battalion arrived on the pound in parade order in less than an hour. It was not forewarned. It proved to be a battalion that had distinguished itself at the capture of Tashkent in June 1865, and had participated in the ejection of the Afghans from Dash-Kepri on 30th March 1885. The latter feat confers no distinction. It was nothing for Russian infantry armed with Berdans to oust 800 or 900 Afghans armed with Brown Besses. It is true that the Times told the world that a handful of Russians had inflicted a crushing defeat on a vastly superior force of Afghans. But in point of facts our leading journal is as prone to err as others. As far as I can ascertain, the numbers of Russians and Afghans engaged were nearly equal. What General Komaroff did deserve credit. for was that with thousands of Turkomans behind him ripe for rebellion, and at the risk of bringing on a war with Great Britain, he attacked and turned the Afghans out of Panjdeh. Nothing succeeds like success. Komaroff succeeded.

The country from the Oxus at Farab to Charjui is not very interesting. At Karakul red and white wines and cognac are made from the grapes of the country. Some Frenchmen are in charge of the place; but it is understood that General Annenkoff has a personal interest in it. We tasted the wines at his table; and very good they were. General Annenkoff is very keen about the development of Central Asia. He interests himself personally in horse-breeding (from thoroughbred English and Turkoman strains), in wine-growing, and in everything that can further trade, manufacture, and agriculture. He is anxious to throw open the railway and country to foreigners, so as to encourage trade and progress. His schemes for railway extension to Afghanistan are not such as can be or should be encouraged by us. It is currently reported that he will superintend the construction of the Siberian Railway. His antecedents qualify him for it. It stands to reason that the Transcaspian and Siberian Railways must be joined. Regarding the extension of the former, opinions differ. Tashkent being the capital of Turkistan, we would expect the railway to be continued direct from Samarkand to Tashkent. Good authorities, however, think that the first extension will be from Samarkand to Khokand. The importance of the Ferghana District, from a mineral, agricultural, and manufacturing point of view, may account for this. It has a population of 700,000. Semipalatinsk is likely to be the point where the Siberian and Transcaspian lines will meet.

A word or two about the prisons at Bokhara. Of course, I read the description of them by Dobson (pp. 255-7) in 1888. I can only say that, in October 1890, I saw nothing of the dirt, squalor, or ill-treatment that he describes. I found the prison clean and fairly comfortable. The prisoners were not chained together when we saw them, but the chains. were there, and we were shown how the whole row of prisoners could be chained together. The prisoners were docile. We gave them bread and money. We asked one or two about their crimes, and, by their own admission, they were justly undergoing punishment. However, the chief point of interest about the Bokhara prison is the fact that in it (i.e. in a subterranean dungeon or pit now closed) poor Colonel Stoddart and Captain

Conolly were perhaps kept. Opinions differ as to whether they were kept in the citadel prison or in the prison I saw. I will state what M. Klem, the Secretary to the Russian Envoy at Bokhara, told me. He said that he had questioned an old Russian trader, who had come to Bokhara in or about 1842 (he died in 1889), and recollected that soon after his arrival two Englishmen were executed on the Righistan. This man stated that the two prisoners (whoever they were) were imprisoned outside, and not inside the citadel. They could only have been Stoddart and Conolly. M. Klem stated very positively that the place where Stoddart and Conolly were kept was in a dungeon under the domed prison that we visited. Mr. Dobson (p. 256) is also of this opinion. No stranger is allowed in the citadel nowadays, and it is not likely that Stoddart and Conolly went there. On the other hand, Khanikoff says the prison was inside the citadel.

During our stay in Bokhara we were the guests of M. Lessar, the Russian Envoy or Diplomatic Agent. We spent two days there, and saw everything. I consider Bokhara one of the unpleasantest and dirtiest cities I ever was in. The population are of the lowest order, and of contemptible physique and appearance. We saw no manufactures there that could touch what we saw at Merv, Samarkand, and Tashkent (both in the bazaars and the Exhibition). No stranger is allowed in the citadel, where live the Amir and Kushbegi. The streets are narrow, and the roads execrable. We drove to and from the railway station to the Residency in carriages. When we met a cart in a narrow lane, great manœuvres were needed to admit of passing. There are few more interesting men to talk to than M. Lessar. He first came to the front in

1882, when he travelled from Sarakhs across Badghis into the Herat valley at Ghorian, and reported that a railway could easily be made to Herat. He has since travelled a good deal in the most waterless tracts of Transcaspia. M. Lessar told us how, at Ghorian in 1882, the Afghans talked of taking him a prisoner to Herat before the Governor. To see the inside of Herat was the height of his ambition. However, the Afghans finally decided not to take him to Herat, and put him across the frontier into Persia, near Kochan. M. Lessar speaks English well, and takes in, among other papers, The Times, Review of Reviews, Public Opinion, and several English magazines.

The Bokhariot troops merit a paragraph to themselves. Every morning the infantry parade on an open space to the north of the city walls. On Saturdays the commander-in-chief attends, and then the artillery and cavalry parade as well as the infantry. At times the Emir himself looks on from a garden window hard by. He has none of the soldierly spirit of William II. of Germany. He leaves his army entirely to his commander-in-chief. The infantry drill that we saw was strictly original. I never saw anything like it. The uniforms were somewhat similar to the Russian. The guns were mostly percussion muskets. Bayonets remained always fixed, as with the Russians. Two or three battalions were drilling -some doing battalion, some company drill. One band played in the centre, and gave the time to the whole. Some of the non-commissioned officers carried wands only, no arms. Several of the officers were Afghans,

and they were among the few really soldierly-looking men of the lot. The men never ceased keeping time to the music. When halted, they always marked time with one leg. The movements in square and to resist cavalry were truly marvellous, and absolutely impossible, or useless, in the face of an enemy. At any cessation in the drill the men lay down here and there, and ate or smoked, the officers reclining on rugs in the shade. We spoke to one or two officers, and found them most civil. There was a great deal of inattention and staring about in the ranks; still the men drilled well. In fact, that is about all they are good for. They looked as if they had no pluck and no stamina.

Samarkand is a very different place from Bokhara, which is the ne plus ultra of squalor. The climate is exceedingly pleasant in autumn, though doubtless warm in the summer and cold in winter. Tashkent has a similar climate. The old town of Samarkand is small compared with Bokhara, but the bazaars and streets are more open and airy. There is nothing to buy except silk. We spent some time in a silk factory. The huge edifices of Samarkand, the tomb of Tamerlane, the mosque of Bibi Khanum, and the three medresses of the Righistan, are unequalled in Central Asia. I cannot agree with Mr. Curzon in speaking of the Righistan as the noblest public square in the world. I would rather look on the Louvres from the Tuileries gardens, or on that grand square in Vienna enclosed by the Palace, House of Parliament, Museum, and other splendid buildings. I have not a great admiration for the effect of the Oriental tile-work, at least in its ruined state. I must admit that some of the designs are very effective, and certainly nothing like them is produced nowadays. It is a defunct species of architectural ornament. Globe-trotters think nothing of pilfering an old tile, if they get the chance ; the mullas in consequence watch all visitors closely. One Frenchman we met inveighed in strong terms against the Vandalism that prompted travellers to despoil the fine specimens of Mohammedan architecture. Nevertheless, when he left Samarkand to return to France, several tiles were found in his room. He had forgotten to carry his spoil with him. I was surprised to note that Russians and Frenchmen never removed their hats when they entered Mohammedan shrines and mosques. We Englishmen always did so. Mohammedans always remove their shoes when they enter one of their religious edifices. I felt that to remove one's hat was at least due to the memory of Taimur-lang, his sons and grandsons, and his ministers and mullas, all of whom lie buried in what is known as 66 Gur-Amir," or the Tomb of Taimur-lang.

To any Anglo-Indian who knew Afghanistan and Afghan politics well it was interesting to meet and talk to the Afghan refugees, with Surdar Mohammed Ishak Khan, the late Governor of Afghan Turkistan. As you will remember he rebelled against his cousin, the Amir Abdurrahman, two or three years ago, and, being defeated, fled into Russian territory with a large following. There he is still. One of his followers turned out to have spent a year with the Afghan Boundary Commission as a mehmandar-in other words, a victualling agent. He knew all the members of it well by name. I was interested to meet him, though I left the Commission before he joined it. The Russian cantonment at Samarkand

covers several square miles of ground. There is a well-wooded park, great broad roads lined with trees, and the houses are all buried and almost lost amid trees and gardens. There is a large fort on the top of a rising ground overlooking the native city, and separating it from the cantonment. The summer barracks are three or four miles away, near the railway station. The troops occupy them in summer only. They are constructed very simply and cheaply, and in marked contrast to the palaces we erect for our soldiers in India. For years past there has been a tendency to molly-coddle the private soldier (not the officers, mind you) in India. The medical men are mainly responsible for it. One of the many good works that Sir Frederick Roberts is now doing in India is taking the British soldier out of the cotton-wool in which others have been packing him up. I have over and over again read the remark that the Russian soldier is better fitted to bear the Asiatic climate than the British. But I do not believe that the Briton, who has proved his ability to advance and struggle in every part of the world, is to be beaten by any European in his power of enduring climatic vicissitudes. If, however, the British soldier is molly-coddled, and the Russian soldier is inured to hardship, the latter will prove the best man in time of trial. I and my companions were very much impressed by the healthy physique and manly, cheery, look of the Russian soldiers whom we saw in Transcaspia and Turkistan. They were real good stuff for soldiering. It is somewhat amusing to think of our soldiers, many of whom if they were in England now would be glad to avail themselves of General Booth's scheme for aiding the unemployed, reclining luxuriously under punkahs in a darkened room in India and having servants to wait upon them. I can assure you that the Russians in Asia have no such nonsense. There is another thing that one notices in Central Asia: within the twenty-five years that the country has belonged to Russia, all the inhabitants of the towns, and many of those in the country, have learned Russian. In India we pay our officers and officials to learn all sorts of outlandish dialects, which, in nine cases out of ten, they forget as fast as they can. Russia pays nothing, but makes the natives understand that the sooner they learn Russian the better for their interests. This is the right principle, for it tends to reduce the number of languages and dialects spoken in the world. What is the use of inventing Volapük, if the empire on which the sun never sets encourages the use of every barbarous language that is spoken in its dominions? They may be most attractive to ethnologists, philologists, and other scientists, but for a practical Government to pay a premium for their preservation is a mistake. It is well known that barbarous races die out as civilisation advances. Barbarous languages should do the same.

As the object of this paper is partly to encourage others to visit Bokhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent, I think a few words about hotels will be appropriate. At Bokhara, as I have mentioned, we were the guests of M. Lessar, and afterwards, thanks to General Annenkoff's courtesy, lived in our railway carriage. Samarkand is rich in hotels, but none of them can be styled first-class. Lifts, electric bells, electric lighting, and such like improvements, have not come in. I should say that the Central Asian hostelries answered more to what in Paris is

called an hôtel garni-a place where you can lodge but not board. However, in Samarkand, the difficulty was-not to find the wherewithal to refresh the inner man, but the wherewithal to cleanse the outer man. At Tashkent the hotel kept up two or three brass basins for the use of the nine or ten inmates. There was no washing apparatus in the rooms, there was no lavatory, there was not even a pump. If a man arrived at the conclusion that he had at least fairly earned a wash, he put his head out of the door (there were no bells), and shouted for the basin and water. Hip-baths are as yet unknown in Turkistan. In other respects the hotel was clean and the proprietors (sarts) obliging. I have had some experience of hotels, and I think that, all considered, the proprietor of the Hôtel de l'Europe at Samarkand should be awarded the palm for extortion. At St. Petersburg I have paid extortionate prices for good food and wine; at Samarkand we paid them for bad food and wine. In Turkistan every staple food is excessively cheap, and that is not the case in large European cities. Samarkand beer and wine are drinkable, but neither choice nor costly. Nevertheless our bill amounted to about 25s. per head per diem. It was pure extortion. When we saw this bill, we realised the advantage we had enjoyed at Tashkent in being able to use the military club. We got good wine and food there at most moderate prices. Such prices are, I imagine, indispensable to the incomes of all the junior Russian

officers.

The most interesting part of our journey was certainly that from Samarkand to Tashkent and back. It has to be done in a tarantass with post-horses. A tarantass is a wooden vehicle with or without springs, on four wheels, in which two persons can recline side by side on straw, mattresses, rugs, or any other soft substance. I can assure you that a good deal of padding is required to enable any one to stand thirty to forty hours' jolting. Still, such a journey entails nothing more than some temporary discomfort. It is true that, of our party of five, three shirked the tarantass journey; but, on the other hand, Russian ladies frequently make long journeys in it. The 190 miles from Samarkand is nothing compared to the two or three weeks' journeys done in Siberia. As I have already stated, I met near Jizak an Austrian lady all alone, bound for China viâ Tashkent and Kuldja. For means of locomotion she would have to choose between a tarantass, a horse, or a camel. We have recently heard of Mr. and Mrs. Littledale reaching India across the Pamir and the Hindu Kush. I will not go so far as to say the journey in a tarantass from Samarkand to Tashkent is a pleasure. Dirt, dust, flies, heat by day, cold by night, joltings, bad food, etc., are not comforts. The dust at times was hanging so thick round the vehicle that we had great difficulty in breathing. I began to realise what a Central Asian dust-storm might be, when travellers are said to be absolutely suffocated. However, despite these little drawbacks, I hold that the game was worth the candle. The Tashkent Exhibition was very instructive, and it is the one thing that was new that previous travellers had not seen. What with the Finance Minister, M. Vyshnegradsky, the Inspector-General of Prisons, M. Galkin Vrassky, General