THE HEART OF ASIA.*

IT is a wonderful tale these two writers have to unfold, each in his different way, and we do not know which has the more absorbing part of the history. Mr. ROBS begins with the con- quests of Alexander, the founder certainly of several Alexandrias in the rich lands about the Oxus and Jaxartes, and according to popular tradition to this day the builder of almost every ancient monument of Turkestan. Then, after the dim period of Bactrian and Parthian Kingdoms and in- vasions of Huns, Ephthalites, Turks, comes another great wave from the South-West, the surging armies of Islam. After the flow, the ebb : the wave is now once more from the East; and flood after flood of Turkomans, Ghaznevids, Seljuks, Mongols of Chingiz, and Turks of Timur, pour over the Oxus country into Persia and on towards Europe. Then a long pause—an interval of anarchy or misrule, of struggling dynasties and barbaric Khanates- till at length the wave slowly rolls eastward again, and the Tartars of Chingiz, merged in the Russians of Skobeleff, slowly irresistibly spread over the well-tramped land of a thousand conquests and begin to reclaim it to order, if not to the glories of the past. This last wave, which The Heart of Asia: a History of Russian Turkestan and the Central ARM Khanates from the Earliest Tunes. By F. H. Skrine and E. Denison Ross, Ph.D. With 19 Illustrations from Sketches by Verestchagln, Photographs, and 2 Maps. London: Methuen and Co. flea Bd. net.]

falls to Mr. Skrine to describe, is in its way as im- pressive as any of the early tides of conquest, as much in the gradual relentless immersion of Khanate after Khanate

—Khiva, Bokhara, Ferghana, Merv—as in the steady advance of post after post, mile after mile of railway, till in a marvellously short time the "iron horse" rides triumphantly from the Caspian to Samarkand, and the capital of the White

Czar is brought within a few days' travel of the capital of Tamerlane.

A railway may seem a prosaic subject of enthusiasm, but we shall be surprised if any one gifted with the least power of imagination can read Mr. Skrine's sixth chapter, on the pushing of the line across Central Asia, without a "thrill." It is not only that one must respect and wonder at the energy and genius, the courage and resource, of men like Annenkoff and Kurapatkin, in driving the engine of civilisation across the sands and floods, and compelling the wild bandits, who have rained the once beautiful and flourishing provinces, to toil at the instrument of their own regeneration and help in the work of reconstruction. But the tragedy of vanished empire is laid bare at each stroke of the navvy's shovel. Here a few crumbling ruins show where "Royal Merv" once lorded it over all the lands from Oxus to Euphrates. There an ugly practical station or a bald cantonment of the railway battalion stands out, like a scar, among the relics of the Marcanda where Alexander feasted, the Samarkand of the "noble Tartarian," the dream of Baber's youth, the city of scholars and poets and astronomers, sung by every Persian poet, coveted by every Prince. To enter Samarkand in a railway train, after rolling over the ashes of dead king- doms, is indeed to "open the door towards Cornwall," to

let loose the regrets of memory. It is doing on a grand scale what the Afghan chiefs and nobles did in pato, when they attended the levee of a Russian Governor in the fall

uniforms of English railway-guards and ticket-collectors, duly labelled on the collar, and purchased by the thrifty Ameer at some Indian sale of damaged goods. There is an element of incongruity, even of bathos, in a Rnssianated Samarkand.

Mr. Skrine's instructive chaptc -I will show, however, that the bathos is only superficial. His lucid and comprehensive

account of the work that Russia is perfecting in Central Asia is all the more valuable because, as a former officer of the Indian Civil Service, he is a trained administrator and critic

of executive systems. He went himself to examine into the Russian methods, prepared to curse unreservedly, and, like the prophet of old, he was forced to "bless them," not

perhaps "altogether," but certainly in most regards :—

" We left home," he confesses, "full of prejudices, the result of a course of Central Asian literature. The Cassandra notes of Vambery were ringing in our ears, and the latent chauvinism of Lord Curzon of Kedleston (whose great work on Central Asia is considered by the Russians themselves as a text-book, though they vigorously combat his views on their policy) had prejudiced the Russians in our eyes. But unfavourable prepossessions vanished when we had seen the results of their rule in Central Asia, and had gathered estimates of its character in every class of the population. We are convinced that the Tsar's explicit instructions to his lieutenants to exercise a fatherly care over his Asiatic subjects are scrupulously obeyed. The peoples of Asia, from the Caspian to China, from Siberia to the borders of Persia and Afghanistan, enjoy as large a measure of happiness and freedom as those of any part of our Indian dominions. The fiscal policy of the conquering race is one of extreme moderation. Imperial and local taxation are indeed too light; and, in Samar- kand at least, a turn might be given to the screw with great advantage to an exchequer which finds these Asiatic possessions a serious drain on its resources. The problem of local self-govern- ment has been solved, and indigenous institutions have not been ruthlessly trampled on."

There is, of course, another side to this picture, and Mr. Skrine does not conceal his disapproval of the Russian attitude towards education, which is left in the hands of ignorant and fanatical moollas, or his dislike of their protec- tive commercial policy. He admits that "the Russians have their faults, which are often a little exasperating to the per- fervid Briton." The Oriental strain renders them, to say the least of it, leisurely in business transactions. Their standard of comfort is not exalted ; social etiquette is not without a

tinge of barbarism. "But," he asserts, "they are a young and vigorous race, imbued with a passionate love of their country, a steadfast belief in its high destinies, both rare and precious in these days of flabby cosmopolitanism. And there I,. a areat deal in their work in Central Asia which should

inspire our admiration and sympathy. Their railways are the fruit of a dogged perseverance, and appeal forcibly to the fellow-countrymen of George Stephenson and Brunel. The broad realm which they govern consists of little but deserts and swamps, and the isolation of those who administer it, their banishment from the sweets of home, give them a special claim on our regard."

Mr. Skrine pleads eloquently, but the facts and statistics he marshals so skilfully are more eloquent still. Whatever we may think of the policy of aggression and the incidents of the subjection of the Khanates, it is clear as daylight that Russia is steadily turning anarchy into orderly government, rapine and slovenly barbarism into commercial security and prosperity; and, if we are not mistaken, the day will come when the ancient kingdoms, which have dwindled and degenerated under four centuries of Tartar barbarism, will renew their youth and become once more the tomes of civilisation which they were in the best days of Mahommedan culture. Nor do we see why Englishmen should not rejoice at such a consummation. Whether Mr. Skrine is right or not in his belief that "the absorption of India is a dream too wild for the most aggressive adviser of the Tsar," the civilisation of Central Asia makes very little difference in the danger. Nothing short of political annihilation could have prevented the Asiatic expansion of Russia, as explained and justified in Gortchakoff's remarkable despatch appropriately appended to this volume ; and if expansion was to be, it is a matter for rejoicing that it is accompanied by improved government and welfare of the peoples absorbed. The Indian frontier can be defended none the worse because the lands outside are no longer the haunts of barbarous and disorderly tribes.

Absorbed in Mr. Skrine's attractive chapters, we have left ourselves little space in which to notice Professor Ross's masterly epitome of the pre-Russian history of Turkestan. It was no easy feat to get the essential facts of more than two thousand years of very varied history into two hundred pages ; but Mr. Ross has succeeded in giving a connected and continuous narrative which is full of interest, and, what is more important, is singularly accurate in minute detail. He has worked up the original Arabic and Persian sources, as well as the researches of Russian, German, and English scholars, with a patience and knowledge characteristic of the talented translator of Mirza Haidar's famous history of the Mongols of Central Asia. Especially noteworthy is the ex- cellent use he has made of the Arabic historian Tabari, only recently printed by a committee of scholars under the editor- ship of Professor de Goeje. From Tabari's annals Mr. Rose Las been able to reconstruct a history of Transoxiana under the Caliphate, and especially of the campaigns and rule of the celebrated General Kotaiba, such as has never before been attempted; though we still miss the picture of social life and intellectual horizons which Oriental writers never define. This part of the book will appeal parti- cularly to students, and forms a text-book of Central Asian history under Mahommedan rule greatly in advance of any- thing we have hitherto possessed. His footnotes, moreover, contain a bibliography of reference which must be of the greatest service to those who wish to carry their studies beyond this able outline. Mr. Ross's share of the volume, indeed, is far more laborious, and in its nature more per- manent, than Mr. Skrine's account of the passing situation. Both are, however, so well done and so valuable that if the book were torn in two, we should not know which half we could do without The Heart of Asia is so happy a com- bination of scholarship, local knowledge, and shrewd observa- tion, that it will long rank as an authority.