being centred in an advance upon Merv, had already ridden off to Lutfabad, leaving his guest to the care of his staff. The eminent Persian was very much. offended at this want of respect, and speaking at a banquet said that he had come to compliment the Russian commander, but as the commander was not forthcoming he must depart. An aide-de-camp at once galloped off with this ultimatum to Skobeleff, who presently turned up much against his will, and organised for the Khan the mimic assault to which I have before alluded. In the evening a dinner was given in his honour. The meal, however, had hardly commenced when an officer arrived from St. Petersburg, bringing a decoration for Skobeleff and despatches from the Emperor. Hastily deserting his place by the Khan, with the feigned excuse of feeling a draught, Skobeleff commissioned an officer of inferior rank to fill his seat, while he himself moved to a place lower down to chat with the new arrival from St. Petersburg. Presently the Khan, being very much insulted, rose and said Good-night.' Skobeleff then made excuses for his breach of manners, but, remembering the draught, found himself unable to return to the head of the table. The story, which I heard from an eye-witness, is interesting only as an illustration of his whimsical and petulant temper. criticism If we were to sum up his character--and I have Final laid stress upon it, as that of the only really commanding personality whom the history of Russian advance in Central Asia has produced-we might conclude that, though a greatly gifted, Skobeleff was not a great Turkoman peasants man, being deficient in stability, in principle, and in faith. In many respects his character was typical of the Russian nation, in its present phase of development, with one foot, so to speak, planted in a barbarian past, while the other is advancing into a new world of ideas and action. To many it will seem that he died in a happy hour, both for his country, which might have suffered from his insensate levity and passion for war, and for himself, seeing that his reputation, which a premature death has now enshrined in legend, might not have permanently survived the touchstone of truth. Russian writers are very sensitive indeed of criticism upon one who was both a political idol and the darling of the army. But foreigners are, perhaps, better able than his own countrymen to ascertain the true perspective of this meteoric phenomenon. They may confess, what the ardour of a patriot might tempt him to conceal, that the light which it shed, though often dazzling, was sometimes lurid. Between Geok Tepe and the capital, Askabad, a distance of about twenty-eight miles, the railway passes through a country of more extensive cultivation and greater fertility. Tending their flocks, or riding on horses or asses, are to be seen numerous Turkomans, father and son sometimes bestriding the same animal. In these peaceful and unimposing rustics, who would divine the erewhile scourge and man-hunter of the desert? Clad in his dilapidated cotton dressing-gown or khalat, and with a huge brown sheepskin bonnet, almost as big as a grenadier's bearskin, overshadowing his dusky features, he does not perhaps look like a civilised being, but still less would you take him for a converted Dick Turpin or Claude Duval. Excellent agriculturists these ancient moss-troopers are said to be, and now that the heyday of licence and war and plunder has faded into a dream, they settle down to a peasant's exis tence with as much contentment as they formerly leaped to saddle for a foray on the frontiers of Khorasan. Askabad, which we next reach, has all the appearance of a large and flourishing place. Its station is of European proportions and appointment. Numbers of droshkies attend the arrival of the trains; and the crowded platform indicates a considerable population. Askabad I was informed that the present figures are 10,000; but these, which I believe to be an exaggerated estimate, include the troops, of which there are three rifle battalions and a regiment of Cossacks in or near the town; while two batteries of artillery are, I believe, stationed further south, at Arman Sagait. Askabad is the residence of the Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief (the two functions in a military régime being united in the same individual), and the administrative centre of Transcaspia. The present Governor is General Komaroff,' a man whose name is well known to Englishmen as the Russian commander in the famous affair on the Kushk, on March 30, 1885, which we have named from the contiguous and disputed district of Penjdeh. Into the question at issue between him and Sir Peter Lumsden I do not wish to re-enter. I afterwards met General Komaroff, and enjoyed an interesting conversation with him, to which I shall have occasion further to allude. He is a short, stout, middle-aged man, with a bald head, spectacles, and a square grizzled beard, and cannot be described as of dignified appearance. Indeed he reminded me of a university professor dressed up in uniform, and metamorphosed from a civilian into a soldier. To administrative energy he adds the tastes of a student and the enthusiasm of an antiquarian; having, as he 1 Alexander Komaroff was born in 1830, entered the army at the age of nineteen, being gazetted to the Imperial Guard, was sent to the Caucasus in 1855, served under General Mouravieff at Kars, was subsequently appointed Governor of Derbent and chief of the military inistration of the native tribes of the Caucasus; was made a ant-General in 1877, and Governor-General of Transcaspia in informed me, amassed a collection of the antiquities of Transcaspia, including a statuette, apparently of Athene, of the best Greek period, some ornaments in the style of the beautiful Kertch collection at St. Petersburg, and no less than forty specimens of coins not previously known. ment of caspia The Government of Transcaspia has, during the Govern last five years, reached such dimensions that rumours Transhave been heard of its approaching declaration of independence of the Caucasus, by the GovernorGeneral of which it is still controlled; while a short time ago General Komaroff is said to have defeated a scheme to render it subordinate to the GovernorGeneral of Turkestan, hitherto the greatest potentate of Central Asia, and to have sought from the Emperor the privilege of responsibility to him alone. If subordination to the Caucasus is perpetuated, it will only be because of the easy and uninterrupted communication between Transcaspia and that part of the empire, in contrast to European Russia, and because in time of war the Caucasus would be the base from which reinforcements and supplies would naturally be drawn. If, on the other hand, it is placed under Turkestan, it will be because of the danger of divided military action in a region so critical as the Afghan border. In any case, the increasing importance of Transcaspia affords a striking illustration of a fact, to which I shall frequently revert, viz. the shifting from east to west of the centre of gravity in the Central Asian dominions of the Czar, with its consequent bearings, of incalculable importance, upon the relations |