tested that the treaty with the Candahar chiefs entered into upon Russian advice was intended to prevent the dangers of Persian annexation, and the mission of Vickovich was, like that of Capt. Burnes, for purely pacific and commercial objects. To appease England and restore the good understanding of 1834, Vickovich was recalled and the Candahar arrangement disavowed.

It was not until Turkistan was annexed by Russia in 1864 that England again began to regard with suspicion and alarm the advance of the Russian power toward the Indian frontier. The Earl of Clarendon proposed in 1869 that Afghanistan should be recognized as a neutral zone between British and Russian possessions. Prince Gortchakoff approved the idea, and declared that Afghanistan was outside of the sphere of Russian influence. In 1870 the Russian Government refused to aid Abdurrahman Khan, the present Ameer, to wrest the throne of Cabul from Shere Ali. About the same time the English Cabinet was alarmed at rumors of a Russian plan to capture Khiva. Gortchakoff denied that any such intention existed, or that hostilities against the Khan were contemplated, except in case that prince should renew his intrigues among the Kirghiz. In 1871 fresh reports of an intended expedition led to additional inquiries. The Russian Government explained that a military reconnaissance had been made for the purpose of frightening the Khan, who was only required to restrain his subjects from preying on Russian commerce and imprisoning subjects of the Czar. Count Shuvaloff was sent in 1872 on a special mission to London to allay the excitement and susceptibility of the English. He said that an expedition was planned for the following spring, to consist of only four and a half battalions, with the object of punishing acts of brigandage and recovering Russian prisoners. The expedition was carried out on a larger scale than that announced, and resulted in the acknowledgment two years after of a Russian protectorate by the Khan of Khiva, and the cession to Russia of the right bank of the Oxus, with the exclusive control of that river.

The English were disquieted anew by rumors of an expedition against the Merv Turkomans, and on the ground that the presence of the Russians in Merv would be likely to entail border disputes and complications with Afghanistan, which must be preserved as an independ ent zone, declared that the Indian Government would consider its tranquillity imperiled by a Russian advance to Merv. For ten years English dispatches repeatedly warned the Russian Government not to meddle with the Tekke Turkomans, and the Russian Cabinet constantly disclaimed the intention of going to Merv until within six months of its occupation. In 1869 Prince Gortchakoff offered no objection to English officers visiting Cabul, though he agreed with Lord Mayo that Russian agents should not. Afghanistan was again and again

declared to be beyond the sphere of Russia's action. There was nevertheless some correspondence between the Ameer and the Russian authorities in Turkistan from 1870 till 1878. In the latter year, when England menaced Russia in relation to the San Stefano Treaty, the Czar's Government responded by sending Gen. Stoletoff to Cabul to negotiate an alliance against England. The result was the Afghan war of 1878-79, in which Russia gave no aid to the Afghans, having no further quar rel with England, and the establishment in 1880 of Abdurrahman on the throne as the nominee and paid ally of the British Government. When, with the aid of British gifts of money and arms, Abdurrahman had established his authority at Candahar and Herat, and overcome his rival, Ayub Khan, the British Government agreed, in the summer of 1883, to pay him a fixed annual subsidy of twelve lacs of rupees out of the Indian revenues. Shere Ali and his pre decessors had received only irregular and temporary subsidies. The English Government, furthermore, changed its traditional policy by giving a pledge to the Ameer, though still refraining from a formal treaty, promising that "if any foreign power should attempt to interfere in Afghanistan, and if such interference should lead to unprovoked aggression on the dominions of your Highness, in that event the British Government would be prepared to aid you, to such extent and in such manner as may appear to the British Government necessary, in repelling it, provided your Highness follows unreservedly the advice of the British Government in regard to your external relations."

The Boundary of Afghanistan.—In the pourparlers of 1872 and 1873 the Russian Government accepted a line that would be regarded as the boundary of Afghanistan and the extreme limit of "the sphere within which Russia may be called upon to exercise her influence." Along the border of Bokhara, where Russian influence was already established, and where an advance from Tashkend in the direction of Balkh and Cabul was apprehended, a definite geographical frontier was recognized in the river Oxus, from its confluence with the Kokcha, down to Khoja Saleh, where it leaves the Afghan border and enters the steppe. This riverain boundary is not accepted by the people of the country in the upper course of the Oxus where the Galchas and Uzbecks are settled on the river-banks and the northern slopes of the Hindoo-Koosh. The large state of Karategrin lies entirely on the north side of the river, and Badakshan on the south side, but the smaller states of Wakhan, Roshan, and Shugnan, over which the Ameer of Cabul exercises a precarious and intermittent dominion, spread over both banks, as does also Darwaz, which owes fealty to the Ameer of Bokhara. All these peoples have been accustomed to appeal to the Bokharan potentate as the protector of their race against the greed and tyranny of the Afghans. Farther down the banks of the river

of the Caspian Sea, to propose the latter; nor were the English interested in defining the line by fixed landmarks, supposing as they did that the fierce brigand tribes of the desert formed an insurmountable obstacle to the approach of Russia in that direction. The districts of Aktcha, Sir-i-Pul, Maimene, Shibergan, and Andkhoi were recognized as belonging to Afghanistan; but westward of the latter point no frontier line was indicated in the agreement. When the not altogether "voluntary" submission of the Merv Turkomans, effected in disregard of the assurance given years before, disquieted the English people, the Russian Cabi. net revived the proposal of a joint delimitating commission in the spring of 1884. The head men of the Sarik and Salor tribes about the same time took the oath of allegiance. This brought the last confines of Turkomania under the scepter of the White Czar, and made his dominions conterminous with the province of Herat. The Russian proposition to survey "the Afghan frontier from Khoja-Saleh to the Persian frontier in the neighborhood of Sarakhs" was accepted by the London Cabinet. Before negotiations relative to the joint commission were concluded, the Afghan Ameer sent a military force to occupy the Sarik town of Penjdeh. All the English maps of recent years, excepting one prepared for the India office to represent especially the boundary of Persia, which draws the Afghan frontier south of Penjdeh, give the boundary as a vague, very slightly incurved line running from a point on the Heri Rud, just above Sarakhs, to Khoja-Saleh. This line was followed in the Russian staff maps. Yet the only official definition of the boundary was that embodied in the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1872-73, which bound Russia to respect the territories actually ruled at the time by Shere Ali. The oasis of Penjdeh was then in the possession of the independent Sarik Turkomans, while the country to the west, including the district of Badghis, which extends to the Borkhut spur and the Paropamisus, was uninhabited. The only district north of the Paropamisus range occupied by Afghan subjects was the country of the Jemshidis, on the head-waters of the Murghab, about Kala Nau. The same conditions existed at the time of the delimitation negotiations of 1884, except that the Salor Turkomans had settled in the pasture-lands of the Heri Rud valley, between the Borkhut mountains and Sarakhs, since the suppression of the Tekke raiders, and the head men of the Sariks of Penjdeh bad recently accepted the rule of the Czar, which was acknowledged also by the Salors. Before the forcible occupation of the town of Penjdeh by the Ameer's troops in June, 1884, the extreme Afghan frontier post on the Murghab was Bala Murghab. In Badghis and on the Heri Rud, north of the Borkhut mountains, there were no Afghan settlements or military posts. The Russian Government was therefore prepared to claim the whole region north of the Paropamisus and the Bor

khut spur, between the Murghab and the Heri Rud rivers, first opened to peaceful occupation by the suppression of the Tekke robbers who formerly overran this district in their incursions into Persia.

When M. de Giers informed Sir Edward Thornton in 1882 that Russia had no intention of advancing to Merv and Sarakhs, he at the same time impressed upon him the importance of inducing his Government to agree upon a definite boundary-line from Khoja - Saleh to the Persian frontier in the neighborhood of Sarakhs. This appeal, subsequently repeated both in St. Petersburg and in London, was totally neglected by the English Government. Meanwhile Abdurrahman Khan, having consolidated his rule in Herat and north of the Hindoo-Koosh, betrayed a disposition to encroach upon lands lying outside the line to which Russia considered that he was confined by the agreement of 1872. In the autumn of 1883 he captured Shugnan. Russia thereupon moved upon Merv and Sarakhs in the spring of the following year. The English Government then began to press in their turn for a settlement of the boundary. During the negotiations Abdurrahman seized upon Penjdeh, whereupon the Russians made another countermove to Sariyazi and Pul-i- Khatum, transgressing the line to which they had virtually agreed on the Heri Rud as a check to the Ameer's invasion of their sphere of influence at Penjdeh, and in the petty khanates that were dependencies of Bokhara.

The Delimitation Commission.-The British Government eagerly grasped the opportunity afforded by the hitherto neglected proposal of the Russian ministry to fix the three hundred or more miles of boundary left unsettled in the line of Russia's recent advances, which seemed to threaten Herat, long regarded as the "key of India." The latest Russian acquisition, Sarakhs, a strong position on the Heri Rud, in the "no-man's-land" on the Persian frontier, appeared to Englishmen to have no other motive than to creep within striking distance of Herat. The extension of the Russian strategic railroad from Kizil Arvat to Askabad, and the rapid development of commercial and military activity in Turkomania, frightened the Liberal Government in England out of their policy of "masterly inactivity." Indian troops were massed in the newly acquired districts in Beloochistan, British authority was imposingly displayed in Kelat, punitive expeditions were carried out against the unruly tribes of southern Afghanistan, and the Sibi-Quetta Railroad, torn up by the Liberals after it was partially laid by their predecessors, was begun again and pushed forward with all haste. The British Delimitation Commission was appointed at once, and composed of an imposing list of frontier and military experts and native officials, Hindoo and Mohammedan, including Afghans in the Indian service. Gen. Sir Peter Lumsden, an officer of thirty-seven years'

standing, who had acted as a member of the Military Commission to Afghanistan in 18571858, and performed other important services in the East, was made chief commissioner. The principal topographical experts were Col. Patrick Stewart, who explored the Turkoman country in 1880 in the disguise of an Armenian horse-trader, and had since been employed as a political agent in the Persian town of Khaf, near the Herat frontier; Condie Ste phen, second secretary to the legation at Teheran, a versatile linguist; and Major Napier, author of a report on the northern frontier of Persia. Not content with a formidable array of technical experts, the British authorities sent with the commission a large military guard, in order to counteract the effect of the Russian troops in Turkomania and to prepare the Afghans for a possible conflict. The Indian contingent with the military force, consisting of 200 picked men from the Bengal Lancers, 200 infantry, and several hundred armed camp-followers, under the command of Lieut.-Col. Ridgway, was to proceed through Afghanistan from Quetta, while Gen. Lumsden and the principal officers of his staff journeyed through Europe, the Caucasus, and Persia. The entire commission numbered 35 Europeans and 1,300 natives. There arose a perplexing and ignominious contretemps in regard to the march of the Indian section. The Ameer could not guarantee the safe passage of the red-coats, so lately arrayed in a deadly struggle with the Afghans, over the regular Candahar route, and refused to furnish them with an escort. They were therefore obliged finally to take the Nushkhi route through the desert along the Persian border, passing through the remotest straggling settlements of Afghans. The Russian Government appointed a subordinate officer as its representative on the Boundary Commission; but, influenced by expressions of dissatisfaction in England, recalled the appointment, and made Gen. Zelenoy chief commissioner in September, 1884, with M. Lessar, Major Alikhanoff, and other officers familiar with the frontier, as expert assist

ants.

The Indian section of the Afghan Frontier Commission, with their Sikh guard and followers, and over 2,000 animals, reached Kushan in the Herat valley in the middle of November, 1884, having been nearly two months on the march over the desert route of 800 miles along the western frontier of Afghanistan. The Ameer had proclaimed terrible penalties against any of his subjects who should interfere with their peaceful passage, and his officials were solicitous in their attentions and protection; yet the Afghans showed their animosity in every way short of attacking the party. The inhabitants of the Herat valley, on the contrary, having a grateful remembrance of English money freely expended among them, gave them every where a hearty welcome. By the population of the valley, which has received

a strong infusion of Turkoman blood, but is Persian in language and customs, their Afghan rulers are hated as much as they are feared. Sir Peter Lumsden arrived at Kushan Nov. 19. The English commissioners, on arriving at the Afghan frontier, found no trace of their Russian colleagues; but they found Cossacks picketed at Pul-i-Khatum on the Heri Rud, forty miles south of Sarakhs, and confronting the Afghan outposts at Penjdeh. Sir Peter Lumsden assumed that the plan of a peaceful demarkation was defeated, and that a state of hostilities existed. In visiting Sarakhs he held no communication with Gen. Komaroff, the Russian commander, who came to Sarakhs expressly to meet him. He went into winterquarters at Bala Murghab, south of Penjdeh, whence he incited the Afghan garrison to hold their ground, while his military subordinates directed the defensive operations. He showered gifts on the Sarik inhabitants of the district in order to induce them to renounce their allegiance to the Czar.

The Russian Advance.-Sarakhs was occupied early in 1884, prior to the negotiations in relation to the Delimitation Commission. Soon after, the Czar's representative received the submission of the elders of the Salor Turkomans settled along the Heri Rud, between Sarakhs and the Borkhut mountains, and of the Sariks, dwelling in and around Penjdeh. Sarakhs was a Persian outpost, separated by 100 miles of desert country from the next Persian garrison, but maintained as a protection against Turkoman raids. It is also the point where the caravan routes to Meshed from Merv and Bokhara, from Maimene and Afghan Turkistan, and from Herat, all converge, and therefore admirably adapted for a trading center. The Russian Government obtained possession of this point by the voluntary cession of the Shah of Persia, who needed no longer to keep up a garrison since the conquest of the Turkoman marauders by Russia. The Cossacks first occupied the deserted site of the ancient town on the opposite side of the river, which is the better military position. Stress was then laid on the fact that it was not the Persian Sarakhs, but Old Sarakhs, outside of Persian territory, that was occupied; yet, after the withdrawal of the Persian garrison, they moved into the barracks in the new town, through which the road to Herat passes. Major Alikhanoff, an astute Circassian, thoroughly versed in Oriental ways, the officer whose diplomacy had brought about the submission of the Merv Tekkes, proceeded to Penjdeh in June, 1884, and found the seat of the Sariks occupied by a strong Afghan garrison. Simultaneously with Alikhanoff's march to Penjdeh the St. Petersburg Government announced officially, on June 23, that the Sariks of Penjdeh had become subjects of the Czar. The English Cabinet replied, June 29, that Penjdeh belonged to Afghanistan. Perceiving that their intention to round off the Russian dominions by the inclu

sion of the whole Turkoman nation would meet with resistance, the St. Petersburg Government allowed Gen. Zelenoy to remain at Tiflis, and left the military authorities in Turkistan to push on the Cossack outposts as far as possible toward the limits of the Turkoman country. Gen. Rosenbach, who was made Governor-General of Turkistan in the place of Gen. Tchernajeff after the annexation of Sarakhs, in order to please the English, was now superseded by the aggressive Komaroff. The Russian lines were advanced before the arrival of the British commissioners from Old Sarakhs, which was occupied in July, 1884, to Pul-iKhatum in October and November, and on the Murghab from Merv, where a garrison was posted, in February, to Yolatan, at the edge of the oasis, in September, and in November across the desert to Sariyazi. Subsequently the Russians occupied Pul-i-Khisti, on the Kushk, south of Penjdeh, and Akrobat, on the border of Badghis proper, and advanced up the Heri Rud to Zulfikar Pass.

Gen. Lumsden entered into a lively correspondence with his superiors. The authorities at Downing Street demanded explanations of the delay in sending the Russian commissioners, and of the advance of the Russian lines. A categorical demand was made that the Russian outposts should retire from the debatable zone to their former positions pending the delimitation. To this the Russian Government returned an absolute refusal on Feb. 24, 1885, but gave assurances that its officers had received orders to avoid conflicts with the Afghans, and declared that complications could arise only if the Afghans attacked the Russian posts. Sir Peter Lumsden then advised the Afghans to maintain their present positions, but to abstain from offensive operations. The British Government assumed a threatening attitude, and made preparations for war. The Russian Government at this point offered as a last concession to accept the Zulfikar-AkrobatMaruchak line of demarkation. The hasty demand for the retirement of the Russian outposts, the English premier declared, when afterward questioned, was allowed "to lapse." On March 13, Mr. Gladstone announced on the strength of M. de Giers's conciliatory assurances, that the two governments had agreed that there should be no further advance of either the Russian or the Afghan troops while the negotiations were in progress. As no definite agreement of the sort had been entered into, Lord Granville telegraphed to know if the agreement or arrangement was accepted by the Russian Government. On March 17 came the reply ratifying the agreement, subject to a reservation-" unless in the case of some extraordinary reason "-such, for instance, as a disturbance at Penjdeh. This agreement," which had its origin in an inferential construction of Russian dispatches by Mr. Gladstone, and hence was, on second thought, explained as an arrangement," was,

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66

after the acquiescence of the Russian Government, magnified into a sacred covenant." The Disputed District. The debated region is a tract in the shape of a wedge intervening between Afghanistan and Persia. The portion principally in dispute is inclosed between the Murghab and the Heri Rud rivers, and extends from the Borkhut mountains to where the desert proper begins, near Sarakhs and YolaThe entire region is without inhabitants, except the Turkoman nomads, who pasture their flocks there during a part of the year, and some colonists planted by the Ameer of Afghanistan on the Murghab and in other places, since the frontier question arose. The southern portion, watered by the upper Kushk and its tributary streams, is the district of Badghis, formerly occupied by the Char Aimaks of Herat, but depopulated by the Khivan auxiliaries of the Shah, during the siege of Herat, and since used as a pasture and hunting ground by the Turkomans. The region to the north, traversed by the Turkomans of the Tedjend and Murghab oases in their predatory forays into Persia, has been without a settled population and known as a "no-man's-land " for two hundred years. The English sought to extend the name Badghis, that by which the northernmost district of Herat has been designated, to the whole disputed region. There is a range of hills crossing the country 36° north of the Borkhut mountains to the Heri Rud at Pul-iKhatum. This chain is called by Lessar the Elbirin-Kir. The Kushk and its tributaries wind among another congeries of low mountains, the outskirts of the Paropamisus. The whole country is abundantly watered by the numerous small tributaries of the Murghab and the Heri Rud. It is generally extremely fertile and nearly everywhere arable. Though now deserted, it once supported a large population, and contains the ruins of many towns. Poplars, mulberry-trees, willows, and other trees grow thickly along the water-courses, and pistachios stand scatteringly on the hill-sides. Grain will grow well as far as to the north of the Elbirin-Kir. In the east, along the banks of the Kushk and the Murghab, profuse irrigation produces a prolific yield of grain, rice, and many kinds of fruit. In the plains to the west are salt lakes which supply all the neighboring districts with salt. This salt is of excellent quality, and constitutes the chief export of the Turkoman population. The grazing-grounds of the Salor Turkomans are along the Heri Rud, those of the Sariks in the valleys of the Murghab and the Kushk.

The English resisted the Russian claims to the lands of the Salors and Sariks, mainly on strategical grounds. As Herat was a part of Afghanistan, and the part that it was most necessary to preserve from Russia, so whatever positions were essential for the most favorable defense of Herat must be awarded to Afghanistan. If the Salors and Sariks occupied territory in which the approaches to Herat were