Passing from thence on to Siberia or Russia, a merchant has the choice of two routes. He can either directly enter Russian territory, the border of which lies within sixty miles of Kashghur to the north, or he can reach it through the still independent Khanate of Khokund intervening on the west. If he prefers the former, he escapes indeed the transit due of one in forty levied in Khokund; but he has for twenty-eight stages to traverse successive mountain ridges of extreme elevation and roughness, swept from early autumn to middle spring by fierce snow storms, and at all times by a biting wind, quite uncultivated, and tenanted by none but nomad Kirghiz* whose marauding habits manifest themselves on every possible occasion. For some time past, however, the Russians have been engaged in constructing a light cart-road across this rough region as far as their own border. The chief obstacles to traffic will then be the roughness of the mountain ridge beyond. their border, the extreme cold of the winter, and the entire absence of fodder for sixty-seven miles at all seasons of the year. At the fort of Vernoë the route descends into the great plain of Western Siberia, and for 1,700 miles passes over its sad wastes,

Captain Valikhanoff passed through this region on his way both to and from Kashghur, in 1858-9. The Kirghiz were then under the nominal supremacy of the Khan of Khokund, who endeavoured to keep them in subjection by fomenting the mutual jealousies of the several tribes. Captain Valikhanoff's account of the mode in which each clan managed to levy a toll from the caravan as it passed is amusing.

'The Kirghiz chiefs,' he said, 'have established systematic rules, hallowed by time, for robbing caravans; although, according to their own opinion, their robbery is legal, being sanctioned by ancient rights and customs. These customs are as follows:-1st. A caravan passing through the encampments of a Kirghiz chieftain must pay zukat (the right of levying this is refused them by the Khokundees, and the exaction is accounted robbery); 2nd, it must pay ransom for free passage; 3rd, it must present offerings equivalent to the importance and power of the chief; 4th, it must not avoid the tents of distinguished leaders, and is bound to stop in their camps to enjoy their hospitality. The second and third of these clauses are not approved of by the Khokundees, although no measures are adopted to prevent the enforcement of their observance; but the fourth has preserved its legality, and is acknowledged by the Khokundees. Now, to enter as guests means that the caravan will be treated to one or two lean rams for supper, and that on the next day presents will be demanded "for hospitality;" and if the presents prove to be out of keeping with the importance of the host, the caravan is inevitably fined; and, each Kirghiz chieftain esteems himself the first in his tribe.'

and through its sparse patches of cultivation, by Semipalatinsk, and Omsk, and Petropavlovsk to Troitsk, whence, crossing the Ural mountains by a fair cart-road, after a transit of 400 miles more, it reaches Perm, on the Kama river, connected by steamer with the Volga, and with the centres of commercial and manufacturing activity in Russia. Altogether the distance between Kashghur and Perm by this route is not less than 2,600 miles; the transport of merchandise occupies between five and six months; and can only be effected during the

summer season.

On the other and Western line, a comparatively easy pass leads to the southern head-waters of the Jaxartes. Fodder for cattle has only to be carried over ten, and food for man over six stages, not consecutive. The valley of Khokund, which is then entered, is the very garden of Central Asia; and so, to a minor extent, is the adjoining portion of Russian Toorkistan, torn from Khokund in a series of campaigns which closed in 1866. Then, as the mountains on the northern bank of the Jaxartes sink in height to the west, and cease to be the storehouses of snow lasting long into the summer, and fertilising the plains at their feet-still more, when the mountains disappear altogether, and give place to the salt and arid Orenburg steppe, a burning, treeless, and almost waterless expanse in summer, a quagmire in spring and autumn, a trackless level of snow in winter, the difficulties of the route commence in earnest. The most direct route, that via Orsk and Orenburg, traverses this steppe at its greatest width. Over 650 miles merchants have to carry food for themselves, and over 400 miles, except for a short time after the melting of the snow, food for their camels as well. At intervals the caravan finds shelter under the walls of one or other of those little forts which are dotted over the steppe to keep the nomad and marauding Kirghiz in order.

To avoid the hardships on this line, merchants often take their camels by a very roundabout loop to Akmoliusk in Western Siberia, connected with Petropavlovsk by a cart-road. On this line only 375 miles of desert occur, and pasturage and water are to be found in most places; but, while by the direct route the journey for merchandise from the Volga to Kashghur occupies between three and five months, according to the season, that viâ Petropavlovsk is never performed in less than six.*

Altogether the distances from the extreme point of steam communication are as follows by this route:

From Kashghur to Samara on the Volga, vid Tashkund and Orenburg,

Russian energy and enterprise have long been occupied in devising plans for removing the difficulties of both these lines of communication. For a long time it was hoped that, with a little expenditure, the Jaxartes might be made easily navigable from its elbow at Khojund down to the Sea of Aral, which would in that case be connected with the Caspian by a railway passing over a not much more inhospitable region than that traversed by the great Pacific line in North America. Steam tugs and barges were accordingly, at great expense, carried from Sweden to the Jaxartes, and they managed to get up and down the river occasionally; but the rapids at Chinaz near Tashkund, the extreme tortuosity of the river course in the steppe, the frequency with which it divides into many channels, and even spreads out into a mere morass, and above all, the tenuity of the stream, except during the spring freshes, in the arid desert through which it passes for the last 200 miles, have proved insuperable obstacles. A time will undoubtedly come when Tashkund, the emporium of Russian Toorkistan, will be connected with Samara on the Volga by a railway passing through Orenburg; but the expense of construction would be so great, and the return for money spent thereon would for a long time be so absolutely insignificant, that no capitalists would contribute to its erection without a guarantee; and the administration of the new province is already too much of a burden on the resources of the Empire to allow of such an undertaking for the present.

The recent success at Khiva affords the promoters of Russian commerce with Central Asia hopes of being able to open out a far better water-way than the Jaxartes could ever become. Our space prevents a discussion of all that has been written regarding the navigability of the Oxus, and on the question whether it ever did and ever could again flow into the Caspian. The conclusion seems to be that though a water connexion between the Caspian and the Aral is hopeless, from the latter sea the Oxus could, by engineering works of no great difficulty, be made navigable for river steamers to the spot where the road to Bokhara diverges, and for boats to that where the mountains of Budukshan close in upon its bed. 1,900 miles. From Perm on the Kama, viâ Tashkund and Petropavlovsk, 2,400 miles. And the Volga is frozen for four, the Kama for five months in the year.

It is difficult to place credence in the recent announcements that, on the invitation of the Russian Government, and notwithstanding its known and increasing financial embarrassments, British capitalists have agreed to further the construction of such a railway [March 1874].

From thence a road, quite practicable for mules, although no labour of man has ever been expended on its improvement, leads along the Kokcha (or Blue River) to near its source in the Hindoo Koosh; from thence, by a low and easy pass, crosses back to the main stream of the Oxus; and from the defile down which the river hurries, emerges soon to the surface of the grassy downs of the Pameer Steppe. Within a few feet of the solitary lake in which this, the southern arm of the Oxus, takes its rise, the path strikes the western head-waters of the Yarkund river, and partly along its banks, partly over ridges of no great difficulty, descends into the plains through the mountain canton of Sir-i-kol-a thinly-populated tract at present, but said to abound in mineral wealth, and capable of considerable agricultural development. The land portion of this route from the mouth of the Kokcha to Yarkund is traversed in thirty-two stages, in only seven of which in one place, and three in another, has the traveller to carry his own provisions, while fodder for baggage animals is, in the summer, plentiful throughout, and on the Pameer is especially rich. Unhappily the route is comparatively seldom used except in winter, when thick snow covers everything, and when the piercing wind, raging without obstacle, is a cause of serious danger to life. The disuse of the route in summer is owing to the depredations of the Kirghiz, who, coming down from the north in that season, frequent the Pameer for the mixed purpose of pasturing their cattle and robbing travellers. Indeed these parts, collectively the most elevated, are probably the most unsettled in the world. They are under some dozen different chieftains, who each acknowledge no boundary except that up to which their sword has sway. The Kirghiz themselves, in their winter homes in the north, pay a kind of nominal allegiance to the Khan of Khokund, but, when they move to their summer pasture ground on the Pameer, and approach its eastern lip, they come under the supremacy of the ruler of Yarkund-a supremacy nominal indeed as yet, but liable to be at any time seriously enforced. No acknowledged boundary exists between their grazing grounds and the outermost lands of the Budukshanees and Wakhanees, hardy mountaineers who, having after a hard fight effectually lost their independence, never forego an opportunity of attempting to recover it from the Afghans. Budukshan, again, used to possess, and still asserts in words a supremacy over Chitral across the Hindoo Koosh to the south.

* Even now it produces a kind of wheat with an extraordinarily large ear.

That principality is ruled by a monster, stained with the blood of many brothers and cousins, and given to selling his subjects into slavery when he has no captives from neighbouring lands with whom to traffic. Ordinarily his hunting ground for slaves, and that of the Budukshanees too, is the country of Kaffiristan on the west, peopled by a brave, handsome, wineloving, idolatrous race, who murder every Mahommedan whom they can catch. South-east of Chitral again is a country called par excellence 'rebel land,' split up into small tracts, the people of each of which are perpetually at war with their next neighbours. The northernmost of these, on both sides of the Taghdoongbash, the continuation of the Hindoo Koosh, are the Khoonjootees, or people of Hoonja, whose maraudings on the trade between Cashmere and Yarkund have already been mentioned.

Few countries, in a word, are more strangers to peace, and yet to few countries would peace bring greater blessings. Through it would again lie, as in the time of Marco Polo, the highway by land-that which we have just describedbetween Eastern Asia and Europe. Through it, too, would lie probably the most frequented, as it already is the easiest line of communication between the seaboard and Central Asia. For on to the downs of the Pameer, at what used to be the flourishing little town of Surhud-i-Wakhan, now a waste, there opens a pass called the Dusht-i-Burogil, or Burogil plain, which all accounts seem to show to be the very easiest opening in the great wall of separation between Central and Southern Asia. At that pass the route to India diverges from the one already described between the Oxus and Yarkund, the track leading from thence down the Chitral and Koonur valley via Jelalabad to Peshawur, or else diverging at Chitral itself, and, by an easy path across the mountains, reaching Peshawur direct. On this line between Peshawur and Yarkund there are but forty-four stages altogether, only seven of which in one place and three in another pass through uninhabited country, while none are devoid of the main necessities of the traveller, water, fuel, and grass, and none present physical difficulties of any importance.

Such are the advantages of the route which we must hope will, in a future not too remote, be again the chief channel of communication between the sea and Central Asia. Even now goods can be taken to Eastern Toorkistan with least* cost

• Mr. Forsyth has calculated, from inquiries made on the spot, that the transport of a cwt. of piece goods from Moscow to Yarkund