CHAPTER XI.

LONGE AB SUIS.

IT is the 18th of June, and high summer in Central Asia. Not a cloud in the sky, not a shadow on the plain; all is one blinding, blistering glare, beneath which the endless desert looks vaster and drearier than ever. Still as death lies the little fort behind its low grey wall; noiselessly flows the broad, smooth Syr-Daria between its low banks of cracked, parched clay. Amid these tremendous solitudes, even the anniversary of Waterloo is silent and peaceful enough; yet war and conquest have penetrated even here. Yonder, against the blue summer sky, loom the masts of anchored steamers and the muzzles of planted cannon; here, where I stand, lie the bones of those by whom these things were first made and handled. A year ago, in the midst of the lonely Atlantic, I stood beside the graves of Russian sailors on the Isle of St Vincent; to-day, amid a loneliness even more utter and overwhelming, I stand beside the graves of Russian soldiers in the heart of an Asiatic desert.

It is a quiet, unpretending place enough, this graveyard of Kazalinsk-but with an impressiveness of its own nevertheless. On the verge of the desert, just where the last of the little clay hovels that form the

"town" stands looking forth into the great void beyond, you see a low dyke of dried mud, enclosing a few scores of half-effaced mounds, surmounted by rudelycarved crosses or crumbling head-stones. The epitaphs are as simple as the graves themselves-no fanfaronade of praise or regret, but a mere name and date, with a brief word of prayer-such a memorial as befits men who died in their duty, asking no recompense.

I have seen graves enough in my time; but none with a deeper pathos in them than these. Exiles in death as in life, they lie here in the heart of the wilderness, far from their own cool northern sky, among men of alien blood and hostile faith, who curse their very dust with unquenchable hatred. They have done their work, hoping for no reward; and the rough-hewn crosses planted by their comrades, and the tears of nameless mourners far away on the plains of native Russia, are their only memorial. In the bulletins and decorations of imperial conquest there is no place for them; but it may be that when the deeds of all men shall be summed up hereafter, many who are famous in story will look mean beside them.

Most of the inscriptions are tolerably recent, the Russian occupation itself dating only from 1853; but, recent as they are, wind and weather have already so dealt with them, that not more than one in three can be deciphered. Some are carved with knife or chisel, and these have naturally escaped the best; but the majority are merely daubed in with paint; and it is touching to see how long and earnestly the unskilled hands of these

rough soldiers have laboured to preserve the memory of those whom they have lost. The first few that I look at are all men or officers of the garrison; but farther on, it is sad to see how many young children are already among the number; for in this cruel climate which strains even the iron frame of the Ural Cossack, these poor little blossoms have small chance of escape. I take out my note-book, and copy a few of the epitaphs :

"Here lies Vladimir, child of Dmitri Popoff, born June 2d, 1867, died July 1st, 1872. May God give him the kingdom of heaven!"

"Under this cross rests an infant, Alexander Avdeieff, born 18th October 1871, died 11th January 1872."

Thus briefly is summed up the story of a human life. This poor child may have been an only son, long wished for and long prayed for, rejoiced over with great joy during his short three months of life; and then—!

"Here lie buried Alexander, Helen, Alexey, the children of Lieutenant Syriatoff. Lord, receive them in peace into Thy kingdom!"

What a history is in these few lines! A home left desolate a whole family swept away-no more mirth and laughter, no more music of little voices, nor clasp of tiny hands, to cheer this dismal exile in the wilderness; only a monotonous round of wearisome duties, from which the light, and the hope, and the beauty of life have gone out for ever.

Some of the graves show marks of special care, and these are for the most part the graves of officers who

have died during the last eighteen months; but the place itself has a weird, forgotten look. Weeds have sprung up on every side, and the broken gate, swinging loose on its rusty hinges, seems the fit entrance of a spot consecrated to decay. I turn back towards the centre of the enclosure, and resume my copying :

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen. Here lies the body of Nikolai Emelianovitch Perphilieff, Lieutenant in the 8th Turkestan Battalion of the Line, deceased April 1st, 1870."

"Here rests Axinia, wife of Peter Lounin, private in the 8th Turkestan Battalion of the Line, who died June 24th, 1871, in the 31st year of her age."

"In memory of Feodor Kirilloff, sailor of the Aral flotilla, who died by the will of God on the 2d August 1870. Lord, receive my soul in peace."

Three weeks later this last grave is again recalled to my mind when a Finnish sailor, just escaped from the deadly ordeal of the Khivan war,* finds time on the very night of his arrival to visit and tend the grave of his old shipmate. In truth, it is strange what pathos the common Russian, coarse and ignorant as he is, casts around every idea; of death and burial. I can well remember, even now, how nearly I once gave way on hearing a Russian soldier (a rough, ignorant savage as ever breathed) entreat the comrades in whose arms he lay dying to visit his grave when it should be green and beautiful in

* The Aral flotilla comprises two steamers, the Samarcand of 70-horse power, and the Perovski of 40—both of which ascended the Oxus to within 30 miles of Kungrad.

the spring time; or when a rude peasant, during the worst rage of the cholera in Central Russia, begged me to bury him and his wife together, for "he would not be happy yonder if he awoke and did not find her there."

Turning to depart, I catch sight of an aged woman, with a scarlet kerchief round her brown, wrinkled face, pouring water upon a grave in the farther corner-a long, low mound of grassy earth, surmounted by a plain wooden cross, on which hangs a dry, dusty wreath of immortelles, which she is replacing with a fresh one as I

come up.

"I'm watering my poor boy's grave," she says, in answer to my look of inquiry, "and, God be praised, the grass is growing nicely upon it now, though it was terribly bare at first. It's three years last Thursday since he was laid here, but I've never missed a day coming to see to it."

"Was he a soldier, then ?"

"Yes, a Cossack of the line-and a fine tall fellow as you could see anywhere. To look at him, you'd have thought nothing could hurt him; but the fever took him in the hot season, and he just melted and melted like snow in the spring time, till he was no stronger than a child; and so he died. Please God, it won't be very long now till I meet him again; but in the meantime I come every day to water his grave, that it may be fresh and green when his spirit comes to look at it." And with one more long look at the little mound, she turns silently away.