
and astonishing discoveries to be found and made in
this wilder and more neglected half of Asia. After the
war Siberia and Russian Central Asia will begin to
draw more attention from us.
Sergiopol, the last point in Seven Rivers Land be
fore entering Siberia, is a beautifully situated diminu
tive town, or, rather, viUage, for it has been degraded
from the rank of town. The hiUs and moors around it
are beautiful virgin country, bathed in pleasant sun
shine and breathing healthful air ; but in itself it is but
a miserable place, a collection of wee grocer-shops
and cotton stores. The shopkeepers are mostly Tartars,
doing very smaU trade and thinking it very large
and feeling "passing rich." The vendors of cotton
goods do the most trade, for all the Kirghiz wear cotton
and give a great deal of consideration to the purchase
of it. I met a commercial traveller smoking a cigarette

224 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xm
in the market-place, a man sent out by one of the great
cotton firms of Moscow, and he was carrying bags of
samples to aU the stores of Seven Rivers Land. The
Tartars took so long to decide what they were going
to buy that the traveUer was reduced to a novel pro
cedure. Directly he arrived at a settlement he took
from his chest eight bags of samples, and went rapidly
from one shop to another, leaving a bag at each, and
saying he would return in an hour and a half. Then he
went into the market-place and had a smoke and chat
with chance comers. If there were more than eight
shops he had a second round, and distributed the bags
to the remainder after the first set had come to a
decision. Not a very good way of doing business,
one would think ; but, then, the Tartars spoke in their
own language, consulted their wives about materials
and colours, and liked to be free of the presence of the
Russian. He did quite a good business. He told
me that his cotton goods found a large market in
China. The Chinese and the Kirghiz were extremely
critical as to the quahty of the cotton and the colour
and design. You could not palm off shoddy cotton
on these people. It was their Sunday best as well as
week-day, and their outer garment as much and
more than under-garment. Its quality and appearance
mattered. Neither German cotton nor their own Lodz
manufacture was any use. Lodz is the great centre
for the production of shoddy cotton — so much so that

Four Wives of a Rich Kirghiz

xm OVER THE SIBERIAN BORDER 225
the adjective Lodzinsky is a Russian coUoquialism for
shoddy, and when you say Lodzinsky tovar it is more
than when we say "a bit of Brummagem." Moscow,
however, produces good quahties of cotton and good
prints. Manchester has dropped behind Moscow in
this respect and tended to compete rather with Lodz.
Perhaps after the war we shall solve this passion for
cheapness, this competition with Germany in turning
out cheap wares, and wiU revert to our earlier prejudice
in favour of British quaUty. It is rather touching in
Russia that best quahty goods are often caUed Anglisky
tovar (EngUsh wares), even when made in Russia.
Our reputation for thoroughness survives.
StiU, I do not suppose that Great Britain wiU ever
compete with Russia in the supply of cotton to the
interior. Russians and Enghsh hving in Russia have
imported our British machinery and set up mills which
are reaUy British mills on Russian soil, and an enormous
business has been founded. Russia, moreover, hopes
to be able to grow enough raw cotton in her Central
Asian dominions to be able to make her cotton business
a national self-dependent industry. Cotton is the
material mostly used for clothing in Russia, even in
the towns. The women are stiU content with cotton
dresses and the men with cotton blouses. When cloth
and "stuff" come in, if they ever do, the cotton industry
wiU tend to degenerate, but not tiU then.
Sergiopol is a place of Uttle significance. But the

226 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xm
next town, Semipalatinsk, in Siberia, is a large colonial
town, with over 35,000 inhabitants — larger, even,
than Verney. But Siberia is an old-estabhshed Russian
colony, while Seven Rivers began only fifty years ago,
and was a desert. Perhaps even now it is little more
than a desert qualified by irrigation. The obstacles
in the way of successful settlement have been tremen
dous. Still, these obstacles are being overcome. The
result of half a century's work is a measure of clear
success and a healthy promise. Hundreds of Russian
viUages have established themselves, and the channels
of smaU trade have been kept open. Yellow deserts
have become green with verdure, and chains of oases
have been made. Russian schools and Russian
churches have arisen on the northern side of India, and
an essentiaUy Christian culture is spreading in a way
that is clearly profitable to the Old World. The colony
sadly needs a railway, and the railway is being built
quickly, even now, in the time of the war. For the
Kirghiz, who do most of the labour, are not required
for miUtary service. When the railway comes, more
people wiU come with it, more colonists, more traders,
and they wiU take away the products which the farmers
would gladly sell. We are accustomed to think of
raUways spoiling districts, but Russian Central Asia,
with its empty leagues of sand and barrenness, wfll
only profit by the railway. The raUway must go east
from Tashkent aU the way to Verney, and probably as

xm OVER THE SIBERIAN BORDER 227
far as Kuldja, in China, then northward, through
IUisk and Sergiopol, to Semipalatinsk, through Sibe
rian farms and settlements, forests and marshes, to
the Siberian main line at Omsk. This wiU greatly
strengthen the Russian Emphe when it is achieved. It
wiU be a wise measure of consoUdation.
M. de VesseUtsky, in his able book on Russia, remarks
that whereas in 1906 the population of Canada was
greater than that of Siberia, in 191 1 Siberia had two
miUion more inhabitants. This is the more astonishing
because Canada has splendid and populous towns,
whereas Siberia has only three cities of over a hundred
thousand inhabitants. A strange contrast to European
Russia, this Asiatic Russia ; no Court, no Emperor, no
aristocracy, no modern aims or claims, no power — in
a sense, human tundra and taiga, though many miUions
are Uving there. Then a power enters it, commercial
capital and the Russian desire to get rich, and Siberia
begins to seek new wealth. European Russia and the
dazzling if somewhat tawdry West begin to hear of
the wealth of Siberia. Our civihsation, the centre
of attraction, draws from all the outside wilds and
wildernesses gold, precious stones, skins. So we help
Siberia in the material sense and set its industrial Ufe
a-going.

XIV
On the Irtish
The most interesting circumstance in the history of
Semipalatinsk up tiU now is that Dostoieffsky, in exile,
was domicUed there. The cities dotting the wastes
of Siberia are not notable. They are young, and things
have not happened in them. But dreary Semipalatinsk
held the mightiest spirit in modern Russia — Fedor
Dostoieffsky, the author of "The Brothers Karamazof."
So Semipalatinsk, on the loose sands of the River
Irtish, has now its Dostoieffsky house, where Dostoieff
sky hved, and a Dostoieffsky street. It will, no doubt,
be a place of pilgrimage in the future for those wish
ing to grasp the significance of the great Russian.
Semipalatinsk is a duU collection of wooden houses
and stores, an important trading centre functionising
an immense country-side. What struck me most were
the large general shops, with their extensive supphes of
manufactured goods and all manner of luxuries. There
were at least six department stores, with handsome
clocks, vases, bedroom furniture, mandohns, violins,
guitars, Vienna boots, American boots, gay hats, silk
dresses, wrapped chocolates, promiscuous and lavish
228

xrv ON THE IRTISH 229
supphes of all manner of European goods. EngUsh
wares seemed noticeable chiefly by their absence, and
the cutlery was Swedish, the stoves Austrian, the wools
and the cottons Russian, the note-paper American or
French, the wonderful enamel ware and nickel and
aluminium ware German. Only sanitary contrivances,
cream separators, and agricultural machinery seemed
to be Enghsh. How much more of these things might
be sent. However, with aU these signs of luxury —
luxury for Russians — Semipalatinsk lacks the graces
of a town; has no Ughting, no pavement or pubhc
place, no theatre, only a cinema. Its prospect is
waste, loose sand, which the air holds even in calm — a
grit in the eyes and in the mouth. Its trees do not
flourish, and only people accustomed to a quiet life
could go on Uving there from year to year. The
peasants bring most Ufe into the town, selhng their
products in the immense open market, or buying
manufactured goods to take up-country to their farms.
The broad River Irtish flows placidly onward, five
hundred mUes to Omsk and thousands of miles to the
Arctic Ocean, and it is navigated by a considerable
number of steamers and saihng boats. It is a great
waterway — a sort of safer sea in the heart of Asia.
The wonder is that more towns have not sprung up on
its shores. In the history of the world it has not yet
become a typical river. It flows from the silences of
the Altai mountains, through the silences of Northern

230 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xrv
Asia, the noise of man hardly ever becoming more than
a whisper upon it. It never becomes
Bordered by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries,
and it cannot be said that as we go onward to its
mouth Cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker incessanter line ;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream.
It is almost as peaceful and serene as a river in an un
discovered continent.
At Semipalatinsk I stayed some days before taking
boat up-stream to Malo-Krasnoyarsk. It was here
that I read of the astonishing inteUigence of the assassi
nation of the Archduke of Austria and his wife. The
Russian papers of the time devoted a great deal of
space to the details of the murder, the reprisals taken
by the Austrians, the gossip of Europe. The preoccu
pation of the British Press with home affairs was
astonishing, and in aU the telegraphed opinions of
our representative papers there was not an utter
ance that overstepped the limits of conventionahty.
Whether the murder was planned politically by Ger
many, as has been hinted, or planned politicaUy by
Serbia for vengeance, or came about accidentaUy
through the passion of a noble Serb, it was in any case

xiv ON THE IRTISH 231
a test phenomenon. It had enormous significance to
diplomatists and scanners of pohtical horizons. By
the attitude and behaviour of Germany and Austria
their intentions, at least in the Near East, could be
gauged. But it did not seem of sufficient importance
to conscious England. The Austrians tried to spread
the idea that Russia had contrived and bought the
murder of the Archduke because she feared his in
tentions in the Balkans. But, out of the Germanic
dominions, that did not carry weight. Austria mani
festly threatened Serbia pohtically, and some British
people scratched their heads and asked questions:
"ShaU we go to war for Serbia?" Then came the
seemingly obvious answer: "No, not for Serbia!"
which fairly indicates the bhndness of that part of
England which was vocal at that time. In that spirit
we neglected our duty in connection with the St.
James's conference after the first Balkan war, and in
that spirit we ahenated Bulgaria in the great European
war which foUowed.
Austria threatened war, and there was clearly the
prospect of Austria and Russia fighting. I weighed
it up in my mind as I waited at Semipalatinsk, and
more than once I asked myself whether I had not
better give up my journey onward and go straight
to Western Russia. But, deciding I did not want
to write war correspondence, I concluded I would
continue my way, and rest as I had intended — on

232 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xrv
the verdant Altai. So I left Semipalatinsk and went
in a httle steamer up the narrowing and rocky river,
past wooded islands, grey moors, and emerald marshes.
It was a long though not monotonous river journey.
We stopped at elementary wooden landing-stages
beside smaU hamlets, bought eggs, fish, fruit from
peasant women and children, backed out into mid
stream again, making our big wave that went washing
along the banks and drenching incautious boys and
girls ; we beat up the water with our paddle, turned,
saw ourselves clear of the pier, and a widening stretch
of water between us and the bank, found our course
between the buoys, avoided the weirs and the shaUows.
Morning became hot noon, and the afternoon and twi
light time came on, and then luminous starry night, and
again morning and hot noon. We stopped at the Uttle
town of Ust-Kamennygorsk, the headquarters for
several mining camps, a bit of qualified civihsation not
unknown to British mining engineers. We had on
board a couple of priests, a commercial traveller, some
workmen coming back from doing a job, and two dozen
raw Cossacks who had been ordered to serve on the
Chinese frontier — rather interesting to reflect now how
they were traveUing away from the place where they
would be needed. At that time aU the preparations for
war were going on apace in Germany; the roads were
fuU of horses newly bought by the Government, the
trains full of stores; at the miUtary camps the last

xrv ON THE IRTISH 233
manoeuvres were being worked out with fuU regiments
and the complete panoply of war. We in the steamboat
were aU traveUing the wrong way, away from the in
terest of the world — the centre — up-stream on the fast-
flowing river, against the currents and the tendencies.
A month later aU would come back, forced by the dec
laration of war. StiU, httle we recked. We had a
hohday spirit. There were several high-school girls
and girl students on board — gimnasistki and kursistki
— and the deck was vocal with their chattering and
laughing. They were a charming contrast to rough
Siberia. The deck passengers drank vodka and sang.
Down below deck was a pubhc stove, and there sizzled
a score of pots — pots with jam, with eggs, with fish,
with chickens, with milk. I made my coffee there,
and would frequently see it rising at the boil and be
unable to pick the pot out for others tending their
fish-soup and women taking the scum off their straw
berry jam. At each httle viUage people bought
things to cook, so that at times you might have thought
it was a sort of cooking expedition.
So we went on at this momentous time in history.
The river became more rapid and difficult to navigate ;
it serpentined through wUd gorges, where the rocks
were broken and ragged and squared and angular. The
steep chffs were full of detail that was delicious to the
eye. Where the chffs were not so steep Nature had
clothed their nakedness with mould and grass. We

234 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xiv
passed from placid stretches which seemed to throw the
rays of the sun back on the ship, the people and the
sky, and we entered the intense cold shadow of high,
sheer rocks. The water became green and shadowy.
The scenery changed every moment as we went round
a new bend of the river and entered new territory
through forbidding gates of rock. Frequently we
found ourselves in foaming cauldrons from which there
seemed to be no exit ; we wandered round, traveUing
as often north as south, and catching ghmpses of sun
from aU imaginable quarters, and found loopholes of
escape to new reaches. The steamer seemed a toy
beside the huge chffs on each side, and the sunshine,
when we came into it, seemed sufficient to bhnd the
whole Altai. The higher we pursued our winding way
the higher became the chffs, tiU eventuaUy we had grey
crags of several hundred feet hanging over us. In
the earlier gorges the greenness of the vegetation of the
hUls was reflected in the river in a deep, shadowy
green, but in the later ones the drear greyness of the
chffs was alone reflected, and the swift-moving, placid
water looked Uke oU. As far as Gusinaya Pristan
trees, birches, but infrequent ones, and growing in
haphazard ways from clefts in rocks. Besides our
panting, puffing steamer, with its streamer of dense
smoke and persistent showers of sparks, there were
only rafts on the river — logs roped together, and
peasants standing on the water-washed floating plat-

Nomad Kirghiz Women Outside Their Movable Homes

xrv ON THE IRTISH 235
forms. They seemed to be very skilful in managing
them. On the banks we saw occasional tents and
fishermen's tackle, smaU fires with tripods over them,
and old black pots whereby you guessed that fish were
cooking. Occasional hay-making parties also visible
on the wan outskirts of farms. It was a fascinating
journey, and one could not take one's eyes from the
changing scene, the prospect from door after door
as we passed new rocks, the deUcious side views, the
clefts and wounds healed with birch trees and greenery,
the battered, jaggy prominences, duU blue, purple,
yellow with age and many weathers.
Everyone watched curiously for the next scene, and
the change was so frequent that no one got tired.
Mountains, ridges — the grandeur of our rock basins
multiphed upon us so that we felt we were steadily
ascending a high mountain range by river. Night was
wonderful, especiaUy when we stopped to put some
cargo off or to take on wood, and we got out and
walked on the chffs and the sand ; the stars in the sky
had their drips of golden reflection in the river, and the
opposite banks and rocks were majesticaUy silhouetted
against the sky. The navigation of this river is, per
haps, one of the sights of the future. "Parties will
be taken out." But there is no romance there, no
castles, no ruins — only Nature and the grey tumul
tuous misery and beauty of a scarred continent.

XV
The Country oe the Maral
Malo-Krasnoyarsk, on the Irtish, is a hot, sandy
village supporting itself by agriculture, fishing, and
melon growing. It is treeless, no one seeming to have
cared to plant the trees which could so easily have been
grown, and the native Kirghiz are employed making
fuel blocks out of manure. The stacks of these black
blocks give an unpleasant odour when the wind is
blowing over them. Otherwise, the Irtish is rather
wonderful — deep and green and swift, with powerful
currents. From Malo-Krasnoyarsk I journeyed along the burnt
road and over the vast stretches of pungent wormwood
that grow on the moors. The road chmbed to the
mountain ridges of the Narimsky range, and along them
to the Central Altai. I had given up tramping now,
and an old man in a dirty crimson blouse drove me in
a cart to Bozhe-Narimsky viUage, took me for three
shillings, and was ready to drive me to Kosh Agatch,
on the other side of the mountains, if I would say but
the word. Kosh Agatch, according to his reckoning,
236

xv THE COUNTRY OF THE MARAL 237
would be five hundred miles, and he would have to
plan a month's journey over the mountains, hire extra
horses, and buy provisions. According to him traders
made the journey frequently, especially Tartars and
Chinamen, buying maral horns.
On the higher slopes of the Altai the sale of the horns
of the maral deer {Cervus canadensis asiaticus) seems
to be, if not the chief, at least the most picturesque
means of earning a hvehhood. I was making my way
into the maral country. Here the colonists, instead of
farmmg sheep and cows, farm a species of deer with
very valuable horns — the maral. The horns are not
valuable as ornaments, or as bone, or as drinking vessels,
but as medicine. A very curious trade. The Russians
cut off the horns of the deer every spring, boil them,
dry them, and seU them into China, where they seU
at the rate of about a shUUng an ounce, and give almost
miraculous relief to women in the pains of childbirth,
make it possible for barren women to have children,
and many other things.
" Is it good for that purpose ? " I asked of the man who
was driving me.
"They say so," said he, without committing himself.
"But do Russian women use this medicine ? "
"No; it's too expensive."
"But do they believe in it?"
"No, they don't need it. They are not Uke the
Kitankas and Mongohans, who suffer very much.

238 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xv
These Chinawomen are like the camels here. The
camels would die out if it were not for the skiU the
Kirghiz women have in making them breed. They
would die out, but the Kirghiz keep them going. The
same with the Chinawomen; they need the powder
of the maral horn. No Chinawoman of any importance
thinks of marrying without a pair of maral horns in
her possession, and if her father be too poor to purchase
them, the husband must. They aU use it, and you can
buy the powder in any chemist's shop in China."
"Or an imitation?" I suggested.
My driver could not say whether the substance
could be imitated. Later on, on my journey, I
saw marals, both on the run and in the immense
maral gardens which the Russians keep in their
colony. Bozhe-Narimsky was a pleasant green corner, with
tumbling river, many willow trees, mosquitoes, marshes.
Thence the road went higher and higher to Maly
Narimsky and Tulovka, through districts where once
were forests of great pines and now are only forests of
stumps, through wildernesses of pink maUow and purple
larkspur, and over vast, swelling uplands covered with
verdure, finally to within sight of gleaming streaks of
snow and ice, the glaciers of the central range. Bozhe-
Narimsky, Maly Narimsky, Tulovka, Medvedka, Al-
taiskaya, Katun-Karagai were the names of the Russian
viUages and Cossack stations on the way up. Most of

xv THE COUNTRY OF THE MARAL 239
them were weU-estabUshed settlements, for this terri
tory is Siberia, and not what is caUed Russian Central
Asia. It has been in Russian hands a long while, and
only the fact that Russia is so vast, and there is so much
room for the overflow of population, explains the back
wardness of the colonisation of the Altai. Russia has
never had any enemies worth the name here, and has
very httle to fear unless the Chinese ever turn beUicose.
The only people who stood in her way were the mild
nomads, the Kalmeeks and the Kirghiz. These had
unrecognised rights to certain vaUeys, springs, winter
pastures, summer pastures, and they waUed off their
discoveries with stones and boulders, never dreaming
anyone would think of annexing them. But when the
Russian ¦ generals came riding down the vaUeys with
their engineers, saying, "Fix me a viUage here and a
vUlage there, and give us twenty villages along the
length of that vaUey," no Kirghiz or Kalmeek had the
spirit to say nay, and with a melancholy smile they
crept away, leaving the fields to those who must take
them. Near Tulovka I saw the first marals, six speedy
deer running ahead of as many horsemen, just out
running their horses, but not disposed to race out of
sight and get lost. The horsemen, who were Cossacks,
carried lassos in their hands, and I rather wondered
why they did not shoot the deer and have done with
their hunting. A villager put me right, however.

240 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xv
"These are not wild deer, but escaped ones," said
he. "There are no wild deer left ; they have aU been
caught now. No one has seen a wild maral for fifteen
years. They have aU been caught and put in gardens,
and now we breed them. If they shoot these marals
they lose six good breeders. A buck maral is worth
two hundred roubles. It's a sad day for the man who
has lost these. It is very difficult to catch them, they
are very crafty; and then one doesn't want to injure
their horns in taking them. They generaUy have to
ride them down until they are dead beat; no use
frightening them; just keep them on the move and
give them no rest."
At Medvedka I stayed with an old man who kept
a maral farm. My host was a comical fellow, somewhat
over six feet high, with long hair, bushy beard, kind and
gentle eyes — a giant's shoulders, an ogre's stomach,
but the walk and manners of a child. His great pine
log house had a threshold so large that you might almost
call it a veranda but that peasants do not have veran
das. There were steps up to it, and then a long covered
way, one side of which was the log wall of the house,
in which peeped wee glass windows ; the other side was
a sohd Uttle railing, where you could lean and watch
the pigs, the turkeys, the geese, the horses and dogs in
the big farm-bounded farmyard. Beyond the yard and
the pasture stretched upward the voluminous and ir
regular mountain-side, deep in a tangle of shadowy under-

xv THE COUNTRY OF THE MARAL 241
growth and made majestical by mighty firs. The
gloom and splendour of the mountains brooded over
the big log house.
On the veranda were a whole series of green, many-
branching antlers just sawn away from heads of marals
— an unusual sight in any cottage. They were velvety
and hairy ; if you touched them you found them soft.
Not the antlers hunters bring home and hang on their
waUs, nothing hard or sharp or fearsome, but gentle,
rounded and smooth-knobbed, unripened antlers, sawn
off from a stag's head with a saw.
Mikhail Nikanorovitch, mine host, took me up to
his maral farm, a tract of mountain-side many acres in
extent, fenced in by a gigantic paling, the posts of which
were eight or nine feet high and very sohd. The maral
is a magnificent jumper, and has been known to clear
eight feet upon occasion and get away. As the farmer
has to buy the posts from the Government, the con
struction of a maralnik, as they caU it, is not without
considerable expense for the peasants. Quite a small
place would cost two hundred roubles.
Mikhail and I stumped up the mountain-side quite
a height tiU we came to his wild enclosure. Mine host
caUed the deer as his peasant wife might have called
chickens to their food, and they came fluttering towards
him to be fed, but, spying me, stopped short, sniffed
the air, then turned and fled to the wildernesses of
their prison.

242 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xv
"In the summer they are in this big place," said
Mikhail, "but in late autumn, before the snows, we
drive them into a smaller place, and we feed them there
aU the winter. It is in this smaller place that we saw
off the horns in the early summer."
He took me along to the shed where the horns were
sawn off.
"We make the first cutting only when the calf has
reached its third year. We cut off the horns in June
and the beginning of July — when the antlers are most
developed and so worth most. If we leave them later
they harden and are no use. They would then have
to be aUowed to bear their horns tiU next spring, when
in any case they shed them."
"What happens to those who have had their antlers
sawn off ; do they shed the stumps ? " I asked.
"Yes, they shed their stumps. That is in April or
May ; and then they change their coats and are gener
aUy in a bad state of health."
He described how they managed the animal during
the sawing business: put its fore-legs in a noose, its
hind-legs in a noose, threw it on the ground, bandaged
the eyes, someone carefuUy holding the head and
saving the horns from damage aU the time. They
sawed off the horn with an ordinary hand-saw — such
a one was lying on a sort of bench in the shed to which
the old feUow had led me — and when the sawing
was done they stopped the bleeding with coaldust and

In the Altai: Kirghiz Tombs near Medvedka

'One of the Mud-domed Ace-of-Spades-Like Tombs of the
Kirghiz "

xv THE COUNTRY OF THE MARAL 243
salt, and then tied up the stump tightly with linen.
The blood soon stops flowing, and the maral, being put
at hberty, forgets and scarce knows what he has lost.
In their tamed state the deer have found a sort of
alternative destiny, and the peasants say that often
marals which escape in the summer come back volun
tarUy to the enclosures for food and shelter in winter
time. StUl, some do finaUy disappear, and although
the viUager I met earUer was of opinion that aU the
marals had been caught, there must stiU be many
thousands at large upon the vast and unexplored Altai.
In their wild state they are extremely shy of human
beings, and seemingly with good reason.
Old Mikhail, who was a kind of three-storied man,
potted about, stooping the whole length of his huge
body to pick wUd strawberries and raspberries, and he
constantly caUed out to me to help myself to fruit.
When we got back to the farm-house I found his wife
boUing a chicken for me in a pail over a bonfire in the
garden. Mikhail showed me where they boUed the horns, and
explained the process of preservation. There were
enormous coppers for the boUing. The horns were put
into boUing brine, just dipped in and taken out several
times. The difficulty was to immerse them and
yet not touch the metal sides of the pots. If the sides
were touched the deUcate skin might easily be frayed.
After the immersion the horns were exposed in the

244 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xv
open air. They dried fairly rapidly, and lost weight ;
by the time they would be ready for sale they would
have lost haU their original weight. In the late summer
and autumn Chinese and Tartar merchants appeared
and made great deals in maral horns throughout the
whole district. In China the substance of the horn is
known as ludzon.
Mikhail was an extraordinarily hospitable type of
peasant, and heaped plenty on the table that evening —
a great crust of honeycomb, for he kept his own bees and
possessed a hillside dotted with white hives; wooden
basins fuU of berries ; butter — and butter is rare
enough in peasants' houses; and soup and chicken
and white bannocks. We had an amusing talk
about England. He had never seen a train, the
sea, an Enghshman, or a German or a Frenchman,
or, indeed, any race but Russian, Kirghiz, Chinamen,
Tartars, Kalmeeks. We compared the prices of
things, and he was greatly alarmed at the cost of
meat in England. I made him wonder more and
more. "Now, for instance, a hare," said I. "I do not
suppose they cost much here, but in our country we
pay six or seven shillings for one at Christmas."
Mikhail was astomshed.
"What, for the skin?" asked he.
"Oh, no ; we don't value the skin — throw it away
or seU it to the rag-and-bone man for twopence."

xv THE COUNTRY OF THE MARAL 245
"You don't mean to say you pay that for a hare.
Now, here we keep the skin to sell and throw away the
flesh. It's good enough for hogs. I never thought
of a hare having a price as food. I don't know that I
could say what was the price of hare's flesh here. We
throw it away."
He played with the idea, and then eventuaUy in
quired of me whether it were possible to get an iced
freight-truck from Omsk to London, and what would
it cost.
I could not say.
"WeU," said Mikhail, "supposing we put a nominal
price of two copecks (a halfpenny) a hare exported
from here, we could make a big profit, and it seems to
me they could be got to London, and there would be a
big profit for everyone concerned."
I promised to give the matter my consideration, and
he was so much in earnest that, despite the fact he had
never seen a train and could neither read nor write,
he made me note his address carefully and take it to
England, where I could give it to a commersant, and he
would contrive matters.
"TeU him," said he, "that we can let him have ten
hares for a rouble. Good night."
I was getting ready to he down. Some overcoats
had been spread on the floor for me.
"Tell him there's no end to the number of hares to
be had here. Good night," said he again.

246 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xv
And after I had lain down he came to me again
and said :
"Are you comfortable? There was a man here
once who made his fortune exporting sarka skins.
Good night."
Next morning he gave me a large metal pot of honey
and black currants mixed, as a present, and he drove
me to Altaiskaya Stanista, the top of the Altai, himself.

XVI
The Declaration oe War
It is a fine mountain road from Medvedka to
Altaiskaya, over mighty open upland where the great
firs grasp the earth with talon-like roots. Here and
there along the road are Kirghiz tombs enclosed by
rude hurdles, reminding one of the palings of the maral
gardens. An occasional Russian hut, a mountain
stream pouring across a road, forests of stumps, and
again forests of those giant firs standing as against the
wind — storm trees, broad at base, needle-pointed at
the apex, every branch a strong son.
At Altaisky I proposed to stay a few weeks, and then
cross the mountains to the Kosh Agatch road, north
ward toward BUsk ; but the tidings of war came across
my plan here, and farther than the Altai I did not go.
But I had a quiet fortnight in a wonderful spot — Altai
skaya, opposite Mount Belukha, one of the great snow
peaks that stand on sentry here between China and
Siberia, and I walked and climbed. It would be a
splendid place in which to spend a whole summer.
There are places that are so placid and beautiful that
you exclaim : " Good heavens, this is a very paradise !"
When you have been there a day you want to stay there
247

248 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xvi
for ever, or to go away and to return and return again.
So it was at httle Bobrovo on the Dwina, so again at
Altaisky. I thought to myself I shah come here again
and spend six months, and write a long and interesting
story. And I will ask "Pan" to come, and he also
wiU come and write a wonderful story. "Pan" is
an EngUsh friend, a great, taU, gentle, quick-scented
human, a dear mortal who snuffs the air with his nose
and can teU you thereby what has happened in a place
any time this three weeks past.
Altaiskaya was fuU of the freshness of youth, and
the air gave you wings and its vaUeys were fuU of
wonderful flowers. I have a long-acquired habit of
associating a certain phrase in the Lord's prayer with
the most beautiful thing I have seen during the day, and
if I have seen nothing beautiful, and have been leading
a duU Ufe in a town, my mind goes roving back to
certain wondrous sights in the past. Most frequently
of aU it goes to the wastes, covered with crimson
poppies, in Russian Central Asia, and occasionaUy
to the verdure and splendour of the Altai and the del
phiniums there, the blue, purple and yeUow monkshood,
the China-blue larkspurs, blue and purple larkspurs.
A wonderful place for flowers. Here are sweeps of
blue sage, mauve cranesbills poking everywhere, saffron
poppies, grass of Parnassus, campanula, pink moss
flowers and giant thistle-heads, gentian, Siberian iris.
Just outside the Cossack settlement it was late

xvi THE DECLARATION OF WAR 249
summer, and the glossy peony fruits were turning crim
son from green, openmg to show rows of black teeth —
seeds. But as you climbed upward toward the snow
the season changed, and it was possible to recover the
lost spring.
The southern side of the mountams seemed to be
very bare, but our side, the northern one, was green.
It was comparatively easy to reach districts where it
might be thought no foot of man had ever trod —
primeval moss-grown forest, where were no tracks,
no flowers, nothing but firs and moss. Numberless
trees had faUen, and the moss had grown over them,
and, in chmbing through, one helped oneself from tree
to tree, balancing and finding a footing. Above this
jungle was a stretch of steep mountain-side sparsely
grown with young firs, and then grey, barren, slippery
rock. Wonderful shelves and chasms, fissures, preci
pices, and ways up without ways down, boulder-
strewn tracks and founts of bubbling water, milk-white
streams, crystal streams.
I was housed very weU with a prosperous Cossack
family, and, except for the fact that there was a terrible
monotony in their dinners, had no reason to complain.
Every evening when I returned there was beef "cut
lets," white scones and butter, a jug of miLk, and the
samovar. The whole family was in the fields hay
making aU day, and were indisposed to give time to
cooking.

250 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xvi
Most days I spent by the side of a httle mountain
river, where I built a sort of causeway out of rocks,
diverted the channel, made a deep bathing-pool —
enthralling occupations. Here also I had a bonfire,
made coffee, baked potatoes, cooked red currant jam.
Strips of red currants hung like bunting on some of
the bushes, and were so thick that you could pick a
potful in a quarter of an hour. Here also I sorted out
and re-read thirty or forty copies of The Times, saved
up for me, with letters, at the post office of Semipalatinsk
— aU the details of the poUtical quarrel over Ulster, the
resignation of Sir John French (as he was then caUed),
of Colonel Seely, the vigorous speeches of Mr. John
Ward, the briUiant defences of Mr. Asquith. We
seemed to be running forward sUently and smoothly to
an exciting rebeUion or civil war in Ireland, and nobody
seemed to deplore the prospect of strife. The Govern
ment, nominaUy in favour of peace at aU costs, were
incapable of preventing their opponents obtaining arms,
and were, therefore, aUowing their friends to arm.
On the whole we seemed to be tired of the duU blessings
of peace, out of patience with peace. Yet we were not
ready for the strife that was coming, though certainly in
a mood to take arms. It is astonishing that with our
many international characters — those diplomatical
journalists of ours — we did not know what was coming,
or no one was at pains to undeceive us. JournaUsts
abroad, even if they are out of touch with Courts and

xvi THE DECLARATION OF WAR 251
are uninfluential, have yet much greater opportunities
for understanding international situations than Foreign
Offices. Why is it that they nearly always mislead?
In our country a certain glamour overspreads the per
sonahty of the polyglot who writes of foreign Courts
and foreign poUcies, but as an observer of the Press
for many years I can give it as my opinion that, as a
nation, we do not gain much from the pens of those
journalists who run in and out of chanceUeries and are
weU known at foreign Courts. In any case, as regards
those who dealt speciaUy with Germany, Austria and the
Balkans at the time of the outbreak of war, they were
either blind or ignorant, which is unthinkable, or mixed
up somehow in the great German intrigue.
SUence reigned in Europe, and under cover of that
sUence what tremendous preparations were being made,
what hurrying to and fro there was. It is astonishing
to look back now to those serene and happy weeks in
the Altai and to feel the contrast of the innocence of
Nature and the devilish conspiracy in the minds of
men. If there are devils in the world, black spirits
as opposed to white spirits, what triumph was theirs,
what hidden ecstasy as at the coming triumph of nega
tion. Behind the screen of this sUence horns were
blowing announcing the great feasts of death, the
blasting of the temples wherein the spirit of man dweUs,
the orgy of ugliness and madness. But being, happily,
untuned to this occult world, we did not hear them.

252 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xvi
It was hohday time, the end of July, the English
man's great hberation moment when, even if he goes
on working in office or factory, he ceases to work hard
and lazes at his work. His wife and family have gone
to the seaside. He wUl join them in a week or so.
Meanwhile he is "camping out at home." The young
man is buying stout boots and greasing them for
tramping, is scanning maps and guidebooks, and mak
ing absurd tables of mUeage, prospective hotel biUs
and expenses. The teachers, with the children, are
Uberated from the schools, and the former are gone
on polytechnic tours and what not, whilst the latter
chalk mysterious diagrams on the pavement and play
hop-scotch, or play "WaUflowers, wallflowers, growing
up so high," or "This is the way she went." The
unfashionable but numerous marriages take place of
those who must make the honeymoon coincide with
annual leave, and the happy couples take Cook's
tickets to Strasburg, to the Tyrol, to Munich.
And those Russians who must escape their feUow-
Russians, and don't like the bad drains of their own
watering-places, are off to German baths and Bohemian
and Austrian spas. Students are tripping across to
Switzerland. And on all in German territory the
guiUotine of war is going to fall. At aU the money
changers' offices at Charing Cross and in the City you
can buy German marks, though there is not much
gold to be had. French gold, EngUsh, Russian can

Altaiska Stanitsa .* View of Mount Bielukha

Mobilisation Day on the Altai: The Village Emptied of its
Folk

xvi THE DECLARATION OF WAR 253
be had in almost any quantities, and Cook's will seU
you German hotel tickets for aU August.
One lazy July afternoon I sat on the wooden steps
leading up to my veranda and talked with a Cossack
on wars in general, what prospects of war there actuaUy
were at that moment; and we concluded that there
might possibly be war with Austria. It was the idlest
talk, but the Cossack hves for a new war, and I did not
hke to discourage him. He for his part rather hoped
for a nearer war ; one with China would suit him, but
he'd thankfully consider a war with Austria if nothing
else were available.
I went along the exterior street of the vUlage to
the httle post office facing the wall of the White Ones,
as they caU the Altai, and talked with the postmaster
about marals, and he closed the office to go out and
show me where his garden was. Here also were
several maralniki, and I found them when clambering
up the ridges, and the deer, seeing me, would scamper
away. The viUage had a butter factory, and I used
to go there and wait during the last stages of produc
tion for a pound of butter, and, sitting on a bucket
upside down, chatted with other villagers. Opposite
the cottage where I stayed hved the priest, and he
often came across and talked. The church was the
next buUding after the priest's house, and was a
beautiful httle wooden temple built by the peasants
themselves. I was quickly in the midst of the hfe of

254 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA xvi
the settlement, and when the news came I was at once
thought to be the obvious person to apply to for in
formation. On the 30th of July, after a long day on
the mountains, I slept serenely on the overcoats on
the floor of my Cossack habitation. Next morning
came the young horseman with the red flag flying
from his shoulder, and the tremendous excitement and
clamour of the reception of the ukase to mobihse for
war. As I wrote when I described this in "Russia and
the World," the Cossacks were not told with whom the
war was or would be, and one of the first surmises that
they made was that the war must be with England —
crafty old England, who always stood in Russia's way
and was siding with the Turks again. Or she was
afraid Russia was going to attack India. The real news
came at last, and with it the necessity to return to
Europe as soon as possible. The war came across my
summer as it came across the summer of thousands
of others, cutting hfe into two very distinct parts. At
the vUlage of Altaisky I must draw my war line dividing
past and present, one part of Ufe from this other new
astonishing part. The story of my journey has drawn
to its close. Before, however, leaving the subject of
Russian Central Asia I would give the thoughts and
reflections that the journey has suggested, and es
peciaUy those referring to Anglo-Russian rivalry in
empire, the questions of India and Constantinople,
the future of our friendship and of the two empires.

APPENDIX I
Russia and India and the Prospects of Anglo-
Russian Friendship
The prospects of Anglo-Russian friendship are very
fair at the moment of writing, the after-the-war pros
pects. GeneraUy speaking, international amity or
hostihty has heretofore depended on the absence or
presence of clashing interests. Russia does not stand
on our road of Empire, and has never fought us and
could never fight us commerciaUy as Germany has
done. Our only doubt about Russia has been as to
her possible designs on India. Fifty years ago there
were few Englishmen who did not entertain expecta
tions of eventual war with Russia, and after the annexa
tion of Merv, and the running of the Central Asian
RaUway thither, Beaconsfield was obliged to assure
us that the keys of India were to be found in London,
and consisted in the spirit and determination of the
British people. We felt we were secure because we
could fight Russia and did not fear her. As Lord
Curzon wrote in his book on Russian Central Asia :
"The day that a Russian army starts forth from
Balkh for the passes of the Hindu Kush, or marches out
255

256 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
of the southern gate of Herat en route for Kandahar,
we may say, as CromweU did at Dunbar : 'Now hath
the Lord dehvered them into my hand.'"
Our other bond of security lay in the fact that the
Russians knew they could not successfuUy attack us.
Though it must be said now, after our thwarted efforts
against the Turks on GalhpoU and our experience in
Mesopotamia, that it is not clear that we could count
on winning a distant war of invasion. Though we are
increasing daily in military power and sagacity, as a
result of fighting the Germans, we are not so mihtary a
nation as we were in the days of the Crimean War.
But the invasion of India by Russia may well be put
out of the head once and for all. No statesman in
Russia ever seriously contemplated it, and in this
country those statesmen who thought of it either
decried the idea or used it as a pohtical bogey. As
Namirovitch Danchenko said recently: "From my
seventy years' knowledge of Russian hfe, I should say
that the people who dreamt about the conquest of India
could be found in Russia only in a madhouse." No
serious steps were ever taken to thwart Russian imperial
poUcy in Central Asia, and all that fear has brought
about was mistrust and a refusal to enter into part
nership with Russia in certain schemes in Asia.
The Russians have been ready to trust us for a long
time, and they were anxious for an Anglo-Russian

APPENDIX I 257
agreement even at the time when the invasion of India
bogey was most in the ah here. Probably the Germans,
those persistent enemies of Anglo-Russian friendship,
were responsible for a great deal of subterranean propa
ganda in England. Many in England were pro-Rus
sian — Gladstone (though, of course, even Gladstone
asked for a war credit on one occasion of fear of Russia),
Carlyle, Froude, Kinglake — there was a real basis
of sympathy. But the poisoners of the mind of the
British people succeeded. What an interesting glimpse
of popular feehng is found in Burnaby's "Ride to
Khiva " if we read it now. There is a certain poignancy
in his remarks. Consider this passage to-day :
"Another peculiarity in several Russians which I
remarked . . . was their desire to impress upon my
mind the great advantage it would be for England
to have a civiUsed neighbour hke Russia on her Indian
frontier ; and when I did not take the trouble to dissent
from their views — for it is a waste of breath to argue
with Russians about this question — how eager they
were for me to impress their line of thought upon the
circle of people with whom I was most immediately
connected. Of course, the arguments brought forward
were based upon purely philanthropic motives, upon
Christianity and civihsation. They said that the two
great Powers ought to go together hand in glove;
that there ought to be railways aU through Asia, formed

258 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
by Anglo-Russian companies ; that Russia and England
had every sympathy in common which should unite
them; that they both hated Germany and loved
France; that England and Russia could conquer the
world, and so on.
"It was a Une of reasoning delightfuUy Russian, and
though I was not so rude as to differ from my would-be
persuaders, and lent an attentive ear to aU their elo
quence, I could not help thinking that the mutual
sympathy between England and Germany is much
greater than that between England and Russia; that
the Christian faith as practised by the lower orders in
Russia is pure paganism in comparison with the Protes
tant rehgion which exists in Prussia and Great Britain ;
that Germany and Great Britain are natural aUies
against Russia . . . that Germans and Englishmen
understand by the term 'Russian civihsation' some
thing diametricaUy opposite to what is attributed to
it by those people who form their ideas of Muscovite
progress from the few Russians they meet abroad."
Burnaby's remarks seem pretty foohsh in 1916.
And his views are representative of the views of many
Enghsh in 1875. Prussia, whom he admires so, had
just crushed the French whilst we stood by. The
Boer War had not come. The Kaiser had not sent his
telegram to Kruger. Our miUtary conceit had not
been taken out of us; and so, when Russia offers

APPENDIX I 259
Britannia the hand of friendship, Britannia round her
draws her cloak and folds her arms.
But Russia was sincere. She admired the Enghsh.
She alone of Continental nations appreciated the spirit
of Dickens and our Victorian novehsts. England
was stUl the foolish friend of Turkey, it is true, but she
was not perfide Albion. Nor was she simply "Mr.
Cotton," as Ibsen dismissed us, or "a nation of shop
keepers." From the first Russia has had some sort of
Hair for the English gentleman, has seen the best
thing in our race ; and their wish for friendship with us
has been a sentimental matter, not a desire for commer
cial partnership, not a bond of sympathy between
revolutionary Russia and our Socialists. The desire
for friendship with England dates to before the emer
gence of our Sociahsts as a party in England. It is a
genuine craving for mutual understanding between
the real Russia and the real England.
Fortunately, that desire on Russia's part found an
answer on this side. We became friends — we are now
brothers-in-arms against a common foe. If the shed
ding of blood for a common ideal strengthens friendship,
we should be good friends for this generation at least.
Those who are young now will keep in remembrance
the stress of these days, the sacrifice, the common sad
ness, the shared triumph. Holy Russia has become
near to us, and, despite aU machinations and insinua
tions, will remain near. And, with the hope of making

260 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
things more easy, let me indicate the points of resistance
to Russian friendship stiU remaining in our national Ufe.
I. India. — A number of our people, chiefly on the
Unionist side in politics, still fear Russian designs on
India, and for that reason deny Russia the right to
Constantinople and the Straits, should she take them.
In doing this they unwittingly play the German game,
which is to reserve Constantinople for Germany.
There are several European journalists in the pay of
Germany, and among other things they do for their
money is the stirring up of British suspicion about Con
stantinople and Russia. The fact is that this is Russia's
legitimate outlet, her front door, and there can be no
settled peace in Europe as long as it is barred up or
Uable to be barred. It is also the seat and capital of
the Russian faith, and what in 1876 Dostoieffsky
answered to the question on what high ground Russia
demanded Constantinople from Europe is still true :
"As the leader of Orthodoxy, as protectress and pre
server of Orthodoxy, the r61e predestined for Russia
since the days of Ivan III . . . that the nations pro
fessing Orthodoxy may be unified under her, that the
Slav nations may know that her protection is the
guarantee of their individual personahty and the safe
guard against mutual hostiUty. Such a union would
not be for the purpose of political aggression and
tyranny, not a matter of commercial gain. No, it

APPENDIX I 261
wUl be a raising of Christ's truth, preserved in the
East, a real new raising of Christ's Cross, and the con
clusive word of Orthodoxy at the head of which wiU be
Russia. . . . And if anyone holds that the 'new word'
which Russia wiU speak is ' Utopia,' worthy only of
mockery, then I must be numbered among the Uto
pians  "
StiU, it must be said that at the present moment
Constantinople does not seem likely to fall as a fruit to
the AUies or to Russia, and unless Bulgaria should turn
upon her unnatural allies there is not much question
of St. Sophia becoming Christian again. We ought
only to keep in mind that Russia has striven for Con
stantinople not to have a base from which to oppose us,
but in order to keep the door of her own house and to
be Queen of the Eastern Church.
The next point, and where the question of India
causes us to be suspicious, is that of Persia. Here,
happily, some understanding has been obtained and
spheres of influence aUotted ; but our distrust has stood
in the way of the consummation of one of the most
interesting schemes of the century : the trans-Persian
raUway. If this railway had been built before the out
break of this world war, it would have been of ex
traordinary value to the Allies, an effectual means of
checking the inflammation of Islam. There wiU be
little money left when the war is over, but certainly
the overland route to India should be one of the first

262 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
big civiUsing schemes to receive attention. World raU
ways, instead of little bits of hnes, belong to the future
of the Old World, and we can have them now or put it
off for another era. It depends on the faith and imagi
nation of our generation. Then Persia faUs inevitably
under European surveillance, and there is no reason
for English and Russians at the outposts of Empire to
compete and be jealous and suspicious and to squabble.
For the rest, Russian Central Asia raises no further
problems. It is a peaceful, growing Russian colony,
shut away from the chances of attack by foreign
Powers — likely to remain for a thousand years one of
the most peaceful places upon earth. Unlike India, it
is comparatively empty and its peoples are decaying.
The railways which Russia has built were built in order
to subdue the Tekintsi and the Afghans. The railways
which she is building have in view only the convenience
of the colonists, the development of the colony, and
trade with China. Russia is slow out there, and she is
laying the sound foundations of a healthy and happy
colonial country.
II. Rivalry of Empire. — Whatever be the direct
issue of the war with Germany, one indirect result
seems certain : England wiU have more empire, whUst
Germany will have less, and Russia wiU not lose any
thing. Two great empires will emerge more clearly,
facing one another because of the dispersal of the
German ambition. There seems to be only one

APPENDIX I 263
possibUity of German extension, and that lies in the
chance of Germans and Austrians turning on their own
allies and absorbing Bulgaria and Turkey. But that
chance must be considered remote to-day. The Rus
sian and the British Empires wiU stand facing one
another in friendly comparison. The Russian Empire
is self-supporting, it has no need to import the necessi
ties of Ufe — food, fuel, raiment ; whereas we could sup
port ourselves, but do not, not having reconciled our
seh-hostUe commercial interests. For many a long day
Russia wiU export for British consumption corn, butter,
eggs, sugar, wool, and wood, to say nothing of other
things. And when at last we succeed in making our own
Emphe independent, the Russians will eat their butter
themselves and there wiU be more white bread on the
peasant's table. It wiU be no calamity for Russia.
I was speaking on the future of the Russian Empire at
one of our leading Conservative clubs in London last
winter, and I was surprised to note a very important
feeling of opposition toward Russia. Those who were
interested in manufactures wanted the tariff against
British goods reduced, and those who were Imperialist
in spirit felt a certain jealousy and suspicion of the
Russian Empire. Several speakers warned Russia that
she had better give up the dream of having Constanti
nople — it would be bad for her health if she were to
have it. But the most significant utterance came from
an ardent tariff reformer, who did not know how far love

264 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
of Russia was compatible with love of the British
Empire, for more Russian grain coming to us meant less
Canadian grain, and so on. If we gave Russia any
preferential treatment as regards her exports to us, we
handicapped our own colonies. We ought to give our
colonies preferential terms, but how would the Russians
feel if we asked for reduced tariffs for the import of our
manufactured goods into Russia while at the same time
we put a tax on the produce they sent to us. That
problem is a serious one, and it cannot be doubted that
the best pohcy for us is to make ourselves self-de
pendent as an Empire whatever it may cost us in
foreign favour. Russia must not misunderstand our
efforts to consohdate the Empire, and I do not think she
wiU. The diminution in our import of food-stuffs
from Russia wiU be gradual, and wiU be made up par-
tiaUy by the increased import of other things which
Russia has in superabundance. Yet even as regards
ores and mineral products we have to learn to be self-
supporting. The war itself, which shuts us off from
Russia and throws us upon our own resources, has sent
us to our own colonies. We are beginning to find in the
Empire not only our food, but also the raw materials
required for our products. Take, for instance, the case
of asbestos. The only first-class quality of asbestos in
the world comes from the Urals, and it is a product of
great value industriaUy. During the war it has been
very difficult to get it from Russia. The result has

APPENDIX I 265
been that we have found a very good though still
inferior quality in Rhodesia, and may quite conceivably
obtain aU our best supplies from that colony in time,
the lower grades coming from Canada, which begins
to have a great output. But our tendency to be self-
dependent wiU tend to rid Russia of many exploiting
foreign companies, and for that the Russian people
wiU be thankful. They want to experience what gifts
they have for doing things for themselves.
III. The Trade Treaty. — Russia will be so much in
debt to us financiaUy at the end of the war that there
wUl be a tendency to regard her as an insolvent liability
company possessing valuable assets. Some of our
business men may want to treat her as such and ap
point a trustee, so to say. There is a movement to
inflict upon Russia a trade treaty similar to that, or
even more humiliating than that which Germany
caUed upon her to sign. The bond of friendship with
Russia cannot be a commercial halter round her neck.
She would quickly resent foreign financial control, no
matter from what quarter it might be exercised.
Russia wiU be all but bankrupt after the war, and aU
that she wiU have lost will have been lost for the com
mon cause. We should be generous to her and see what
can be done, not to tie her and bind her industriaUy
and financially, but for us all. Russia herself is ready
to make a kindly treaty providing us with real ad
vantages over Germany, but she could not make a

266 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
treaty whereby arrangements would be made for the
paying off of her financial war debts to her alhes.
IV. The Basis of Friendship. — The basis of friend
ship with Russia is not reaUy trade, and no provision
needs to be made to make a trade basis. We had
plenty of trade with Germany or Germany with us,
and that did not make for friendship. On the contrary,
the question of trade and of haggling over money is
almost certain in the long run to lead to estrangement,
or, at least, mutual dis-esteem. There has been a
growing trade, but that has not led to the growing
friendship. Friendship has been founded on real
mutual admiration. We hke the Russians, and they
like us. The positive side of Russia profoundly in
terests us. Of course, we are not vitally interested
in the negative side, the rotten conditions of hfe in
certam classes, the faults of Russia, the seamy side of
the picture. We are thoroughly aware of the ugliness
of the negative side of our own hfe, and we would
ask — do not judge us by that, that is not England.
Similarly, in Russia we are interested in beautiful
and wonderful Russia, in Holy Russia, not in unholy
Russia. This positive side is comparatively unrealised
here, for gossip and slander make more noise than
truth, but in it is a great treasure both for Russia and
for ourselves in friendship. On the whole the pros
pects are good.

APPENDIX II
The Russian Empire and the British Empire
The moment of peace will be the moment of recon
sideration. We shaU want to know where we all stand,
and we shaU want to face the facts — financiaUy, in
dividually, imperially. We shall want to know what
we have got, what we owe, what sort of empire we have
to make or mar in the succeeding years, what are its
resources, what its possibihties, and ours. One may
remark, in passing, what very good work is being done
by the Confederation of the Round Table.1 The calcu
lation is exercising many patriotic British minds. First
of aU be it remarked, in order to remove misconceptions,
we British people are not by any means the most numer
ous white people. We have in our Empire something
like 63 milUon whites, whereas Russia has at least
140 miUion, Germany has 65 million, and the United
States have 82 million of mixed race. We compare
favourably with the United States because we are
homogeneous and much more calm in soul, and
favourably with Germany because she has no land
for expansion, though it must be remembered that
1 See " The Round Table," a review of the interests of the Empire, and
" The Prospect of a Commonwealth," an extraordinary after-the-war volume.
267

268 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
if Austria and Germany should unite, the Germans
would have almost as large a white population as
Russia, and certainly a very much more active one.
There remains Russia, with its enormous population
and its astonishingly extensive territory. Russia has
ample room for ten times her present population,
and she has it at her back door, as it were. She has
no oceans to cross. The railway goes all the way or
can go aU the way from Petrograd to the uttermost
ends of her earth. She has also calm, and can develop
without worry. As an empire, compared with ours,
she has tremendous advantages. Her people are not
impatient to be rich, the strain of her race is not con
fused through foreign immigration, she is shut off from
mongrehsing influences, and tends to grow with pure
blood and a clear understanding of her own past and
her own destiny. She has less chance of making mis
takes. And, as I have said, her problems are much
simpler. It is not difficult to keep the stream of coloni
sation moving into the emptiness of Asia when the rail
ways are so good as to carry one six thousand mUes
for thirteen roubles, a Uttle over a sovereign.
Our younger poUticians have got to decide what
they are working for — trade, or the Empire, or the
people, or the individual. They must affirm a larger
pohcy than has been affirmed heretofore, a world
pohcy, and they must not scorn the lessons which
Germany has taught them: the necessity to be

APPENDDK II 269
thorough, to have large conceptions, and to work for
the reaUsation of these large conceptions rather than
potter about doctoring the little-English constitution
here and giving a little funeral there. We teach our
chUdren a very f ooUsh httle proverb : that if we look
after the pence the pounds wiU look after themselves.
That is the opposite of the truth, which is that if we
look after the pounds we need never worry our heads
about the pennies. If we nationalised our ocean-
transit, we should not need to insure our working men
against unemployment. If we scheduled the enormous
tracts of land available for culture in the Empire, we
should not need to wage war with the landowners in
Great Britain.
Our present Colonial Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, has
risen to the front as the pohtical leader of our Con
servative and Imperialist party. He does not seem
to love party strife, and he has, perhaps, found a per
manent post at the Colonial Office. He is the next man
of importance after Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and
though by no means so great a man, he is an admiring
foUower of the great Imperialist. Whatever we may
think of the merits of Free Trade and Protection,
Chamberlain was undoubtedly right in his larger con
ception of a unified British Empire, a Zollverein. And
the Liberals who opposed him and confused the issue
were merely opportunists. They were not concerned
to find what they could agree with in his proposals.

270 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
They merely fought him to beat him and step into his
shoes pohtically. The riff-raff of pohtical opportunists
set on him, and he was forced to shed one of his great
Ulusions, a trust in the common sense of the people.
Mr. Bonar Law is his successor, and we wish him weU.
He might weU carry his office out of the arena of party
pohtics and sit at the Colonial Office whatever wind
were blowing. For Imperial Pohcy must have con
tinuity U it is to be successful.
England must hope and pray that Mr. Law has given
up mere pohtics. We are thoroughly sick of the bad-
tempered quarreUing and maUcious fighting of the heads
of the parties. Even a first-rate man is ninth-rate
when he is quarreUing, and a quarrel among politicians
is always a quarrel among ninth-rate pohticians.
Pohtical genius likes affirmation and agreement. The
task of Mr. Bonar Law is to think about the Empire
and gain consciousness of its true destiny ; it is not to
think out devices in pohtical antagonism. As a na
tion we demand he give his whole time and the cream
of his inteUect to the positive task of giving to every
citizen of the Empire the consciousness of the large
thing. He wiU be attacked; curs wiU bark at him;
the Germans and German Jews will try and stir up the
uneducated against him ; there wiU be all manner of
insinuations. But he need never reply or attempt to
defend himseU. The nation and the Empire will back
him calmly. There is a splendid Russian tale of a

APPENDIX II 271
prince climbing a mountain to obtain a bird, and all
the stones behind him shout abuse after him. He is
safe on his quest on this condition only, that he does not
turn round and hsten, or draw his sword to attack.
If he turn he will change to a stone himself. The
point is, we are going to be more in need of great men
once this war is over than we ever were before — of
great men with big ideas, faith that they can be reahsed,
and that calm of spirit which is the greatest strength.
If Mr. Bonar Law is not great enough, or if he'd
rather continue in the pohtical arena, there is another
man for the post, and that is Lord Milner. Lord
Milner strikes one as the greater man. The Empire
is his one idea. He thinks largely — his imagination
takes him in vast sweeps over the surface of the Emphe.
He has dignity, is a powerful speaker, and a clear
thinker on Imperial matters. His weakness is a certain
aloofness or reserve, an ambassadorial manner, and one
is not quite sure what is behind it. Mr. Bonar Law,
on the other hand, is unscreened ; he is familiar, even
domestic in his manner. Probably what Mr. Law
has to guard against is doing things in small parcels,
doing branch things rather than root things, whereas
Lord Milner may give offence occasionally by a lack
of consideration for other people's feelings — want of
tact, in fact. In any case they are both men on whom
the eyes of the nation rest. Lord Milner has sent me
an extremely interesting letter which had been ad-

272 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
dressed to him by a number of British citizens who have
become lost to the British Emphe. By his kind per
mission I reproduce it :
"Open Letter to Lord Milner.
Quincy, Mass., U.S.A.
"Dec. 15th, 1915.
"Lord Milner, — I have read with intense interest
the report of your speech appearing in The Times
Weekly Edition of Nov. 19th. You mentioned the in
difference of the working man to Imperial affairs. I
am a working man, and possibly my views on these
questions may be of some small interest to you. When
I speak of my views I mean that they also are the views
of other workers with whom I come in contact. I mix
daily with several dozen workers, British born, and I
assure you that the opinions here expressed are the
opinions of practicaUy aU.
"We believe that right now a strong committee
should be formed to deal with Imperial reconstruction
after the war. This committee should have a weU
thought out, clearly defined, and decisive pohcy to
put in operation the moment the war ends. We
beheve that not less than half a milUon soldiers who
have fought in the war should be settled in Canada,
Australasia and U. S. Africa, and that an appropria
tion of not less than one biUion 1 pounds sterhng should
1 American value, i.e. £ 1,000,000,000.

APPENDIX II

273

be voted for the purpose. Canada is a land of vast
agricultural possibihties and great mineral wealth.
A smaU group of the best agricultural and engineering
experts in the Empire should be sent over to make all
necessary preparations for the coming of the men.
The exact location or locations where they are to
settle should be defined, Unes of branch railways should
be surveyed, sites of model garden cities, cement built,
should be located, mining properties surveyed, and the
location of factories and workshops should be decided
upon. Nothing should be left to chance. The gang
ploughs, threshing machines, motor tractors, grain
elevators, etc., should be provided and run on the co
operative principle, and the entire properties should
belong to the nation. If one-half the energy, fore
sight, and preparation used in the war were used for
the reconstruction, the scheme is an assured success.
"There are great irrigation and artesian possibihties
in S. Africa. Preparations should be made now. In
cidentally the intensely loyahst stock thus settled
would swamp the Hertzog party with their disruptive
ideals. In AustraUa very great possibiUties await
irrigation. I have only to point out what has been
done in arid S. California and Arizona to prove this.
"The British Empire heretofore has been more or
less imaginary ; there has been nothing tangible about
it. Take my own case, for instance. I cite it merely
because it iUustrates a principle. Seven years ago I

274 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
was in Scotland and unemployed. There were a great
many unemployed at the time. Those who had no
means were left to starve. Was anything done for
them? Absolutely nothing! AU were British, loved
Britain, were able and wilhng to work, yet no organisa
tion was created to utihse their services. PersonaUy
I came to the United States. I have done better here
than at home ; had better pay, shorter hours, better
conditions. What is the British Empire to us? Ab
solutely nothing ; a mere sentiment. Yet our feeUngs
are British still, our sympathies are British ; but that is
not enough. There must be something tangible to go
on, something real; sentiment alone is no use. An
Enghshman here whom I meet daily is a veteran of the
S. African war. When that war finished he was not
aUowed to settle in S. Africa. At home he could not
get work. He was driven to want. He had to pawn his
medal to Uve, and finaUy was assisted to America. He
has done weU here and has been steadily employed.
But he has been embittered, and his sentiment in his
own words is : 'To heU with the British Empire.' It
is an empty phrase to him, without meaning ; and I teU
you, with all the earnestness of which I am capable,
that these things wiU mean the decline and faU of the
Empire if they do not stop. In the United States
there are several milUon British born who are lost
to the Empire for ever. Theh sentiments are British,
theh sympathies are British, but theh interests are

APPENDIX II 275
here, and interest becomes sentiment. And observe
that theh chUdren born here have sentiment as weU
as interest for the land of their birth.
"The British Emphe is the largest in the world.
In natural resources it is the wealthiest. It could
support a population of hundreds of miUions in a high
degree of prosperity. The British are an able and
inteUigent people. The nation is rich. The problem
is to settle the people throughout the Empire and de
velop its resources under the guidance of experts, ac
cording to a weU thought out and definite plan. This
plan wants to take shape now. If the war were to
suddenly end one year hence, and an army of three
million men disbanded, we would (and wiU) be faced
by industrial chaos. The problem must be placed
in the hands of experts, and be so clearly worked out
that when peace is declared the soldiers will be drafted
without fuss to the various parts of the Empire, and
immediately tackle the problems of city and railway
building, agriculture and irrigation, mining and manu
facturing. And these properties must be owned by
the nation. These measures will create a real Empire
in which every citizen wiU have a tangible interest.
Each part wiU legislate on its own domestic affairs, and
the Imperial ParUament, deaUng with Imperial affairs
and representative of all the Dominions, wiU be held
in London. With such conditions you will find a
strong sentiment for Free Trade within the Empire

276 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
and Protection without, and also a strong desire for
that universal mihtary training which wiU defend what
in very truth is one's own. Start this programme at
once, and do it thoroughly, and you can be absolutely
certain of a sohd and enthusiastic backing. — Beheve
me, yours sincerely, «Wm c Andsbsos»
Under Mr. Anderson's signature appeared the signa
tures of forty-nine men, all British subjects once, people
of pure race and complete British traditions, now " lost
to the Empire." The letter was endorsed thus:
J. C. Collingwood, late of Glasgow, Scotland;
A. W. Coates, late of York, England :
James J. Byrnes, late of Dubhn, Ireland;
T. Gibbons, late of Newfoundland;
and so on, a hst far too long to quote here but most
impressive in its implication — "late of Great Britain,
now and henceforth of the United States of America."
I wiU add a letter sent to me from Tasmania, for it
wiU help to give the atmosphere of the problem :
"9 Garden Crescent,
"Hobart, Tasmania, "Australia.
"Oct. 3rd, 1915.
"Dear Sir, — I am just being interested in your
book, 'Russia and the World.' I read it because I was
dehghted with your vagabond trip along the Euxine

APPENDIX II 277
shores. You deal with the problems of the British
Empire. Perhaps you might Uke to get a view from
' down under ' ? WeU, I do not consider in the matter of
defence that a huge land empire has advantages over a
sea empire. Russia is to-day more vulnerable than the
British Empire. Let us suppose the British Isles with
a navy such as it possesses to-day, with a million men
ready for home defence, and with an expeditionary force
of 250,000 men — 'ready' at an hour's notice to step
into transports also ready. Let us assume that two
years' provision of corn is stored, and a tunnel with
France. Let us also assume that every available rood
of British ground is cultivated. What country could
invade and conquer the British Isles? What country
could keep up a two-years' naval war? Let us come
to Australia — grand in her isolation. We shall soon
have a quarter of a milUon of trained soldiers. We
launched a new cruiser last week, and we are going to
build submarines. We can not only defend ourselves,
but we could supply garrisons for India. So far as
external aggression is concerned, South Africa is safe.
Canada is hable to attack from the Americans, and in
the course of time will be attacked. If the British ex
peditionary army were landed promptly, and Canada
had our plan of compulsory service, the Empire
would be right there. India is safe except from
Russia. " Have we a weak spot as an Empire ? Certainly we

278 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
have. England for three parts of a century has aUowed
herseU to be bled to death by the emigration of her
best youth to foreign countries. That ought to be
stopped. There should be an export tax of £20 upon
every emigrant to the United States or other ahen
country. (Plain talk about U.S.A.) As to the present
'colonies' — hateful title — there are but two British
ones within the Empire — Austraha and New Zealand.
The others have an undesirable mixture of races. It
should be a portion of the Imperial pohcy to fill up
Canada and South Africa with British-born people!
But such emigration must be upon a system. Under
a proper system we could do with two miUions of im
migrants in Australia. Suddenly dumped upon our
wharves, 1000 would be an inconvenience. Your
scheme of cheap ships is admirable. When we build
railways in AustraUa, and provide water schemes, we
do not consider whether they wiU 'pay,' but whether
they wUl develop the country and add to the happiness
of the people. The best method of emigration is to
dispatch from the United Kingdom every year, say,
500,000 youths and girls from 15 years of age and up
wards. These would find homes at low wages in
settlers' famiUes in Canada, South Africa and Aus
traha, and would become acclimatised and absorbed
into the population. This emigration should be a
State scheme and compulsory. But the emigrants
should not be made slaves of. When their indentures

APPENDIX II

279

ended they should be aUowed, if they wished, to return
to England in one of your ships free of charge. I do
not wish to enlarge upon the subject, but the failures
of adult EngUsh immigrants who come here are pathetic.
They cannot get along, neither would we get along in
England. The immigrant should be captured young.
This is the greatest problem of the Empire :
"(1) To fiU up the Empire with loyal citizens of
pure British birth.
"(2) In the cases of Canada and South Africa, to
send large numbers in order to neutraUse the alien
elements now existing there. To stop foreign immi
gration into British territories, especiaUy German im
migration. "Upon the question of naturahsation we have been
too easy and indifferent. A man wishing to be natural
ised should make a solemn appUcation in propria per
sona before a court. He should be under the obliga
tion to abjure his foreign nationality and to take a
British name. We have now our directories crowded
with foreign names, which through generations of inter
marriages have lost their original national significance.
"I note that you compare our culture with that of
America. Thanks ! No two countries could be more
dissimilar — there is not amongst us the greed, the
wUd rush, or the boastfulness of the Americans. We
do not like them. While we are on comparisons, let
me remind you that whUe you have failed to adjust your

280 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
Irish question, we have federated Austraha, a task of
no smaU difficulty. While you have been talking and
spilling ink about conscription, we have a system of
compulsory training, both for the army and the navy,
in full operation. While you allow strikes in the midst
of war, our difficulties are being settled by wages
boards and arbitration courts. We are not perfect, but
our Press is much superior in tone and culture to yours.
It is painful to read some of your Yankeeised London
papers. In Uterature we have given you Mrs. Hum
phry Ward, though to learn new sins we read the in
decent novels which appear to be the chief product
of British fiction. And we have given the world —
Melba !
"As to our share of the war. I walked down-
street in Hobart yesterday to take a 'billy' — pity
your simphcity if you do not know what that is — to
the City HaU. It was fiUed with all sorts of good
things for our boys at GalhpoU for Christmas. Out
side the newspaper office I read the cable, another
ghastly hst of Austrahan casualties. Were they
necessary? Could not the Turks have been outflanked
and theh communications cut? When I reached home
my wife and her friend were knitting socks for the
soldiers. The lady friend mentioned, be it correct
or not, that a ship that dechned to carry troops — the
Wimmera, New Zealand to Melbourne — was taken
possession of and forced to take the men. The streets

APPENDIX II 281
are full of soldiers ready to sail, and, alas, with many
returned from the war crippled for life. And such
splendid young men. What an improved edition of
the British race the Australians are !
"Enough from stranger to stranger, but as your book
seems to indicate gleams of inteUigence on your part,
and as it interested me, I am humbly — as a native-
born Australian now close approaching the Psalmist's
limit — endeavouring to repay the compliment. —
Yours truly, "William Crooke."
And Mr. Crooke enclosed a poem on the launching
of H.M.S. Brisbane at the naval dockyard at Cockatoo
Island :
Another link in the steel-strong chain which holds us heart to
heart,
Another pledge to the old, old vow which swears we'll never
part;
While life doth last and love doth last we'll give thee of our
own —
Dear Motherland, accept this gift we lay before thy throne.
Forged in the heat of a southern sun, framed 'neath an Austral
sky,
Worthy indeed this ship shall be to float thy flag on high.
Fanned by the breath of a South Sea breeze, kissed by the foam-
flecked spray,
Did ever a child of War awake as this one wakes to-day?
We bargain not in windy words, and not in idle boast,
We speed her shding down the shp, and make her name a toast.

282 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
Remember ye that gaunt, grey wreck on Cocos' barren rocks
[Emden],
Where seagulls pick the whitened bones around the old sea-fox.
Another link in the steel-strong chain which holds us heart to
heart,
Another hound shpped from the leash to play a winning part ;
Her flag is broken to the wind, her steel has met the sea —
Dear Motherland, accept the gift we give this day to thee.
The letters indicate something of the spirit of our
people, and they more than touch on the " after- the-
war" problems of the Empire. Both indicate the
way we lose our citizens to the United States of America.
And it is, of course, loss to the Empire whenever an
Enghshman settles in the U.S.A. Our social inter
change with the United States is a snare for us. The
gleam of their dollars is the Star-spangled Banner, and
not the Union Jack. We do not see that, although the
Americans speak a recognisable dialect of our language,
they are a foreign people, with their own national
interests. When a man or woman goes there to settle
he is lost to us, and if in the great unrest after the war
a great number of our young people set sail for " God's
own country," it wiU mean that we can add the
numbers of those young people to the total of our
casualties. That is clear.
Then we cannot afford to imitate the ways of the
U.S.A. The U.S.A. receive the discontented and re
beUious of aU nations in Europe — it is Europe's safety-

APPENDIX II 283
valve. Our Irish go there, German anti-mihtarists,
Russian Jews and Finns, Austrian Slavs and what not.
The nature of the United States is composite and its
task is synthesis. The nature of our Empire is ele
mentary and its task is to keep pure. Canada has
made a mistake in opening its doors to aliens, and
especiaUy to those ahens who would stand a poor
chance of passing the tests at EUis Island. Canada
behaves as if it were left behind in the struggle by
America, as if she had been asleep in the past and was
now making up for lost ground by any and every means.
She is virtuaUy accepting those aliens whom the U.S.A.
consider not good enough to take. Through the help
of Tolstoy and the Quakers the Dukhobors were
dumped down on Canadian soil. They have refused
to become naturalised British subjects and have sacri
ficed estates to the value of over three million dollars —
"in the name of the equality of all people upon earth
we would not be naturahsed, and we sacrificed this
material fortune." They learn no English, conform
to no English rules, nourish no EngUsh sentiments,
are lost to Russia, and are no use to us. The same may
be said of the hundreds of thousands of other ahens
we are letting in. It should be obvious that to lose
British-born citizens, our own spirit, flesh and blood,
in the United States, and at the same time to take
those ahens who cannot pass the doctor and the
immigration examination at New York, is a woeful
and even ridiculous circumstance.

284 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
After the war, America wiU be extremely rich and
we extremely poor. She wiU be in a position to buy
everything that is offered for sale. We must take care
not to offer birthrights in any shape or form. That
which we can legitimately seU let us seU, but that
which is in the nature of an heirloom of the British
people let us not be tempted to seU, no matter how
high the mountain of dollars be piled on the American
shore or how dazzUngly it may shine in the sunshine.
I say this with no malice agamst the American people.
They are a splendid people, and they are working out
their own ideals. They are carrying out their ideals of
town-planning, marriage-planning, slum-raising, park-
planting, wages-raising beyond anything we dream
of here. When I wrote in my book on America that
we British were the dying West whereas America was
the truly Uving West, I was taken up by British critics
as if I had said something very disparaging about my
own people. That was a mistake. I do not desire to
see my own people a Western people, such as the
Americans are, but rather a nation seated between
the East and the West. Some of us fondly think our
selves Western in our ideals, but the fact is the Ameri
cans have left us far behind, and we can never catch
up because we do not reaUy believe in these ideals.
But we can gain immensely by seeing America go ahead.
Let us shake hands with America; she is splendid.
God speed! Go on, work out your ideals, let us see

APPENDIX II 285
you as you wish to be. Meanwhile we wiU go on with
our own problems and the reaUsation of our own ideals.
With America on the West then also with Russia
on the East — shake hands ! Thanks to Russia, and
God be with her also. Let her realise her ideals and
discover what she is ; we shall learn from the spectacle of
her self -reaUsation. And meanwhile we wiU go on with
our own problems and the reaUsation of our own ideals.
We who write about foreign countries are the torch-
bearers to foreign progress and the means of foreign
friendship. We render good service, and U our light
shine weU and show clear pictures it is unfair to reproach
us with a wish to Russianise or Americanise or whatever
it is. Our function is a legitimate one, and, far from
confusing or ahenating our readers, our hearts are
actuaUy with our own nation and we help our fellow-
countrymen to see themselves as quite distinctive.
Our minds certainly are confused by the writings and
sayings of those stay-at-home folk who imagine that
difference of nationahty is only difference of speech and
customs, and perhaps of dress, not understanding that
first of aU it is difference of soul and difference in
destiny. To return to the comparison of the two Empires
and the consideration of the colonial letters, Mr.
Anderson asks for an Imperial commission to consider
the "after-the-war " problems, and in conversation with
Mr. Bonar Law I learn that such a commission is to

286 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
sit, and there is the possibUity of an Imperial Parlia
ment being formed. This ought to be taken up
warmly by our people at home. I also discussed with
Mr. Law the prospects of emigration after the war.
There is a great unrest in the Army. Great numbers of
men have one common opinion that they are not going
to return to the old duU grind in factory and office
after the war is over. They are going in for an open-
air life, going to Canada, going to AustraUa, or going
to take up land at home in Great Britain. The
Canadians and Austrahans have served their homelands
weU by telling the men at home what it is like in the far
parts of the Empire. Our men have a genuine ad
miration for the physique of our Colonials. The fine
bodies and good spirits of these men speak for them
selves, and then they are full of talk of a rich country,
beautiful Nature, wildness, big chances, prosperity.
It is no wonder that the Englishman wants to go there
also when the war is over. There will be a great
readiness to go. The question is what facilities wiU
be given them to go ? How much will it cost and how
much land will they be given, and what status will
they have within the Empire ? Mr. Law was not in
clined to give much answer to that, and he reminded
me that we wanted to get some more men back to the
land in our own country. The back-to-the-land move
ment here is, however, of httle importance U we are
going to look upon the whole Empire as a British

APPENDIX II 287
unity and feel that a man on the land in AustraUa can
be of more significance than a man on the land in
Essex. I asked Mr. Bonar Law whether he thought that our
manufacturers here would be dismayed at the prospect
of so many young men going to the Colonies, would
they not oppose facUities being given? Would they
not feel that it was necessary to keep the labour market
overflowing with labour in order to keep labour cheap ?
In any case, would they not feel they needed to keep
the men in England? The foundation of personal
wealth is a plenitude of labour. The more hands em
ployed, the richer the man at the top. Mr. Law did
not think they were Ukely to raise objections.
The overcrowding in the United Kingdom is much
greater than in France or Germany or Italy. India
is also terribly overcrowded, but Canada and AustraUa
and South Africa are practicaUy empty. The only
nation that occupies the correct amount of land pro
portional to its population is China. Russia has double
the territory of China, and something like a third of
the total population. And, thanks to cheap railway
fares, the Russian population spreads quietly and
naturaUy. After the war we must nationahse a
steamship service for the use of British subjects only,
and make it possible to travel anywhere in the Empire
for a pound or so, paying for food according to a normal
tariff. We must give emigrants privUeges in our own

288 THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA
Colonies that they would not obtain in the United
States. We must set up big Imperial works, and
spend time and money in development. We must not
relax our rule of the seas, but go on buUding an ever
better, ever more efficient Navy, and not underman it.
We must Uve even more on the sea than we have done
in the past, for the seas are our high roads, the con
necting links of Empire. We must get out of the foohsh
habit of thinking of Canada and Australia and South
Africa as terribly far away. It is a httle world, and
there is scarcely a far-away in it. We have to give to
our working men, and to theh children in the schools,
the consciousness of belonging to a big and glorious
thing rather than the consciousness of belonging to a
little State that's almost played out. Let us think of
Russia with her bigness, her space, her consciousness
of unity, and of the large thing, and remember we have
aU the possibihties of health and splendour that the
Russians have if we wiU only face our problems and do
the things which are obvious to all except to those who
fight in the poUtical arena for fighting's sake.
To recapitulate :
(i) Russia has at least double the white population
in her Empire that we have in ours. Why should we
not take steps to transplant from overcrowded Britain
to the less crowded parts of the Emphe, and so get
better famUies?
(2) The Russian Emphe is aU on land, and is easily

APPENDIX II 289
strung together by raUways, whereas our Empire is
across seas. Fares within the Russian Empire are
cheap. Why should we not popularise our ocean
travel and have cheap fares on the seas ?
(3) Russia, through certain natural advantages,
keeps her race pure, even on the outskirts of Empire.
Why should we let our own people go to the United
States, and try to fiU up our Colonies with aliens who,
in time of war, are ready to blow up ParUament build
ings, powder factories, plot assassinations, and what
not? (4) Russia is self-supporting in food, fuel, and
clothing. Why should not we be ?
(5) The Duma is elected by the people not only of
Russia in Europe, but by the people of the whole
Russian Empire. Why should not we have Imperial
representatives in the House of Commons — one man
one vote for aU white British citizens.
(6) The Russian Empire is a large unity with a
growing consciousness of its own power. Why should
not the British Empire reaUse similar possibiUties of
unity and seh-expression?

INDEX

Abakum, Pass and Gorge of, 202,
203-4; advertisements in, 204
Africa taken by Attila, 53
Agriculturists, emigration of, 151
Alabaster Mosque, Cairo, 45
Alai Tau Mountams, 99
Alakul, Lake, 163
Alani, the, 53
Alexander of Macedon, 62
Alexander the Great, 49
Alexandrovsky Mountains, 99
Altai, Central, 236 et seq.
Altai, flora of, 248
Altai Mountains, the, 9
Altaiskaya, 238, 247, 248
Altin-Emel, Government aid to emi
grants, 164; the crossroads for
China, 190, 191
America — after the war, 284
Amu-Darya, 27
Anderson, Wm. C, an open letter
to Lord Milner, 271-6
Anglo-Russian friendship, prospects
of, 255 et seq.
Antonovka, 104
Ants, ravages of, 142-3
Apples, the City of. (See Vemey)
Arabs and Semitic tribes, conquests
of, SS
Arazan, dinner at, 201
Arbitration courts, 280
Arizona, 273
Artisans, emigration of, 153
Asbestos, the question of supply of,
264 29

Ascension Day, the Russian, no
Asia, a former frontier of, 7; the
deserts of, 19, 20
Askhabad, the railway station, 24;
fall of, 73; extension of Central
Asian Railway to, 75
Astrakhan, fall of, 72
Attila, Huns of, 53; conquests of,
53
Aulie Ata, captured by Russians,
71; a mysterious city, 112; a
former Moslem shrine, 115; the
native orchestra, 117; its cathe
dral, 125; sheep as payment, 126;
frequency of earthquakes in, 126;
population of, 135
Austraha, irrigation possibilities in,
273; railway system of, 278;
military service compulsory in,
277, 280; federation of, 280; the
Press of, 280 B
Bactkian labourers, 22
Baku, n; the bazaar, 12; the har
bour, 13
Balkan war: the St. James's Con
ference, 231
Balkans, the, 21
Balkhash, Lake, 163, 221
Balta, 3
Baltic, islands of, conquered by
Attila, 53
Barber, a Sart, 199
Barber-photographer, a, 107
Baskau, River, 206

292

INDEX

Beaconsfield, Lord, and the "keys
of India," 255
Belukha, Mount, 247
Bibi Khanum, wife of Tamerlane
the Great, 57
Bielovodsk, 134
Blagoveshtchensk, Siberians versus
Chinese, 188
Bobrovo, 248
Bokhara, Ancient and New, 30
Bokhara, Russian Protectorate of,
28, 73; absence of hotels in, 30;
scenes in, 30; a Mohammedan
settlement in, 30; houses, shops,
and bazaars of, 31 ; its silver coin
age, 33; the sacred stork of, 35;
Russia's hold on, 36; power of
Mohammedanism in, 39 et seq.;
Uzbeks in, 74; the Central Asian
Railway and, 76
Bokharese, the, 35-6 ; and the battle
of Irdzhar, 72
Bokharese delight, 33
Boxer insurrection, the, 187
Bozhe-Narimsky, 236, 238
Brisbane, the, a poem on launch of,
281-2
British Empire, the, necessity for
consolidation of, 263-4; white
population in, 267, 288; after-
the-war problems, 267 et seq.;
and the Russian Empire, 267-
289; expert development of re
sources necessary, 275; a Tas
manian view of future problems
of, 276-281
British Isles, the, after the war, 284
Buddhism, attempted introduction
of, into Central Asia, 54
Bulgaria, alienation of, by Britain,
231
Burnaby's "Ride to Khiva," 257

Cabbage pies, 9
Cairo, 45

California, 277
Camel-breeding, Kirghiz women and,
237
Canada, comparison with Siberia,
226-7; suggested after-the-war
measures for, 272; 'aliens in, 282
Carlyle, Thomas: "Heroes and
Hero-Worship," 42-4; his pro-
Russian proclivities, 257
Carpet-making in Transcaspia, 37
Caspian Sea, the, n
Caucasians, author's impression of, 5
Caucasus, the, future development
of, S
Central Asia, ethnology and, 49;
races of, 49 et seq.; Chinese at
tempt the introduction of Bud
dhism, 54
Central Asian Railway, building of,
73. 75> 76; consecration of, 76
Cervus canadensis asiaticus. (See
Maral)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, 269
Charchafs, 29, 31
Chardzhui, 28 ; extension of Central
Asian Railway to, 76
Cheesecakes, sweet, 9
Cherkask, 215
Chimkent, Russian capture of, 71;
the cinema at, 9s; the bazaar,
96 ; population of, 135
China attacked by the Huns, 50-1;
the Great Wall of, 51; Russians
in, 77; the Boxer insurrection,
187; land proportional to popu
lation in, 287
Chinatown, New York, 29
Chinawomen and maral horn, 238
Chinese, altruistic, 193, 199; a na
tive circus, 194 et seq.
Chinese Tartary, 9 ; Mohammedans,
40, 180
Chingildinsky, 181
Chingiz Khan, 55-6
Christianity versus Mohammedan
ism, 41 et seq.
Chugachak, 200

INDEX

293

Churek-cakes, 32
Cinema theatres, popularity of, 68,
95. "S, 174, 229
Colonial preference, question of, 265
Colonials, British admiration for, 286
"Commonwealth, Prospect of a,"
267 (note)
Confederation of the Round Table,
the, 267
Constantinople, Germany and, 260;
Dostoieffsky on, 260; and the
Great War, 261
Constantinovka, 146
Cornucula, 105
Cotton goods, 224-5
Crooke, William, letter to author,
276-281
Curzon, Earl, 255 D
Danchenko, Namirovitch, on Rus
sian conquest of India, 256
Dariel, Gorge of, 6; the "Kremlin"
of, 8
De Vesselitsky, M., 227
Deer-farming, 237 et seq.
Dengil-Tepe taken by Kuropatkin, 73
Denmark, conquest of, by Attila, S3
Deremyi, 13s
Desert, the, railways in, 19; wheat-
fields in, 21, 22; antiquity of, 22;
its flora, 23
Dockers, Persian, 13
Dolinadalin, 3
Dostoieffsky, Fedor, 228; on Rus
sia's demand for Constantinople,
260
Dukhobors in Canada, 283
Duncani, the, 41
Dunkan, a, 132

Earthquakes, frequency of, 63, 126,
171
Egypt, the shepherd dynasty of, 49

Electricity, a Caucasian contract for,
4
Emigrants, house-building by, 167-8
a suggested export tax on, 278
Emigration, compulsory, 278
Emigration, Russian, 151 et seq.;
inducements for, 154; restrictions
concerning, 155; concessions on
rail and steamer, 158 et seq.
England and India, 260
England and Russia: the question
of India, 259-262; rivalry of
empire, 262-4; the trade treaty,
265-6; the basis of friendship,
266
Enghsh, uneasiness of, at Russian
progress, 73, 263
Ethnology and Central Asia, 49
Europe, after-the-war prospects of,
267 et seq.

Factory hands, emigration of, 153
Falanga, hairy-legged, 129
Falconry, the Kirghiz knowledge of,
218
Falcons in Bokhara, 33
Fatalism, Mohammedanism and, 46
Ferghan, grants in aid of emigration
to, 166
Flint-hunting in the Caucasus, 6, 7
Fortoug, 4
Froude as pro-Russian, 257

Gavrilovka, 192
Geok-Tepe, 24; the railway station.
of, 24 ; storming of, 76
Georgians, 4, 18
Germany, conquered by Attila, 53;
preparations for Great War in,
232 ; an enemy of Anglo-Russian
friendship, 257; and Constanti
nople, 260; white population in,
267

294

INDEX

Gimnasistki, 233
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., a pro-
Russian, 257
Goths, the, 52, 53
Great War, the, Germany's ambi
tions, 74; reception of news of
declaration of war at Semipala
tinsk, 231; Germany's prepara
tions for, 232; England's un-
preparedness for, 250
Gregoriefsky, 215
Grosnoe, 109
Grozdny, n
Gusinaya Pristan, 234
H
Hassan, Sultan, Mosque of, 45
Havana cigars in Kopal, 200
Huns, the, 50, 51 et seq.; of Attila,
53 ; Mongolian, 54
Hydrotechnics, Russian, 207, 211 et
seq. I
Ikons, Russian, 10
Di, River, 163, 179
Di, valley of the, 178
Iliisk, 178
Imperial commission for after-the-
war problems, an, 28s
Ince- Agatch, 222
India and Russia, 255 et seq.;
Namirovitch Danchenko on Rus
sian conquest of, 256; fear of
Russian designs on, by British
pohticians, 259-260; the over
land route to, 261; overcrowding
in, 287
Indian frontier, the, 9
Indians, the, 49
Irdzhar, battle of, 72
Irrigation, artificial, in the desert,
22; engineering students, 207, 211
et seq.
Irtish River, 229 et seq.
Issik-Kul, Lake, 163

Jatman Terekti, 206
Jangiz-Agatch, 192
Jarasai, 175
Jarkent, a jurisdiction of Seven
Rivers Province, 162 ; rice-growing
in, 164; Government aid to emi
grants to, 164
Jerakhof , Gorge of, 3
"Jericho, trumpets of," 117

Kabul Sai, 82
Kalmeeks, the, 51, 239
Karabulak, 192
Karachok, 184
Karakirghiz, the, 70
Kara-Kum, desert of, 27
Karakurt, the, 129, 177
Karasbi, 175
Katun-Karagai, 238
Kaufmann, General von, 69
Kazan, fall of, 72
Kazanskaya Bogoroditsa, 146
Kazbek mountain and Prometheus, 7
Khalati, 21
Khodoki, 137, 149, 150, 155, 156,
158, 167
Khodzkent captured by Russians, 72
Khosain Tereka, 4
Khiva, 49; Uzbeks in, 70; under
Russian protection, 73
Kief, University of, student hfe at,
138
Kinglake: his pro-Russian sym
pathies, 259
Kirghiz, the, 19, 50, 52, 82 et seq.,
128, 239; become Russian sub
jects, 72 ; their system of pecunia,
126; skill at falconry, 218; re
lieved of military service, 226
Kirghiz Cossacks, the, 70-1 ; women,
description' of, 92-3; wedding,
184; banquet, 208, 209; women
and camel-breeding, 237

INDEX

295

Kizil Arvat, 76
Kok-sa River, 192
Kokand, 70 ; Uzbeks of, defeated by
Russians, 71 •
Kopal, population of, 135; a juris
diction of Seven Rivers Province,
162; a walk to, 190; author's
arrival at, 192 ; a quaint clock at,
193; visit to a Chinese circus,
194-8; altruistic Chinamen, 192;
boundary of, 200; facilities to
sportsmen, 200
Koran, the, Carlyle and, 45
Kosh Agatch, 236
Kosuli, 128
Koumis, 89, 96, 217
Krasnovodsk, 11, 17 et seq.; a
Georgian host in, 18; siege of, 72
Kruglenkoe, 191
Kuan-Kuza, 189, 190
Kugalinskaya, 191
Kugalinskaya Stanitsa, 191
Kurdai, 146
Kuropatkin, Colonel, 73
Kursistki, 233

Labour question in England, the,
287
Larse, a night at an inn, 4-5
Lava-Khedei, Mosque of, 38
Law, Mr. Bonar, 269-271, 285, 286,
287
Lepers, 142
Lepeshki, 22, 32, 143
Lepsa, the, 221
Lepsinsk, 162, 204, 205, 210; "re
moval" of, 211; the information
bureau, 212; a Cossack settle
ment, 214
Lermontof's "Demon": scene of
story of, 7
Lessovaya zemlya, the, 22
Liamin, M., 181-8
Lignitz, battle of, 56
Linbovinskaya, 146

Lodz : its production of shoddy cot
ton, 224
"Lodzinsky," definition of, 225
Ludzon, 244 M
Mahomet, birth of, 55
Malo-Krasnoyarsk, 236
Maly Narimsky, 238
Mankent, 102
Maral, the country of the, 236 et seq.
Maral deer horns, 237 et seq.
Maralnik, cost of construction of a,
241
Mare's milk. (See Koumis)
Marlowe on Tamerlane the Great, 58
Mecca, Mohammedan pilgrimages to,
40
Medvedka, 238 ; a maral farm at, 240
Melba, Madame, 280
Merke, 129
Merv, fall of, 73; Central Asian
Railway extended to, 76 ; annexa
tion of, England's attitude on, 255
Mesopotamia, a holy war in, 75
"Midsummer Night among the tent-
dwellers," 204 et seq.
Milner, Lord, 271 ; an open letter to,
272-6
Mogul. (See Mongol)
Mohammedanism and Mohammedan
cities, 39 et seq.; Mecca pilgrim
ages, 40; Cairo, 45; the Koran,
45 ; fatalism and, 46; character
istics of, 47-8 ; birth of Mahomet,
55. (See also Bokhara)
Mongolia, Russians in, 78
Mongolian brick tea, 216; Huns, 54
Mongols, the, 53
Moslem pilgrimages to Mecca, 40
N
Narimsky Mountains, 236
Naturalisation, the question of, 279
Navy, the, necessity for increasing,
288

296

INDEX

Nazimof, M., 138 et seq.
Nevsky, Alexander, 70
Nikanorovitch, Mikhail, 241 et seq.
Nikolaevski, 175
Nomadic tribes, 49 et seq.
North Caucasian oilfields, 11
Northern Persia, Russians in, 78
Novy Troitsky, 134 O
On*, region of the Caucasus, n
Orenburg falls into Russian hands, 72
Osmanh, the, 52
Ossetines, 4, 5, 6, 53
Oxus, the, 27; a State service of
steamers on, 76

Pamir, 9, 70; grants to emigrants, 166
Passports, 17, 36
Pavlovska, Zoe, a pilgrimage to tomb
of Bibi Khanum, 59-60
Paynim, the, 42
Pecunia, 126
Pekin, siege of, 55
Persia, roses in, 23 et seq.; its future,
261
Persian dockers, 13
Persians, the, 49, 50
Petrovsk, n
Photographs and free shaves, 107
Pigs' hver, black, 5
Pishpek, fall of, 71; population of,
135; a meeting with a Govern
ment topographer, 138; cUmate
of, 141; skin disease in, 142; a
jurisdiction of the Seven Rivers
Province, 162 ; Government grants
for emigrants, 164
Police, Russian, 194
Polovinka, 191
Porters, Russian, 13
Proletkas, 31
Prometheus, legend of, 7
Przhevalsk, 162

R
Railway concessions and fares for
emigrants, 158 et seq.
Railways, Russian, 19, 20, 62, 75 et
seq., 262, 268, 287; scenes at
stations, 21, 22; British distrust
of Trans-Persian Railway, 261
Rice-growing, 164
"Ride to Khiva," Burnaby's, 257
River charges for emigrants, 161
Romano vskaya, 221
Rome burned by the Goths, 53;
sacked by the Vandals, 54
Roses, Persian, 23 et seq.
"Round Table," the, 267 (note)
Russia, English entente with, 9;
railway systems of, 19, 20, 62,
75 et seq., 262, 268, 287; con
quered by Attila, 53; rise of,
71 et seq.; colonisation of, 73
et seq., 77 et seq.; powers of cliief
of police in, 194; mobilisation of,
254 ; her possible designs on India,
255 ; future of her empire, 262 et
seq.; exports of, 262-3 ; the ques
tion of a trade treaty, 265; the
white population in, 267, 288
Russia and England: the question
of India, 260-2 ; rivalry of Empire,
262-5; the trade treaty, 265-6;
the basis of friendship, 266
Russia and India, and prospects of
Anglo-Russian friendship, 255 et
seq.
Russian card games, 213; colonies:
provinces open to colonisation,
151; information to intending
colonists, 151; colonisation, 169;
exports: the Tariff Reform view
of, 263
Russian Central Asia, capital of, 63
et seq.; commercial travellers in,
137
Russian Empire, the, and the British
Empire, 267-289
Russian Turkestan, Uzbeks in, 70

INDEX

297

St. James's Conference, the, 231
Salt steppes, the, 12, 17, 19
Samarkand, the grave of Timour,
49 ; conquest of, 56 ; an impression
ist poem on, 59 ; a Mohammedan
centre, 61; foundation of, 62;
Russian occupation of, 72; and
the Central Asian Railway, 76;
Government inducements to emi
grants, 166
San Francisco, a Chinese under
ground city in, 187
Sandbanks, 21
Saracens, the, 53
Sarajevo tragedy, the, 230
Sarts, the, 29; in Samarkand, 62;
natives of Tashkent, 65-6; their
orchestra : music from 10-ft. horns,
117
Scandinavia, Attila's conquest of, 53
Scythia, 50
Semipalatinsk, 226; Dostoieffsky in
exile at, 228; shops of, 228-9;
and the Sarajevo tragedy, 230-1
Semiretchenskaya Oblast. (See
Seven Rivers Land)
Semi-retchie, Northern, plain of, 203
Semitic tribes, with Arabs, conquer
Persia, etc., 55
Serbia and the assassination of the
Archduke of Austria, 230-1
Sergiopol, population of, 135 ; shops
of, 223; a commercial traveller's
experiences in, 223-4
Seven Rivers Land, Russian pene
tration and occupation of, 71, 128,
162; fauna of, 128; its troika,
129 et seq.; chmate of, 163; Gov
ernment grants to emigrants, 154,
164 ; taxes, 165 ; miUtary service,
165; timber, 166; cinema shows
in, 174; the Pass and Gorge of
Abakum, 202, 203-4
Shakespeare's burlesque on Tamer
lane the Great, 58

ShasUeek, 116
Shaving extraordinary, 199
Sheep as payment for goods pur
chased, 126
Siberia, value of land in, 154; an
old-estabhshed Russian colony,
226; compared with Canada, 227;
population of, 227
Sirdaria, deserts of, 9; author at, 82 ;
a Kirghiz settlement at, 83 el seq.;
Government grants to emigrants,
166
Skobelef, General, reduces Geok-
Tepe, 24 ; in Transcaspia, 73
Skobelef, the, 14
South Africa, irrigation possibiUties
in, 273
Southern Siberia, steppes of, 9
Spider, black, 129, 177
Stantsi, 135
Steamship service, a national, 287
Stewart, Mr., "Boss of the Terek," 4
Storks in Bokhara, 35
Strikes in war time, 280
Suffragettes, Russian opinion of, 213

Table Mountain, 4
Tadzhiks, the, 49
Talass, River, 125, 127
Tamara, 7
Tamara, Queen, castle of, 7
Tamerlane the Great, his conquests
for Mohammedanism, 56; Em
peror of Asia, 57, 70 : Marlowe on,
58 ; conquest of India and Eastern
Russia, 58
Tariff reform and Russian exports,
263
Tartars, enemies to Christians, 41;
rising of the, 55
Tashkent, 63 et seq.; water-supply
of, 63-4; muezzin towers of, 65;
an exiled Grand Duke at, 66;
schools, 67; cinema shows at, 68;
Russian atmosphere of, 68 ; Kauf-

298

INDEX

mann Square, 69; taken by Rus
sians, 71
Tea, Russian and Indian, 173
Tea dust, soUdified, 216
Tekintsi, the, headgear of, 21; a
great fortress of, 24
Terek, River, 3
Terek, the "Boss" of, 4
Thian Shan Mountains, 178
Timour the Lame. (See Tamerlane
the Great)
Tokmak, fall of, 71
Tolstoy, 283
Transcaspia becomes a Russian prov
ince, 73
Trans-Dian Alai Tau Mountains, 99
Trans-Persian Railway, the, 261
Tribes, mediaeval history of, 49 et seq.
Triple Entente, the, 9
Troika, the Russian, 129 et seq.
Tsaritsinskaya, 129
Tulovka, 238
Turkestan, cosmopoUtan, 24; four
great cities of, 49; value of land
in, 154; restrictions as to emigra
tion, 155; demand for labour in,
166; grants in aid, 166
Turkish tribes, the chief, 51
Turkomans, dress of, 21 ; one of the
chief Turkish tribes, 52
Turks, the, 52 U
United Kingdom, the, overcrowding
in, 287
United States, the, mixed races in,
267, 283; loss of British citizens
to, 232 et seq.
Ust-Kamennygorsk, 232

Uzbeks, the, 52 ; in Bokhara, Khiva,
and Russian Turkestan, 70

Valens, Emperor, 53
Vandals, the, 54
Vatrushki, 9
Verney, faU of, 71; population of,
135; a jurisdiction of the Seven
Rivers Province, 162; rice-growing
at, 164; Government grants, 164;
capital of Seven Rivers, 171 ; its
apples, 171 ; the High School, 172 ;
German sausages in, 174; news
paper record of cinema shows, 174
Visokoe, 109
Vladikavkaz, the mihtary road of,
3. 4
Vodka in Russian Central Asia, 96
Vsevolodovitch, Yaroslaf, 70
W
Wages, boards, 280
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 280
Wheatfields in the desert, 21, 22
Wimmera, the, 280
Wolves in Russian Central Asia, 97

Yakuts, the, 52
Yaroslaf Vsevolodovitch, 70
YeUow Peril, the, 187

Zaalaisk, Government grants to
emigrants, 166
Zollverein, a, Chamberlain and, 269

Printed in the United States of America.

/TVHE following pages contain advertisements of
Macmillan books by the same author.

The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Illustrated, $2.00
Stephen Graham is a close student of Russia ; he has a consuming
interest in the Russian nature and deep sympathy with Russian char
acter. For many years he has lived among the people of whom he
writes. "The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary " is a study of
Russian national characteristics, particularly as typified by her religious
spirit, which is contrasted with the spirit of Western Christianity.
A national idea, national unity, has its origin in the national religion,
and this is especially true of Russia, because the intensity of Russian
character demands some absorbing ideal to which it may turn.
"All that is beautiful in Russia's life, art and culture," writes Mr.
Graham, " springs from the particular and characteristic Christian ideas
in the depths of her. She is essentially a great and wonderful unity.
It is of that essential unity that I write."
" The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary " is a valuable addition
to the list of important books Mr. Graham has written on Russia,
books that are treasuries of information and a source of inspiration to
those who love mankind.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Russia and the World
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Illustrated, Cloth, 8vo, $2.00

For more than seven years Stephen Graham has been a close stu
dent of things Russian. CompeUed by an intense sympathy with the
country and its people, he forsook his native England and went to
Russia when he was twenty-three to study at first hand the life and
customs of that country. This was the beginning of an attachment
which grew stronger with the years and out of which have come several
of the most important contributions made to English literature bearing
on the Russia of modern times.
At the outbreak of the present European war Mr. Graham was in
Russia, and his book opens, therefore, with a description of the way the
news of war was received on the Chinese frontier, one thousand miles
from a railway station, where he happened to be when the Tsar's sum
mons came. Following this come other chapters on Russia and the
War, considering such subjects as, Is It a Last War?, Why Russia Is
Fighting, The Economic Isolation of Russia, An Aeroplane Hunt at
Warsaw, Suffering Poland : A Belgium of the East and The Soldier and
the Cross.
But " Russia and the World " is not by any means wholly a war
book. It is a comprehensive survey of Russian problems. Inasmuch
as the War is at present one of her problems it receives its due consid
eration. It has been, however, Mr. Graham's intention to supply the
very definite need that there is for enlightenment in English and
American circles as to the Russian nation, what its people think and
feel on great world matters. On almost every country there are more
books and more concrete information than on his chosen land. In fact,
" Russia and the World " may be regarded as one of the very first to
deal with it in any adequate fashion.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

With Poor Immigrants to America
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Decorated cloth, illustrated, Svo, $2.00,

" We collected on the quay at Liverpool — English, Russians, Jews,
Germans, Swedes, Finns. . . . Three hundred yards out in the harbor
stood the red tunneled Cunarder which was to bear us to America. ..."
The beginning of the voyage is thus described, a voyage during which
the reader sees life from a new angle. The trip across is, however, but
the forerunner of even more interesting days. Stephen Graham has
the spirit of the real adventurer and the story of his intimate association
with the immigrants is an intensely human and dramatic narrative, valu
able both as literature and as a sympathetic interpretation of a move
ment which too frequently is viewed only with unfriendly eyes.
"Mr. Graham has the spirit of the real adventurer. He prefers
people to the Pullmans, steerage passage to first cabin. In his min
gling with the poorer classes he comes in contact intimately with a life
which most writers know only by hearsay, and interesting bits of this
life and that which is picturesque and romantic and unlooked for he
transcribes to paper with a freshness and vividness that mark him a
good mixer with men, a keen observer and a skillful adept with the
pen." — North American.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem
Decorated cloth, illustrated, 8vo, $2.7$

The journey of the Russian peasants to Jerusalem has never been
described before in any language, not even in Russian. Yet it is the
most significant thing in the Russian life of to-day. In the story lies a
great national epic.
"Mr. Stephen Graham writes with full sympathy for the point of
view of the devout, simple-minded, credulous peasants whose compan
ion he became in the trip by boat from Constantinople to Jaffa and
thence on foot to the holy places." — The Nation.
" Apart from the value which must be attached to the authenticity of
the glimpses of Russian life that Mr. Graham gives in his latest book,
it also clearly ranks him as the best modern writer of the saga of vaga
bondage.'' — N. V. Times.
" Mr. Graham has written an intensely interesting book, one that is
a delightful mixture of description, impression, and delineation of a pe
culiar but colorful character." — Book News Monthly.
" A book of intensely human interest." — The Continent.
" The book is beautifully produced, illustrated with thirty-eight ex
ceptionally fine snapshots, and is of commanding interest, whether read
as a mere piece of adventure or as revelation of an almost unknown
tract of religious belief." — Christian Advocate.
" The story is written with a graphic and eloquent pen." — The Con-
gregationalist.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A Tramp's Sketches
Cloth, illustrated, Svo, $1.7$

"The author's notes on people and places, jotted down in the open
air, while sitting on logs in the forests or on bridges over mountain
streams, form a simple narrative of a walking trip through Russia.
The sketches read like those of a rebel against modern conditions and
commercialism, who prefers to these the life of a wanderer in the wil
derness." — Outdoor World.
" A book throbbing with life which cannot help but prove of interest
to many readers. The book is a treasury of information, and will be a
source of great inspiration to those who love mankind; while the
author teUs us much of the sorrow and degradation of the world he
also teUs as much of his own high and noble thinking." — The Ex
aminer. " It is with Ufe itself rather than the countries visited that this col
lection of sketches is concerned. It is personal and friendly in tone,
and was written mostly in the open air while the author was tramping
along the Caucasian and Crimean shores of the Black Sea, and on a
pilgrimage with Russian peasants to Jerusalem." — Country Life in
America. "Mr. Graham has seen many interesting 'parts of the world, and he
teUs of his travels in a pleasing way." — Suburban Life.
"... there is much that the reader will heartily appreciate and
enjoy." — Boston Transcript.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Yoik

THE WORKS OF FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKI
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
The House of the Dead /20, $i.jo
A story based upon the author's experience as a convict in Siberia. As a real
istic narrative of the horrors of Russian prison life it stands quite alone.
" Of the many works that have come from prison walls to enrich literature, and their
number is legion, this is one of the most powerful because one of the most truthful and sin
cere. It is marked by that naive Russian simplicity that goes not to the reader's head, but to
his heart. If the shop worn phrase ** human document ' can ever be fittingly applied, no better
instance can be found than this." — William Lyon Phelps in " Essays on Russian Novelists"
Crime and Punishment i#,$i.$o
This is the story which Robert Louis Stevenson described as " the greatest book
I have read in ten years."
" The masterpiece of the Russian novelist, Dostoevski has been translated by Mrs. Con-
stance Garnett under the familiar title " Crime and Punishment." Any one who reads it will
never forget it. The new translation by Mrs. Garnett is far better than previous versions."
— San Francisco Chronicle.
The Possessed if% $i*so
" A monument of realism and a marvel of narrative detail." — New York World.
" Full of suggestive thought and literary power." — Philadelphia Ledger.
The Idiot zsPitijo
"It is a book which one is very glad to welcome in English, and one welcomes it the
more cordially because of the great merit of Mrs. Game tt 's rendering." — London Times.
" One of these novels of universal literature which will not die." — Review of Reviews.
The Brothers Karamazov 12°, $1.30
" It is the greatest work of fiction ever written, a work so extraordinary that everything
else seems insignificant." — George Moore.
The Insulted and Injured /s°t $i.jo
Of this (the latest of Mrs. Garnett's translations) Professor William Lyon Phelps says in
" Essays on Russian Novelists " " the author here gives us the Hfe he knew best by actual
experience and the life best suited to his natural gifts of sympathetic interpretation. There is
no scorn and no satire in this book; it was written from an overflowing heart."

ObL

AN IMPORTANT NEW RUSSIAN NOVEL
omov zs0, $1.30
By IVAN GONCHAROV
Ivan Goncharov's " Oblomov," one of the greatest of Russian classics,, is for the first time
introduced to English readers. The translation has been prepared by C. J. Hogarth. " Ob
lomov " constitutes a study of a new type in Russian fiction of a man who, though plunged in
a slough of apathy from which nothing can arouse him, is yet a man of fine and noble instincts.
Writing of this novel, Maurice Baring, the great Russian authority, says, "Goncharov has
created a type which has become immortal. Oblomov has passed_ into the Russian tongue
just as Tartuffe has passed into the French language, or Pecksniff into the English tongue."

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Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

S