a spot might be found in the neighbourhood of Tchardjuy, which lies on the left bank of the Oxus, within easy reach of the city of Bokhara itself.

The port once established, and furnished with light steamers of strong engine-power (which may be ordered from America, and sent in detached parts from Orenburg to Kazalinsk, there to be put together and launched)—all this, I say, being done, the more remote future teems with brilliant possibilities. Coal may be obtained in abundance from the rich beds of anthracite in the hills. that border Kokan, of some of which I received a plan and description, while at Tashkent, from one of the proprietors. Silk factories may be established at Khodjent, and the splendid material produced there exported in large quantities. The embryo post which is just beginning to run once a month between Samarcand and Bokhara, may be exalted into a regular caravan service-the distance along the Zer-Affshan to Bokhara being only one hundred and fifty miles, and that from Bokhara to Tchardjuy barely eighty more. The commercial relations of Russia with Kashgar and Western China, at present vague and precarious, may be consolidated and expanded. Finally, when once the Orenburg-Samarcand railway shall have reached its half-way house at Kazalinsk, the goods brought down the Oxus may be carried up the Syr-Daria to meet it there, and to reach Orenburg (taking the average rate of steam travel in the East, and allowing for the time occupied in landing), within nine days from their leaving Tchardjuy.

All this may sound chimerical; but it is probable that the first explorers of the Mississippi considered it, with its countless sandbanks, its formidable "snags and sawyers," its unwholesome Delta, and the intolerable heat of its lower course, as little promising for navigation as the Oxus appears now. To draw to herself the entire trade of Central Asia, while closing the country against her formidable competitor, England-this is surely a stake worth playing for on the part of Russia. If she can once establish a line of steamers upon the Oxus, and a railway along the basin of the Syr-Daria—maintaining at the same time her policy of exclusion-there are no limits to her possible success. Left unmolested by us, she may put all nations under her feet from the spurs of the Himalaya to the shores of the Frozen Ocean; she may see embassies from Washington and Pekin defiling through the gates of Tashkent; she may watch capitalists out of every land fighting for shares in the "Oxus and Sea of Aral Navigation Company, Limited," and invite all the ends of the earth to send their merchandise to the Great Industrial Exhibition of Samarcand.

Before taking my final leave of this part of the subject for with the Oxus in its military aspect I shall have much to do later on- -a word must be said in passing with respect to the former course of the river, and the question of turning it once more through the forsaken channel into the Caspian Sea. The reasons which have disposed the best Russian engineers

P

to regard this undertaking as impracticable (a conclusion amply borne out by Capt. Kostènko's admirable summary of the question, in his recent work on Central Asia), I have already quoted in the narrative of Adjutant M (Chapter XIII); it remains only to mention a theory propounded to me by a Russian. officer at Samarcand during our after-dinner chat, which has at least the merit of boldness, starting as it does with the hypothesis that what we call "the former course of the Oxus" was in reality not produced by the Oxus at all!

"If you look at the map," said he, "you will find the channel, set down by geographers as 'the ancient bed of the Oxus,' running in a slanting direction from S.W. to N.E., across the Turkoman steppes, starting from Krasnovodsk Bay on the Caspian, and debouching upon the existing river almost due east of KounyaUrgendj, between Bend and Khodjeili. Pursuing the same direction across the steppes beyond the Oxus, you come upon another channel of the same kind, wholly dry at its southern extremity, but containing water enough farther on to pass for a branch of the Syr-Daria, under the name of Djani-Daria. Crossing the Syr-Daria, and still bending to the north-east, you meet the river which divides Turkestan from Siberia, known to us as the Tchoo. Now, I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal of study, that this Tchoo, as we now have it, is merely the residue or spectrum, so to speak, of a mighty river which once traversed the whole breadth of Central Asia from N.E. to S.W.,

falling into the Caspian at Krasnovodsk Bay; and that the so-called beds of the Oxus and Djani-Daria are in reality parts of its channel."

Such, as I noted it down at the time, was my friend's theory. What amount of truth there may be in it, is for wiser heads than mine to determine.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AUT COENUM, AUT COELUM.

THE next morning it is the usual programme-half a dozen men helping each other to do nothing, and several precious hours lost to no purpose. Two Russian officers who are in the same plight as myself, having vainly exhausted themselves in anathemas, have gone into the big, bare, dingy room reserved for travellers, in order to smoke themselves into oblivion; while I, returning from my tour of inspection to find matters no farther advanced than before, am standing disconsolately in the doorway, when a well known voice suddenly greets me.

"David Stepanovitch, sure enough! So you've got loose at last, then! How are you?"

I turn round, and see beside me a tall, gaunt figure in uniform, surmounted by the iron features and bushy grey moustache of my old gaoler at Kazalinsk.

Captain Vereshtchagin! this is a strange chance! What are you doing here?"

How

"Oh, I'm here for good now. They've made me district governor, and I only hope they won't courtmartial me, as they did the late commandant. ever, they can't say that I've let any one pass without leave. I kept you pretty close, didn't I!"