favoured by circumstances which seem deliberately to combine in her favour. The Dungan insurrection of 1862 rendered the provinces west of the Great Wall virtually independent of the Court of Pekin, and opened a new and boundless field to the ambition of Russia. Into this new ground she has made her first stride by the annexation of Kouldja in 1871, which gave her a new province of considerable extent and great intrinsic value, a docile and hard-working population of more than one hundred thousand souls, and, more than all, an open road into Western China. This last advantage she is now securing by making practicable roads through the Thian-Shan, the most remarkable of which is the wonderful highway constructed by Colonel Kolokoltzeff's soldiers in the summer of 1872, from the Bouam ridge to Fort Narinsk, through the precipices of the Djuvan-Arik-undoubtedly Russia's greatest engineering exploit in the far East. China lies open to the masters of Tashkent and Kouldja; and what the next move will be needs no prophet to divine.

Let us suppose, then, that some years have elapsed, during which Russia will have had time to raise two or three more foreign loans, to consolidate her new acquisitions in Turkestan and Western China, to connect her Khivan annexations with the Caspian seaboard by a chain of steppe fortresses, and to perfect her communications by establishing a line of steamers on the Oxus, and a railway along the Syr-Daria. Meanwhile the bitter commercial rivalry, which is to actual warfare

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what the pilot-fish is to the shark, gradually rises to a height. The three trading powers of the worldAmerica from the east, Russia from the west, and Britain from the south-stand forth as competitors for the traffic of Asia; and the efforts of the "man in possession" to keep the ground clear are met by correspondingly vigorous struggles for admittance on the part of his rivals. Somewhere in the future, then, we may conclude that there lies a day when Russia will discover, and proclaim in the consecrated pages of the Invalide Russe, that "the best interests of civilization, and the cause of humanity itself, demand the expulsion of the English usurper from the country which he has so long oppressed." How is this to be effected?

In the event of her attempting an actual invasion of Afghanistan, Russia's obvious course would be to despatch a force from Samarcand to Merv, and down the valley of the Moorgh-Ab-, to be joined before Herat by another army ascending the Attreck from Tchikishliar, and passing through Meshed. In moving upon Herat from the north, the only real difficulty lies in the first stage of the route from Samarcand to Merv. That once past, the fifteen "marches" from Merv to Herat traverse a well-watered and perfectly easy tract, abounding in forage, and practicable enough for artillery to satisfy even the First Napoleon. As for the other route (that up the Attreck to Koochan and Meshed) it contains no natural obstacle which could impede the advance of a regular force for a single day.

As for any armed opposition on the part of the

natives, Russia is tolerably safe. More than a third of the route from Samarcand lies through the vassal kingdom of Bokhara; very nearly the whole of that from the Caspian lies through the friendly territory of Persia. The "ten thousand Turkomans that guard Koochan" merely represent so much transferable stock, to be made over to Russia whenever she chooses to bid for it. In a word, it may safely be predicted that a Russian army advancing upon Herat from either the north or the west would reach the Afghan frontier without firing a shot.

It is needless to observe, however, that in order to support such an undertaking, even for a few months, the resources and appliances of Russia in the far East must be immensely multiplied. At the present moment, the total number of troops in Turkestan (maintained at a ruinous expense) is twenty-six thousand of all arms; and this force is not more than sufficient for the mere garrisoning of the province. How many additional tens of thousands would be required in order to push across Afghanistan, with any hope of success, is a question for more experienced critics than myself to decide.

But this matters little; for Russia's habitual policy is to have her game played for her by her enemies; and among men divided by countless factions, and wholly devoid of attachment to any one form of government, there is a boundless field for the application of her favourite system of welding the conquered into a weapon for the conqueror. In every age,

aggressive warfare in a semi-barbarous region has employed this method with complete success. It was with the help of the Latin and Hernican cavalry that Rome destroyed the Samnite and the Gaul. It was from the ranks of his foreign captives that Bajazet drew the staple of the terrible brigade which taught Europe to shudder at the name of the Janissaries. The subjugated mountaineers of Tlascala were the lever wherewith Cortez overthrew the throne of Montezuma and the best soldiers of British India are the descendants of those who fought against Lord Clive and Sir Eyre Coote.

And now Russia, in her turn, has inherited the fatal science of her predecessors; and "the slayers of all men are being slain with their own swords." Intestine quarrels are never wanting in Central Asia; and no one knows better than the diplomatic Muscovite how to foment them to his own advantage, and to the destruction of both combatants. "All that we have to do in Central Asia," said the elder Count Berg to me years ago, "is to give each of the lesser Khans a few thousand roubles and a few hundred Cossacks — let them cut each other's throats for four or five yearsand then march over their bodies without burning a cartridge." This is no empty boast. The feuds of Afghanistan have more than once offered a tempting opening to Russia ;* and the growing unpopularity of

The rebellion of Abdul Rahman Khan - Mohamed Isa's attack upon Sherabad -and other instances of the kind, will occur at once to those who have studied the subject.

Yakoub Beg among his own people of Kashgar is holding out to her, at the present moment, another chance of the same kind.

It may be taken for granted, then, that when Russia at length considers herself strong enough to attack us, her final advance will be heralded by a skilfully fomented civil war in Afghanistan, and a dexterous propagandism among the malcontents of Northern India. It is upon this last weapon, indeed, that she mainly relies; and it must be owned, not wholly without reason. Had Russia been hear enough in 1857 to give a hand to Nana Sahib and Tantia Topee, we should have lost India; and, to this day, our disaffected vassals look to her advance as the great Avatar which is to inaugurate their second, and (as they fondly hope) decisive struggle for independence. Barely two years ago, the native population of a large town in Northern India, near which a review was being held, ascribed the firing to "a battle between the English and the Russians." Russian journalists garner up every obtainable scrap of information respecting the temper of our native subjects; and at least two Russian travellers, to my certain knowledge, have started within the last sixteen months with the intention of making a prolonged tour in Northern India. These, it will be said, are trifles; but even trifles become important in playing against antagonists who never make a move in vain, and who excel all the children of men in the great art of saying one thing and meaning another.

But all this is still in the future; and, for the present,