morning after the battle they lay in rows like freshly mown hay, as they had been swept down by the mitrailleurs and artillery. He himself saw babies bayonetted or slashed to pieces. Many women were ravished before being killed." On my mentioning that Skobeleff had solemnly assured me none had been ravished, he replied energetically, "Lots were. They were ravished by the soldiers before my eyes. He may not have known it. I could tell you many horrible things that took place, but (tapping his lips significantly with his forefinger) it is better to be silent in this world. The plunder from Geok Tepé was immense. The troops were allowed to get drunk, plunder, and kill for three days after the assault."

I

I mentioned that Mr. Cail had carried away the impression from the last interview that he, Samuel, had served as interpreter to Skobeleff during the siege. He denied this. He had been a sutler, pure and simple. He had, however, acted as interpreter to Prince Khilkoff after the war. On my asking if he had no other name besides Samuel, he replied that his family name was Gourovitch, but that he was commonly known as Samuel at Kertch. He wrote his name in my pocket-book. should add that I made no secret of my personality. What he told me was given openly, not in confidence. As he disclosed to me nothing respecting what he was bound to keep secret, I can do him no harm in giving his statements in full. On the steamer I showed him some of the illustrations appearing in my last work, "The Russians at Merv and Herat." The picture of the "Northern Gate of Merv" (page 194) delighted him.

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"How many times have I gone up and down that road," he said. 'We used to go about the fortress, scanning it, disguised as Tekkés. Do you know that inside the fortress, behind the wall, there are forty

OUR POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN.

77

English cannon ? " I replied that they were not English, but Persian ones, thirty-two in number, captured from the army of Sultan Murad Mirza in 1861. "Then if they are not English, they are of English manufacture," rejoined Samuel.

The third bell now ringing, to warn the public that the steamer was about to start, he bade me goodbye, and went ashore.

I have no wish to give undue prominence to Venkhovsky's secret mission to Cabul, but I cannot dismiss the subject without a few remarks. When the discovery was made at Kertch, rumours were reaching India from Cabul that Russian agents had repeatedly visited Afghanistan since our treaty of peace with the Ameer, and that a secret representative was still there. Samuel's story proved for the first time without doubt that there had been at least one secret mission to Cabul since 1881, and thereby gave an air of probability to the statement that others had been there also. This was something.

But the true bearings of Venkhovsky's mission can only be understood by a reference to the condition of political affairs at the time it reached Cabul. Europe, in the early part of 1882, was in a state of agitation. The rising in Herzegovina had found England's sympathy to rest with Austria, and General Skobeleff, chagrined at Mr. Gladstone's falling off, had used ominous language at the famous Geok Tepé banquet with reference to Vienna and India. Already, even then, the Egyptian Question was exciting rival ambitions among the European Powers, and Russia had taken up a diplomatic attitude decidedly hostile to this country. If Venkhovsky's mission had a political aim, the time was certainly well chosen for preparing the ground in Central Asia for operations against India, in the event of a necessity arising to coerce England in Europe.

But whether the expedition had a political purport or not, it was certainly attended with geographical results of the highest importance. There is, I believe, no published march-route existing of the direct road between Herat and Cabul. The road has never yet been traversed by an English explorer, and we know so little about it that Colonel Malleson, in his admirable "Herat," goes back to 1506 for a description of the highway! In 1875 General Sir Charles MacGregor made preparations for effecting the survey, but was foolishly hindered from doing so by the over-scrupulous and timid officials at Simla at the very moment he was setting out from Meshed. Thus we have no survey of a road which has been carefully investigated and mapped by a couple of clever Russian officers, in a country which we were assured when Candahar was evacuated would remain wholly under our influence. So little is this the case that Russia can send officers riding hither and thither throughout Afghanistan and maintain agents at Cabul, while we, who are paying the Ameer £120,000 a year and giving him armaments to fit out a fresh army, are forbidden to send not only any agent to his capital, but even solitary English officers or merchants across the frontier. Such a policy is, on the face of it, a foolish An independent Afghanistan is an idle dream. The Gladstone Government are simply pandering to the treachery of a prince who has given no real evidence whatever that he is loyally disposed towards England, or that he would be her ally in the event of complications with Russia.

one.

CHAPTER VI.

CRUISING ALONG THE COAST OF THE CAUCASUS.

Departure from Kertch-The Romance of the Caucasus-Wanted, a Historian-The Conflict for the Possession of the CaucasusAnapa-Its History-The Slave Trade, Old and New-Traffic in Young Girls-Novorossisk-The Colonization of the Stavropol Plains-Rapid Growth of Rostoff-on-the-Don-Future of Novorossisk-A Second Railway projected between the Caspian and Black Sea-Petroleum in the Taman Peninsula-The French Company at Novorossisk-Bartering Girls for HerringsJourneying along the Coast-A happy, memorable Day—Soukhum Kalé-What the Turks did and did not do in 1877-Armed Mountaineers-Poti-Arrival at Batoum.

WE left Kertch at midnight, the moon shining brightly upon the angry waters of the bay, and a wild wind blowing. Several times during the night I was awakened by the tossing of the vessel, but when a sudden cessation of motion finally aroused me at daybreak, and I looked out of the porthole, I found the weather calm and bright again, and the Grand Duke Michael anchored in the beautiful bay of Anapa.

From this point really commences the modern, exciting, romantic part of the Caucasian coast. The Taman Peninsula, and, as a matter of fact, the whole of the region on both sides of the Straits of Yenekale, are full of classical associations. A whole volume might be written upon the rise and fall of the Greek colonies, which at one period rendered the entrance to the Sea of Azoff busier and more flourishing than any part of the Russian littoral at the present day. For those who hate

classical history, and prefer that of the Middle Ages, the same region is full of mute memorials of the wonderful trade centres established by the Genoese. But, once we get away from the lower ground round about the Straits, and reach the mountains of the Caucasus, practically commencing at Anapa, the interest henceforth is neither classical nor Genoese, but arises from the modern fearful struggle which the chivalry of the Caucasus waged against desperate odds until the other day. The story of that struggle has yet to be written by some sympathetic historian. A finer subject an earnest and ambitious writer could hardly desire. For a period of two centuries there is not a decade without its campaign, and at times there are a dozen in as many years. Pitched battles and sieges occur by hundreds; of skirmishes, reconnaissances, raids, and ambushes there are thousands. Generation after generation of yellow-haired Russians swarm to the Caucasus and pierce its defiles by land, or invade the coast and attack its flanks from the Caspian and the Black Sea, and one after the other the Persian, the Turk, and the Caucasian go down before them; the latter the toughest resister of the three, and maintaining for a solid century such a defence as we can find no parallel for in ancient or modern history. Considering the marvellous character of that racial conflict, it is remarkable that neither in English nor in Russian is there any work extant describing from beginning to end the conquest of the Caucasus. Abundance of materials lie scattered through European works of travel; and as for Russia, it would take years to go through the records, the narratives, and the fragmentary histories in the Library of the General Staff and other great collections of books. Yes, the materials are numerous and accessible enough, but neither in Russia nor out of it does there seem to be any man anxious to gain a reputation for himself by evolving a history out of them.