of French Central Asian literature. The last two years have produced three books on Russian Central Asia by Englishmen-viz., by Colonel Le Mesurier, R.E., the Honourable George Curzon, M.P., and Mr. Dobson, the St. Petersburg correspondent of The Times. With such books to consult, we need hardly turn to French writers. Of late years few names have been more prominent in this field of literature than that of Mr. Charles Marvin, whose death in London was announced to us on Friday last. His intimate knowledge of the Russian language and people gave him advantages that other writers, though having a sounder appreciation of the real state of affairs in Central Asia, did not possess. It is not for me here to give any sketch of Central Asian literature. I can only refer my hearers to Mr. Curzon, who gives a list of books on the subject that fills twenty-seven pages, and adds that it might have been enlarged tenfold. We should be cautious about adding to a bulk so vast.

The honour of organising the first personally-conducted tour to Central Asia has fallen to a French company. Messrs. Cook and Gaze may have had all the will to undertake it; but that part of the world is at present not open to English enterprise of any kind. I have always understood that I have had to thank the friendly relations existing between General Annenkoff, the director of the Transcaspian Railway, and the chief of the International Sleeping Car Company for the pleasant trip to Tashkent that I made this autumn. I have certainly to thank the former for unvarying kindness and courtesy from the day that I landed at the port of Uzunada (the western terminus of the Transcaspian Railway) to the day that I re-embarked there. This was the second excursion along the Transcaspian Railway organised by the Wagons-Lits Company, the first being in 1888. I may mention that another one will probably be arranged for next autumn, and, if so, that the starting-point will be Tiflis or Baku, and not Paris. This will be a great improvement. Any one can go from Paris to Baku and back. The difficulty is to get farther. We Englishmen certainly ought to avail ourselves of these Wagons-Lits Company's excursions; and yet this year our party consisted of only three English and two French people. A man has only to send in his application to go and a cheque for the cost of the trip, and the company does the rest. I paid £84 from Tiflis to Tashkent and back, everything included, except wine and washing. For that sum I have seen the first Exhibition ever held, I believe, in Asia. Considering the size, population, commerce, manufactures, and revenue of our Indian Empire, I do not think that we should have allowed Russian Turkistan to set India an example in the matter of Exhibitions. However, we have done so. India has a population of 250,000,000, according to the census of 1881. The census of 1891 will probably show a population of 270,000,000. The revenue of India is about £70,000,000. Against this Russian Turkistan, Transcaspia, and the subject states of Khiva and Bokhara can show a population of from five to six millions only. As for the revenue, we know that there is a heavy annual deficit, probably amounting to half-a-million; and yet money is forthcoming for an Exhibition. It is one of the curious features of Russian administration that, while money is not forthcoming for ordinary wants, such as roads and

railways in European Russia, improved prisons in Siberia, roads in Central Asia, etc., the Tsar's Government always have funds for extraordinary needs, such as the Siberian Railway, the construction of which -if report be true-has not only been sanctioned but also commenced.

There is no longer much romance about travel in Transcaspia and Turkistan. When, in 1863, Vambéry made the tour of Khiva, Bokhara, Samarkand, and Herat, in the garb of a dervish, and when O'Donovan penetrated, in 1881, among the Tekes of Merv, there was romance and risk in that. Nowadays it is a simpler undertaking to visit the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, and the scene of the tragic fate of Stoddart and Conolly at Bokhara, than it was less than a century ago to post from York to London. The Turkoman and Uzbek of to-day are more innocuous than the British highwayman of the last century. No part of the old coach-road from York to London is half so barren, bleak, and desolate as is the Galodnaya steppe between Samarkand and Tashkent. A pair of pistols was a sine quâ non for the former; the latter may be now traversed without so much as a derringer. The Russians like to keep all this security for themselves and their pro tem. friends, the French. I did meet near Jizak an Austrian lady bound for Tashkent and thence (I heard) via Kuldja to China. She talked English excellently, and expressed great surprise at meeting an Englishman there. I did not think it necessary to remark that an Austrian was an equally rara avis in those climes. There are those who argue that because women can travel in a certain locality, therefore comfort and security are there. By no means. Women are as enduring and as adventurous as men. We may instance Lady Baker, Miss Bird, this Austrian lady whom I have just mentioned-who, alone with a courier, intended to reach (vid Kuldja and China) the Pacific-Mrs. Littledale, Madame Dieulafoy, and others. One of the party with whom I journeyed from Baku to Samarkand in September last was a French woman. On my return from Tashkent I came across a Russian lady, who was sharing a tarantass from Tashkent to Samarkand with a Russian officer. The two were simply for the time being compagnons de voyage; but the lady took the lead. She bullied the driver, hectored the post-house master, and never allowed her companion to interfere. She had a masterful energy, and a freedom of speech and of manner, of which many men might have been proud.

I found some difficulty, on the 17th September last, in getting on board the steamer of the Mercury and Caucasus Company at Baku, bound for Uzunada. The Russian Minister of Finance, M. Vyshnegradsky, was a passenger. The only gangway to the first-class cabin was covered with a carpet in honour of his High Excellency, and that carpet was not to be profaned with the dirt off humbler boots. It was intimated to me that I might get on board by the backstairs. After a moment's reflection, I decided that I would not go on board by the backstairs, so I took that carpet by storm. M. Vyshnegradsky having been conducted and received on board with that ceremony which is the due of eminent men-and there is no doubt that he is an eminent man and an able financier-we set sail at 7 P.M.

Nine years ago I remember Baku not half the size it is now, and

twenty years ago its site was almost a desert. The Yankee expression of having "struck ile" is a highly appropriate one. Oil truly lubricates the path to millionairism. Naphtha is utilised in many ways. Petroleum, paraffin, vaseline, lubricating oil and grease, benzine, pomade for the hair, are among its products. The distilled oil is absolutely tasteless, and is admittedly used in the fabrication of salad oils. There is no more reason why it should not be used in the fabrication of butter. It is a mere question of the proper flavouring of the absolutely tasteless. grease; it would be quite as palatable as margarine. There are signs that the supply of Baku oil is decreasing. The crude naphtha is much dearer than it used to be. If naphtha fails, it will be a sad blow to the steamers of the Caspian, the Volga, the Aral, and the Oxus, and to the locomotives of the Caucasus and Transcaspia. Coal from Rostoff and Khokand must replace it. The Baku oil-wells are well known. Mr. Marvin, in The Land of Eternal Fire, tells us a good deal about them; and it is not a fortnight since that a very good paper on them appeared in The Scotsman from a manifestly American pen. The chief thing to note now is, that the town of Baku, with its 40,000 or 50,000 people, lives mainly by that oil. If this oil fails, Baku will dwindle away. It will, however, always be an important harbour and railway

terminus.

The Caspian is uninteresting. Sand and bare rock are not attractive. The south shore from Astrabad to Astara, and the stretch from Darband to Petrovsk are bearable. The rest is ghastly. The summer heat is damp and apoplectic, and in the winter every harbour in the north is frozen np. The sinuous approach to Uzunada, after passing the Krasnovodsk lightship, is dreariness itself: bleak mountains on the left, and bare sand on the right. Uzunada itself wakes up the tourist a little. There are the busy wharves, the wooden houses and sheds and barracks, the water-works, the great piles of bales of cotton, cases, boxes, etc., awaiting shipment or transport to the interior; or perhaps a detachment of time-expired Russian or Cossack troops, being embarked to the sound of musical strains more excruciating than a grinding organ or a hurdygurdy their regimental band playing them out. They ought to have been playing "Home, Sweet Home;" but I doubt they do not know that lovely air in Russia. I never heard a good military band in Russia, not even of the Guards. The massed bands at the Zariya (evening prayer) at Krasnoe-Selo played, however, very well indeed; there were at least one thousand bandsmen present.

General Annenkoff and every officer of the garrison met M. Vyshnegradsky, the Finance Minister, on the 18th September at Uzunada. When Finance Ministers are on tour and control the grant of millions for railway construction and extension, when important economical, political, strategical, commercial, and financial issues depend on their verdict and pleasure, directors of railways have to be attentive to them. It was therefore very kind of General Annenkoff to notice and think of us as he did, and to give us a carriage all to ourselves. We were six in all, and had a compartment each. This was convenient, as we found the Transcaspian very warm in September.

It was pleasant sitting about in shirt-sleeves, eating grapes and melons, and drinking hot tea and iced lemonade. We had a restaurant car attached to the train, and plenty of ice. We could have delicious pheasants at every meal, and very cheap. A pheasant costs a shilling or so in Transcaspia. We used to shoot pheasants by the score in 1884-85. Unfortunately our Government ceded most of the best coverts to Russia. It was thoughtless of them to do so. I am surprised that the Amir Abdurrahman should have allowed it. He can have no sporting instinct. Herat may be of no great moment; but to allow Russia to monopolise all the best pheasant-shooting is too bad. It is bad enough that the Russians in 1885 should have bounced and blustered us out of 15,000 or 20,000 square miles of arid sand and “chul”; but that they should have deprived us of some of the best pheasant-shooting in the world, not to mention tigers and innumerable bears, is inexcusable.

Most people know that Mikhailovsk was the western terminus of the Transcaspian Railway till Uzunada was unearthed (or rather unsanded) and its harbour dredged. Krasnovodsk has a good harbour; but to extend the railway there would have cost, say, half a million. £40,000,000 to £50,000,000 are, however, about to be sunk on a Siberian railway; and yet there is scarce one good metalled road in Russia, and scarce one good paved street in any city in Russia. However, the "heathen Chinee" has to be kept in order on the Amur, while the comforts and conveniences of the millions of European Russia can wait. From Uzunada to Mollakari is sandy-great rolling dunes of sand. It looks as if nothing could check that sand. I have seen the great sand-wave of the Registan, near Kandahar, at least 30 feet high, pressing on slowly and steadily eastward, and threatening in future centuries to engulf Kandahar; and I have seen the southern edge of the same between Nushki and the Helmund burying a tall row of willow-trees. I have seen, too, the work that sand is doing east and north-east of the Oxus, near Farab and Karakul; and I have read Sir Douglas Forsyth and Bellew on the shifting sands of Kashgaria. I believe there is no power can stop drifting and shifting sand. The little barriers of saxaul that I saw about Peski and Repetek (near Charjui) were as likely to check drifting sand as a silken thread is to stop a runaway locomotive. I should say that sand-sweeps, on the principle of the American snow-plough, would be useful on the Transcaspian Railway. It is just 900 miles from Uzunada to Samarkand, and the train traverses that distance in sixty hours, just fifteen miles an hour. After travelling on that line in a carriage that shakes one to pieces, it is indeed a treat to come back to old England and do fifty miles an hour in the Scotch express, with a motion so smooth that the sense of motion is almost wanting. I have little doubt that the refreshment car on the Transcaspian railway was a most admirable digester. Motion, they say, is necessary to digestion. I cannot say that that refreshment car was the poetry of motion, but there was plenty of it. The most obstinate morsel could not withstand its disintegrating power. The marvellous thing was that the whole car did not go to pieces. If the contents of a cupful of

tea or a dishful of soup were not rapidly swallowed, they transferred themselves automatically to the table-cloth and the floor. Still, though I mention these little inconveniences, I wish again to repeat that we were deeply indebted to General Annenkoff for the comfort with which we made the journey from Uzunada to Samarkand and back again.

There is no beauty of scenery near the Transcaspian Railway. Bleak mountains such as the Kuren and Kopet Dagh have at times a transient picturesqueness in the light of the rising and setting sun. The miles of sand-dunes, the miles of waterless waste, the miles of dark arid hillranges, may have some strange power of fascination over the mind, but not of attraction to the eye. One can realise that the railway has had to struggle with the obstinate, defiant sands, with now the absolute dearth of water, and now the untimely attack of violent floods. Mr. Dobson (Russia's Railway Advance into Central Asia, pp. 139-145) describes these last well. As Bami and Kizil Arvat are approached, the complete desolation is varied by the habitations of the Turkomans, mud forts and walls and houses, streams of water, patches of cultivation and pasture, clumps of trees, etc. There is a certain fascination in thinking that even ten years ago this was almost a terra incognita. But as Geok (or rather Denghil) Tepe is neared, the interest increases. The place where Skobeloff broke the power of the Akhal Tekes in 1881 must be interesting. I have read, and doubtless others have likewise, all that Mr. Curzon and Mr. Dobson and Colonel Le Mesurier have to say about it. When I saw the reality, I could only marvel that 35,000 Turkoman men, women, and children could exist there for a month in the face and under the fire of 8000 or 9000 Russians, commanded by one of the most impetuous and intrepid of Russia's generals. The walls average twelve to fifteen feet in height, and enclose a space measuring about 1600 by 800 yards (for exact and detailed measurements I may refer you to Mr. Curzon, p. 77, note). The whole of this enclosed space can be swept by artillery, and perhaps also by infantry (long-range) fire. Thus the Asiatics could only be safe just behind the walls. Indeed they took refuge in pits and holes dug in the ground. There is no ditch worth speaking of, and the flank defences are nil. Yet it held out four weeks. Now compare with this such a town as Herat or Kandahar. The walls of Herat dominate the plain by 100 feet. The mud, hardened like concrete, offers almost greater resistance to artillery projectiles than solid masonry. The Royal Artillery experiments made at Kandahar in 1880 and elsewhere should have taught our gunners this.

Askhabad is an absolutely uninteresting place. Its only importance consists in its being the headquarters of the Transcaspian Government, and that from it the carriage-road via Kushan to Mashhad, which is now completed, starts. M. Lessar informed me that in June last he drove along it in a carriage-and-pair. If the Russian Consul-General at Mashhad, M. Vlassoff, wants a change of air and scene, a drive to Kochan or Askhabad is easily managed. Given a good new bridge over the Hari-Rud near Kochan, and one might travel in a post-chaise from Askhabad to Herat. The mountain barrier between Askhabad and Kochan apparently precludes the chance of a railway taking this line. Railway