The Shah is globe-trotting again, and all kinds of reports
are current as to Russian negotiations with his Majesty while he remained in St. Petersburg. It is asserted that the Czar told his guest bluntly that if he made any more concessions to the English, he had one hundred thousand soldiers on the frontier, and that he could not keep them from acting, a story upon the face of it false. Sovereigns do not threaten each other in that style, and who repeated the tale P Another rumour, that the Shah agreed to allow the Russians to construct a railway from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, is much more probable, but need not create excitement here. He is always granting concessions which come to nothing, and if this one is honest, the English will obtain the trade carried by the railway, as they have the trade carried by the Suez Canal; and the deboachure of the line will be under the British cannon. It is the direct conquest of Persia, not Russian efforts to enrich her, which India has to fear.
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