implied compliment. There's no reason for stopping you here, now that you've got these recommendations; but I shouldn't be at all surprised if they stop you at Orsk or Kazalinsk (Fort No. 1) till they can communicate with the Governor-General. You see we have to be very careful on this line, because there's always somebody trying to slip past. I remember that some time ago (I think it was the autumn of 1869), an Englishman came here with a gun, and called on me, saying that he wanted to have a run along the Syr-Daria, having heard that there was very good shooting there. So I just said to him, 'My dear sir, whoever said that must have been making fun of you; I assure you that the shooting is infinitely better in Siberia, and I strongly recommend you to go there instead ;' and with that I wished him. good morning."

The old gentleman gives a quiet chuckle at his own shrewdness, and, handing me a signed travelling-pass across the table, says pleasantly, "If I were you I'd go by the Emba Fort and the western shore of the Aral Sea, instead of Kazalinsk; but that's as you please. Come and see me again when you return. morning."

Good

That night two or three of the officers at my hotel give me a kind of farewell supper. My preparations are already complete; I have bought a light waggon, a complete set of cooking utensils, a three months' stock of tea, sugar, and camp-biscuit, and various other necessaries suggested by the experience of my new friends, who have all been " out on the steppes" in their

time. The list of essentials is completed by a Tartar servant, a smart, handy fellow of seven-and-twenty, who comes for his orders every morning as regularly as if he had served me from childhood. There is now nothing left to do but to start, and we make merry accordingly, as for the last time.

"It's a pity you hadn't come sooner, and gone along with one of the officers," says Captain M——, my vis-àvis. "It's the uniform that does everything in these parts, as I daresay you've found out. However, I don't suppose you'll have any trouble till Kazalinsk; but I shouldn't at all wonder if they stop you there."

"And why there in particular?" ask I, remembering the prophecy of the chef de police.

"Well, in the first place it's a frontier post, and they're always stricter there; and then Colonel Goloff, the regular Governor, has gone with the Kazalinsk column, and in his place there's a certain Captain Vereshtchagin (no relation of the painter, I believe) whom nobody's ever heard of. Now, of course, his game is to arrest somebody, or do something else very energetic, during his term of office, so as to distinguish himself a bit; and your not being an Englishman won't matter a straw to him. He'll just say that it's all one who you are, so long as he hasn't got a special order to let you pass."

"Does no one know him?" inquire I. "The Governor doesn't, and the chef de police doesn't; but perhaps some of you could give me a line to him."

"We'd do so with pleasure," says my neighbour

O- who, having lived several years in Tashkent, is a kind of oracle upon Turkestan; "but you see he's a new man, and his name's hardly known yet. However, I don't suppose any one will care to detain you long, now that Khiva's taken.” *

"By-the-by, talking of Khiva, are the particulars known yet? All I've heard is that the town's taken, and the Khan a prisoner, with slight loss to the Russians."

"Well, that's all that we heard at first; but a man came through two days before you arrived, who told us (I suppose it will be officially confirmed in a day or two) that the war party and nearly all the population had deserted the town, and that when our men got in they found no one but the Khan and a few of his attendants, who gave themselves up at once. It's said that the runaways have gone southward towards Persia, and if so, they're almost certain to be cut off by the Turkomans."

"You think I ought to get through, then, in time?” "Well, I don't see any reason why they should turn you back, especially as you're not a correspondent. No foreign correspondents have been admitted, and quite right too."

"I've heard," remark I, "that one of Count Schouvaloff's reasons for refusing them leave was, that the chance of their getting hurt would be an additional embarrassment to the officers in command, and that they

* I need hardly say that this report afterwards proved to be unfounded.

would be likely to misrepresent any severe measures which might be found necessary."

"That's just it, you see. Supposing we were to burn a town and shoot the whole garrison (and such things have to be done, I can tell you, now and then), all Europe would instantly ring with "Horrible massacre in Central Asia"-" Civilisation worse than barbarism," -and all that sort of thing. Then, again, supposing one of the correspondents had got himself killed, of course the English would have said at once that we had done it on purpose, to keep him from telling tales."

"You don't seem to love the English much more than we do," observe I, laughing.

"Well, what would you have? We are trying our hardest to civilise the East, and to protect our trade there; and then steps in England and says, 'You mustn't do this, you mustn't do that'-virtually encouraging the rascals whom we are trying to put down. It's true that, now-a-days, the English only threaten and never strike: but even threats count for something, so long as the Asiatics believe in them. To whom did the Khan of Khiva first turn for help? To his brother Mussulmans in Central Asia? No-to the English Viceroy of India!"

Shortly after this the party breaks up; and O

as I take leave of him, produces his card, with fresh offers of assistance in case of need.

"If you go to Tashkent, as you most likely will,"

says he, "be sure you find out P

knows him), and mention my name.

(everybody there

He has all the

statistics of the country at his finger-ends, and he'll be able to give you any information you may want."

By noon the next day all is ready for my departure, in the primitive fashion of Asiatic travel. My waggon (a light little thing with a movable hood) is prepared for my accommodation, by filling the bottom with hay, laying my baggage upon it in a kind of pavement, and covering the whole with a straw mattress, upon which I recline, walled in with rolled up wrappers to keep me from being absolutely battered to bits against the sides of the vehicle. In the pockets of the hood are provisions for the first few days, including a large stock of soda-powders, intended to qualify the proverbially unwholesome water of the desert. I pay my bill (which, by the bye, my honest landlord tried hard to make me pay over again on my return in September), my Tartar clambers to his perch, the driver cracks his whip, the officers shout a hearty "bon voyage!" the three horses break into a smart trot—and we are off!

And now the hills of the frontier begin to assert themselves in earnest. First come broad sweeps of bare upland, shelving down every here and there into the gravelly channel of a half-dry torrent; then rolling waves of steep grassy hill, growing higher and steeper with every mile; and finally the actual " Uralskiya Gori," with their quaint little hamlets, and headlong streams, and deep, narrow valleys, and clustering trees perched upon overhanging cliffs, and great billows of dark mountain lapping over on either side as if to bury the road and all that is on it.