postmaster to me at the next station, popping up from the little underground burrow which forms his only dwelling. "We have no horses nearer than an hour's ride; and as for water, that lake yonder's salt, and when we want fresh water, we have to go ten versts (about seven miles) to fetch it."

Barer and barer, bleaker and bleaker, the lifeless sands and dry watercourses outstretch themselves around under the gathering shadows of night—vanishing, at length, in utter gloom, and then rising gauntly into view under the spectral moonlight. Once and again, during a night that seems to have no end, a circle of grim faces, all eyes and teeth, flash into being around a surging fire, tossed hither and thither by the restless wind; and for a few moments, human life and human speech are about us, and then darkness and utter silence engulf us once more.

But the desolation culminates next morning at Terekli, the frontier station of Turkestan. All around. the solitary post-house (the one sign of man's presence in this forgotten world) stretches a boundless expanse of parched clay ridges, and dry ravines, and burning sands, from which the grey powdery dust rises chokinglynot in sudden gusts, but with a slow, steady, continuous boiling-up, stifling as the fumes of charcoal. And here, at last, is the end of the Orenburg Territory, and the beginning of Turkestan-that forbidden ground which (as I am fated to read in official handwriting, three days hence) "no Englishman is permitted to enter upon any pretext whatever."

At this point, amid sands in which a horse would sink at every step, we bethink ourselves, not a whit too soon, of the "ship of the desert." With three full-grown camels harnessed to my waggon, and the midmost ridden by a Kirghiz driver, I feel master of the situation once more; and it is with a sense of old acquaintanceship that I see (for the first time since I left Southern Arabia in 1871) the huge gaunt figures and long sinewy legs scurrying through a whirl of driving sand, and hear the deep hoarse scream which, like an Englishman's oath, expresses equally every kind of emotion. Backed by the seasoned muscles of the Djemel, we make short work of the next few stages; and by sunrise on the following morning, I look my first upon a spot which, however familiar in name to Western Europe, is still dim and distant as a remote planet-the far-famed Sea of Aral.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OUTLAWED SEA.

A WIDE expanse of smooth blue water; a little plateau of level sand, upon which three bearded and sunburned men, in tattered white jackets, are grouped around a steaming tea-urn; a knot of wild-looking figures in the background, together with the huge ungainly forms of several camels, with their long necks couched upon the earth in lazy enjoyment; and beyond all, the grey unending level of the desert melting into the hot summer sky.

This is the famous "Aralskoé Moré "-outlawed among seas as the men whom it shelters are among nations. It does not, indeed, like the Dead Sea, lie in the depths of a tomb walled in by precipitous cliffs; but in other respects the two banished lakes are singularly alike. The same rich summer blue; the same utter absence of living creatures; the same intense desolation on every side; the same lifeless and sinister beauty; the same deadly silence brooding over all. The water of the Aral Sea, however, is but slightly brackish, and its bottom is thick and muddy; while the little vegetation which it does possess is of an ominous kind-a short, coarse grass of the deepest

crimson, as if all the blood shed there in old time had risen to the surface once more, refusing to be hid.*

But picturesque as it is, a more useless sheet of water, from any but a purely military point of view, does not exist. Shut in on the east by barren sands, on the west by unbroken rocks, on the south by pestilential morasses—without a single patch of wooding on its shores, or a harbour worth calling such throughout its whole length of two hundred and seventy miles--the Sea of Aral is indeed "given up to desolation." Even the practised sailors of the Russian flotilla bear an evil recollection of its sudden hurricanes and perilous shoals; and the very Kirghiz who straggle about its borders never remain there beyond a few weeks at a time. In fact the one redeeming point of this genuine "Dead Sea " is the supply of excellent limestone yielded by the Nikolai Ostroff (the largest of the islands, with an area of 130 square miles) an invaluable aid to the Russians in the construction of their forts.

Fresh from my bath in the lake, I am just ready for the plentiful breakfast which my two new comrades (Russian officers on their way to Orenburg from Fort No. 1) hasten to set before me. The frank kindly faces, and hearty words of outspoken welcome, with which these fine young fellows receive me—an utter stranger and a possible enemy-make me think remorsefully of all that I have said and written against the Russian army. In the heart of these dreary deserts, thousands

* I have remarked the same growth in the Inkermann Valley, appropriate there.

of miles from my own people, this little spot of kindly brotherhood is very pleasant to meet with; but it is only one sample of the uniform kindness and courtesy which I met with from every Russian officer throughout my whole route (even during my detention at Fort No. 1) and which I might possibly have looked for in vain in far more civilised countries.

The first piece of news that I get from them, however, comes upon me like an electric shock.

"What, isn't Khiva taken, then, after all? Why, we heard that not only was the town taken, but the Khan a prisoner as well; and that, too, with very slight loss to your people."

"Ah, they must have confounded Khiva with Kungrad.* It was taken on the 8th (20th) May; and we did lose only a few men over it. As for Khiva, it ought to be taken by this time; but there was no word of it when we left Fort No. 1."+

"Are the steppes all clear?"

"Clear enough when we passed; but I doubt if they'll let you go on without an escort. You see, there was an officer murdered on the other side of Syr-Daria about a month ago; and ever since that, they've been more careful."

"Have you got food enough?" strikes in the other, "We've got far more of this white bread of ours than we shall want; and it'll be better eating for you than that gritty biscuit."

* The key of the Delta, 197 miles below Khiva.

+ Khiva fell June 10; but the news only reached Fort No. I, July 2.