military college where officers’ sons are educated, to the little
native school where the Russian schoolmaster tries to give Russian to
the Sart. I visited the splendid military school, and was only sorry
to be too late in the season to see an hour of Russian football, the
game being very popular with the boys. Most of the professors at this
school are officers, and I met a charming staff-captain who had known
several English correspondents during the war in Manchuria. The teacher
of French gave me some interesting photographs.
There are six cinema shows at Tashkent, two theatres, an open-air
theatre, a skating rink, and many small diversions. The native turns up
in the cinema, and there are generally long lines of turbaned figures
in the front of the theatre. At the real theatres it is necessarily
those who know Russian who take the seats. At the open-air theatre they
play _The Taming of the Shrew_, at the Coliseum the _Doll’s House_ and
Artsibasheff’s _Jealousy_. The town has two newspapers, and on the day
on which I arrived I found that the leading article of the _Courier of
Turkestan_ was entitled “The State of Affairs in Ulster.” All Europe
seemed to have its eyes on our politics, and Europe extends now as far
east as Tashkent, though it is of “Central Asia” that that city claims
to be the capital.
A wonderful place Tashkent. Cherries ripen there by the 1st of May,
strawberries are seven copecks a pound in mid-May. Everything ripens
three weeks earlier than in Russia proper. It is a fresh, fragrant
city--an interesting curiosity among the cities of the world. The
Russians have in it a city worth possessing. It must be said they have
done their best to possess it, not merely in the letter of the law, but
by improving it and governing it and giving it a Russian atmosphere.
Despite camels and mosques, and natives in their turbans, and the sad
call of the muezzin, you feel all the time as you go up and down the
streets of Tashkent that you are in Russia.
The Kaufmann Square is, I suppose, the noblest position in the new
city, all the avenues and prospects being used to frame the monument
which stands there. This is the statue of General Kaufmann, who took
possession of the land for the Russians. On one side of the monument is
a fierce, dark, enormous, two-headed eagle in stone. But between its
claws this year a dove had its nest. From behind the eagle General von
Kaufmann stands and looks over his new-conquered country. On the other
side of the monument there is the following inscription:
“I pray you bury me here that everyone may know that here is true
Russian earth in which no Russian need be ashamed to lie.”
(_From a letter of_ GENERAL KAUFMANN, 1878.)
Rather interesting that this should be said by a Russian with a German
name.
VII
THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST
The Russian princes, Yaroslaf Vsevolodovitch and his son, Alexander
Nevsky, did homage to the Mongol khans in the thirteenth century.
Timour brought back thousands of Russian slaves after his conquests,
and Russia lay under the yoke of the Tartars. The Empire of Asia lasted
only a little while in the hands of the dynasty of Tamerlane, and the
Uzbek and the Kirghiz Cossacks appeared, waging a holy war for Islam.
At the present moment there are one million Uzbeks in the province of
Bokhara, three hundred and fifty thousand in Khiva, and five hundred
thousand spread over the rest of Russian Turkestan, and a sprinkling
in Afghanistan. The Uzbeks formed three kingdoms, Bokhara, Khiva, and
Kokand. The Emirs of these states are to this day Uzbeks, but are now
little more than Russian civil servants. A dependence of Kokand was
Pamir, where the Karakirghiz wandered with their flocks--people now
wandering on the Thian Shan mountains in Ferghan and Seven Rivers Land,
also in parts of Sirdaria and Eastern Turkestan. The Kirghiz Cossacks
came south from what is now the Akmolinsk Steppe in Siberia. This race,
a sort of mongrelisation of Huns and Tartars, diffused itself over the
whole desert from Lake Balkhash to the Ural. In the seventeenth century
they were an organised and powerful nation, with a Khan at Tashkent;
but in the succeeding century there was faction and dissension, and the
nation divided off into three large hordes. The great horde went to
Seven Rivers Land in the Northern Ural, the middle horde to the Steppes
of Akmolinsk, and the little horde to Sirdaria and the Ural. From that
day their military spirit seems to have steadily waned. To-day they
are as peaceful as their herds. During the years 1846 to 1854, the
Russians began to penetrate the deserts of Seven Rivers Land and take
the Kirghiz over as subjects. There was very little actual fighting
till the Russians came into contact with the Uzbeks of Kokand, whom,
however, they fought and overthrew with considerable slaughter. Vemey
fell in 1854, Pishpek and Tokmak in 1862. Then the Russians turned
westward, and took Aulie Ata, Chimkent, and Tashkent. In 1867 Seven
Rivers Land was made into a Russian province, and the stream of Russian
colonisation turned out of Siberia southward toward India.
[Illustration: PLEASANT COUNTRY OUTSIDE TASHKENT]
One stream of colonists was moving southward from Siberia, another
was moving eastward from the Volga. One observes the rise of the
Russian power. In the sixteenth century the Russian had begun to take
the upper hand, and Kazan and Astrakhan, though predominantly Tartar
cities, fell to the assaults of Christian arms. In the eighteenth
century the peasant colonists had already come into contact with the
Kirghiz Cossacks, and boundary lines had to be drawn. Orenburg
fell into Russian hands in 1748, and peaceful penetration followed
military success. In 1847 the great horde of the Kirghiz became Russian
subjects, and all the races of Central Asia began to talk about
the coming advance of the Russians and the need to fight them. The
Russian war of conquest was consummated in the East. From Tashkent the
Russians proceeded to make war on the Bokharese. In vain did the Emir
of Bokhara demand the evacuation of Tashkent by the Russians. In 1866
the Bokharese were defeated at the battle of Irdzhar, and Khodzkent
was taken by storm. After heavy fighting with Uzbeks and Turkomans and
great slaughter of the Mohammedans, they approached Samarkand, which
at last they occupied at the invitation of the inhabitants. In 1868
a treaty was made between the Emir of Bokhara and the Tsar, whereby
Samarkand and district passed to Russia.
In 1869 a Russian army crossed the Caspian and laid siege to
Krasnovodsk, and attempts were made to push across the desert along the
northern frontier of Persia. The Turkomans, however, offered an heroic
resistance, and it was not until 1880, when Skobelef was given charge
of the task of subduing the tribes, that Russia made progress. At the
beginning of December, 1880, the army of Turkestan, under Colonel
Kuropatkin, made over five hundred miles progress across the flying
sands and took the fortress of Dengil-Tepe. Askhabad was taken, and
all the fortified points in Transcaspia. Transcaspia was made into a
Russian province in 1881.
In 1884 there was a short struggle, and then the ancient city of
Merv fell into Russian hands, and the English began to view the
Russian progress with uneasiness. There was even such a word coined
as “mervousness,” and Russophobes had Merv on the brain. It must be
admitted we were rather backward not to treat with the Russians and
obtain definite trade treaties at that time. For we lost and Germany
gained a great deal of trade which we might still have retained.
Bokhara and Khiva came under Russian protection. The Central Asian
Railway was built, and Russia became the most important Power in the
Moslem world of Central Asia, owning as subjects so many millions
of Kirghiz, Sarts, Uzbeks, Turkomans, Tekintsi, Tartars, and being
neighbours of Turks, Persians, Afghans and what not. Never was such
a stretch of territory, so many new subjects, or so much trade and
interest won with so little trouble. It was won almost by military
processions. It must be remembered that it could not have been held,
nor would Russia have any real footing there to-day, but for the
peasant pioneers who followed the armies and began settling the land.
And the peasants would not have remained if the Government of Russia
had not helped them with loans, found them suitable plots for their
villages, and irrigated the desert.
[Illustration: HEARTY SHEPHERDS: ALL KIRGHIZ]
Now Turkestan and Russian Central Asia are extremely loyal, peaceful
and happy Russian colonies. Rebellion was put down with such severity
by the Russians, the defeats were with such slaughter, that the
Asiatic tribesmen learned that Russia was too powerful to be trifled
with; they knew they had found their masters, and submitted absolutely.
The Russians overcowed their spirits, they felt there was some magic
power behind them, and that human resistance was vain. Then fear gave
way to placid acceptance of mastery, and the Russians began building
churches and schools and fortresses and barracks, shops, towns,
villages, and no one said them nay. Trade passed into the hands of
Russian merchants, and new towns sprang up beside the old ones--new
Bokhara beside old Bokhara, new Tashkent beside old Tashkent, and the
Moslems saw unveiled the will of God. They could not have been a very
warlike people really. They are not like the Mohammedans under our
rule or the Turks, though it is quite possible that if, as a result
of this war, a great quantity of Armenia and Turkey fell into Russian
hands, the Mohammedans there would accept their fate as destiny and
settle down to live as peacefully as their fellow-believers of Russian
Central Asia. These are meek. During the past winter the Germans have
been endeavouring to stir up Islam to fight England, France and Russia.
Germany and Turkey have found a common ground. The Arabs in Mesopotamia
are fighting a holy war against us. Persia has wavered; there has
been ferment in India, there might have been a rising in Afghanistan,
but there has been no chance of a rising of those Mohammedans who are
Russian subjects. All the aborigines of Russian Central Asia are
devoted to peace, and none have any quarrel with the Russian Empire.
Russia, of course, has considerable control over her Mohammedan
subjects because of the railways. The development of the lines in
Central Asia has undoubtedly been a wise Imperial measure on Russia’s
part, and they are the best fruits of her conquest. The construction
afforded certain interesting engineering problems, though it may be
remarked that Russian engineers generally succeed in building railways
over plains, even over deserts, but fail when they come to mountains.
[Illustration: THE RUSSIAN TEACHER: A NATIVE SCHOOL IN TASHKENT]
The Central Asian Railway had for its original object the pacification
of the Tekintsi, and was a strategic line from the Transcaspian post
of Krasnovodsk to the oasis of Kizil Arvat. It was built over the
desert, and was at first regarded as of a temporary military character.
It cannot now be regarded as a well-built railway, is very loose, and
trains are forced to go very slowly, and it is constantly in danger
of sand obstruction through storms. In the progress of the military
operations against the Tekintsi, Geok-Tepe was stormed in January,
1881, and the first train went through to Kizil Arvat in December of
the same year. Kizil Arvat remained the terminus until the fray with
the Afghans, on March 30th, 1885, when the prolongation was undertaken
seriously. In June, 1885, the Tsar decided to continue the railway
towards the frontier of Afghanistan, and by December 11th, 1885, the
Russian military railway gangs had taken the rails 136 miles on
to Askhabad, at the northern limit of Persia. Merv was annexed, the
rails went on to Merv. By December, 1886, the railway had gone on to
Chardzhui, on the Oxus. The red river was bridged, and the railway went
on to Bokhara and Samarkand. A state service of steamers was started
on the Oxus between Chardzhui and Khiva. In 1888 the completion of the
line to Samarkand was celebrated, and the railway was consecrated with
ecclesiastical pomp. The Russians have always given the impression
that they did not intend to develop their railways, and yet they have
gone on developing them all the same. They have gone south from Merv
to the River Kush, on the Afghanistan frontier, and east from Khodgent
to Andigan and Kokand. They have brought a main line from Petrograd,
by way of Orenburg, over the deserts of Sirdaria, to the cities of
Turkestan and Tashkent, and have thus a railway all the way from the
Baltic to within a few hundred miles of India. In February, 1916,
trains were first run on the first reach of the new railway that is to
join Russia and Western China. It is now possible to go to Chimkent by
train, and possibly next year to Aulie Ata. If English were in charge
of this territory there would probably be more railways by now. In any
case, the chief value of the railways has been the means they afforded
of bloodless pacification of tribes. But their future is not so much a
military future as one of trade and Imperial development.
Russia has made her Imperial conquests by force of arms, and
safeguarded them by railways and colonisation. It should be remembered
that before and after and all the time runs the natural stream of
colonisation. The ultimate bond of unity is that which comes from the
national family ties of colonisation. Nothing stands in Russia’s way,
and she is always quietly colonising the empty East.
An interesting yearly chart might be issued by the Russian Government
showing the waves of colonisation: the new spots in forests and deserts
that have been given names, the new farms, the thickening of the
population in the nearer-in districts, the efflorescence of Russian
enterprise at the farthest-out points whither they have gone. Several
hundred Russian families are settled in Northern Persia, several
hundred also in Mongolia and China. The movement goes on, and it is
not primarily due to the density of population in European Russia. All
Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under rather than
over-populated. There is plenty of room. Why, then, should Russia
increase? or why not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia.
The old world is hollow at the core, and Russia has access to that
great, wide hollowness, stands at the door of it and stares into the
great emptiness. Then her people are wanderers; they have the wandering
spirit. A cross wind blows over them, and they are gipsies--the
roving heart rules the mind. They love the road and the quest. They
are seekers. Even the most materialistic of them, the least religious
in their outward expression, nourish dreams of success and ideas of
golden climes to be found “beyond the horizon.” We should call many
of them ne’er-do-wells, though as a matter of fact they are all intent
to do well somewhere. They take up farms and give up farms with too
little scruple, and then go farther, disgusting the official eye in one
district, but knowing they will delight other official eyes farther on
when they turn up with carts and cattle and belongings at some verdant,
empty wilderness still farther away from the centre of Russia.
VIII
ON THE ROAD
There was some difficulty in getting on from Tashkent. I had two
British notes, but no bank would change them. The clerks held the paper
upside down, took it to their colleagues, who were supping tea whilst
they worked at their ledgers, took it to the manager to show him a
curiosity, and finally returned it to me “with much regret.” “Don’t
think we are savages,” said one bank clerk, “because we do not accept
your money. The fact is, we’ve never seen it before and cannot even
read what is written on it.” Another clerk, a sympathiser, advised
me that there was an Englishman in Tashkent, a merchant who did much
business and had an account in the bank, bade me go to him, for he
would know what the notes were worth, and would no doubt accommodate a
fellow-countryman. I obtained the address and sought out my compatriot.
His name was something like Kellerman--not very promising. Behold one
of the funniest Englishmen I ever met--as clear a German Jew as I’d
ever seen in my life, scarcely speaking English, and making all the
comic mistakes which Germans make with our tongue, a fat, ill-shaven,
collarless old man of a greasy complexion, a middleman buying wool
and horsehair and oilcakes and seed from the native Sarts and Jews
and Tartars and Kirghiz. He professed to be very pleased to meet a
fellow-countryman, and to be yearning for his “native land”--“a nice
house in Kentish Town, all fog and wet in the streets, a nice fire,
pull the blinds down, and read the ‘_Daily Telegraaf_.’” Every night
in Tashkent he repaired to the public gardens, took a seat beside
the skating rink, and watched the violent whirl of Armenian youths
and their lady friends on roller-skates. Each night between ten and
twelve Kellerman might be found in his place, chuckling to himself at
the sight of accidents. “Causts nawthing,” said he, “and it’s such a
pleasure to see other people break their necks or their legs.”
Needless to say, he would not touch my notes; at first thought they
might be false, and then offered me three pounds ten each for them. He
said he wouldn’t change them, but would be willing to make a deal and
treat it as a matter of business. So I had to post my money to Moscow.
The next obstruction was from the police, who doubted whether I had
permission to wander about in Central Asia, and it was only after
I had myself looked through the books at the police-station that I
found my name, almost unrecognisably spelt, in the list of those who
had permission. At last I got both my money in Russian change and my
_visé_, and was free to go. So I started my long journey from the
limits of the railway to the frontier of China.
I took train to Kabul Sai, a little station north of Tashkent, and
thence set out across the grass-covered downs to Chimkent, the first
point of importance on my journey. I was a little anxious lest I should
be stopped by the station gendarme, for it was not to be thought that
every local police authority would have my name legibly inscribed, and
I did not want to be delayed waiting while Kabul Sai and a hundred
other places wrote to Tashkent for information. However, I escaped
attention, and, having made a good country dinner (big dinner, I should
rather say) at the station buffet, I lounged about till the train went
out of the station, and then, considering compass and map, I cut across
country and found the road--without questions.
So I got on to my feet in Sirdaria, the land of the little horde of the
Kirghiz. The plain was dusty and vast, with a great sky overhead. There
were long-legged beetles that scampered through the dust of the road,
tortoises and their families eating grass and dandelions, and very much
taken aback when picked up and examined. Father Tortoise is big and
green; his children are wee, like young crabs. There was no cultivation
anywhere in sight; the first grass had already seeded and withered,
but thousands of blue irises were in blossom, and the tall sheaves of
their leaves contrasted strangely with the dying grass below. The sun
was hot, but a fresh, travelling wind fairly lifted me as I walked. A
chorus of larks overhead made the prelude to my journey.
[Illustration: A KIRGHIZ GRANDMOTHER: VENDOR OF _KOUMIS_]
The only people on the road were Kirghiz. Far away on the hills I
noticed their great flocks of cattle and the circular tents of the
nomads. There were no villages. No villages, because it was hardly
“white man’s country”; there was no water to drink. I thought to make
myself tea, but I reckoned without my host. Where there should have
been streams there was only a broken parquet of dry mud. No trees,
no shade, no shelter, and, if I should find water, no fuel. The five
post-wagons, drawn each by three horses and driven by enormously fat
Kirghiz drivers with faces the colour of dull mahogany, went past me
in a cloud of dust, and I watched them away as the sun was setting.
Three-quarters of a mile away they all stopped by a wooden bridge.
There was evidently water; perhaps the drivers wanted a drink. I was
very joyful at the prospect of tea. When I got nearer I found that all
the drivers were saying their Mohammedan prayers, and had stopped at
the stream to have the conventional wash. The water was reddish-brown,
with mingled mud; light could not be seen through a glass of it.
I resolved to see what could be obtained at the Kirghiz tents, put my
pack down by the side of the road, and set off, with a pot in one hand
and a bit of silver in the other. There were three tents on a hill,
and near them many cows and goats and horses. I arrived in a whirlwind
of dogs, three or four cattle dogs showing their teeth and barking and
snarling as they tore round me in circles. Several women were employed
tending immense pans of milk which they were boiling over bonfires made
of roots. They seemed a trifle scared at first, but when I showed them
the pot and pointed to the bit of silver they understood, and I was
quickly put in possession of a potful of hot, smoky milk. I carried
it carefully back to the place where I had slung my pack, and there
I sat down, feeling rather lost or accidental, and I drank the hot
milk and munched a bit of bread which I had brought from the town. The
dogs followed me all the way to my resting-place, but when they saw me
sit down and take things calmly they retired a distance and kept up a
desultory chorus.
So I made my first meal out of doors by the roadside. The next thing
was to find a place for the night. There was no variety in the country,
and I could only choose a place where insects were fewer and one not
over a tortoise’s burrow. I had a light, home-made sleeping-sack and
a plaid. The sack was made by sewing two sheets together on three
sides. The sack is a useful institution; it keeps insects out and is
much warmer than open clothing. I had also a mosquito net, for there
are more flies here than in other parts of the world. Before making
my spread I removed an elegant oak-eggar caterpillar. I am always
disinclined to injure the creeping things of the earth, especially on
a long journey. I feel that to a certain extent I am in their charge.
This is a sort of natural superstition. Directly you kill something
superfluously, horror thrills you as it thrilled the ancient mariner
who shot the albatross.
[Illustration: RUSSIANS AND KIRGHIZ LIVING SIDE BY SIDE AT THE FOOT OF
THE MOUNTAINS]
I lay down in such a position as to see the sunset in the evening
and the sunrise in the morning. Sunset was stormy, but somewhere
among the rose-tinged clouds a late lark sang the day out. Then
stars appeared behind cloud curtains, and the night breeze carried
his messages along the heath. The first breath of night was cool
and pleasant, but about an hour after sunset the weather changed
entirely. It became very hot and airless, and lightnings shot across
all horizons. A shower of rain came down, and the stars disappeared.
As I lay considering the sky I heard far off the chattering of
children--chattering, laughing, and occasional bursts of singing. The
sounds came nearer, and presently there emerged a troop of camels,
twelve huge camels stalking out of the night, and on their backs men,
women and children, tents, goods. A little family of wanderers crossing
the wilderness in the night! They came so near to me that the first
camel snorted as he passed, and it was necessary for me to sit up and
warn the others off. I had not anticipated that there might be people
travelling across country in the night. They passed, and the quietness
of night resumed its sway. The clouds thickened, and lightning
shimmered under them; it began to rain again, and then stopped, and the
stars once more came up, and then the clouds thickened once more, and
once more rain came down on me with rapid tapping. So the whole night,
and it was a pleasant tempering of the heat. I slept happily, and it
was a long while before I wakened.