Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 23

Meanwhile Russia was making its way towards the Caspian and Aral seas.

In 1835 a fort was built on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Caspian and several armed steamers were placed on its waters. Four years later war broke out with Khiva, and the khan was forced to give up some Russian prisoners he had seized. In 1847 a fort was built on the Sea of Aral, at the mouth of the Syr-Daria, whose waters formed the only safe avenue to the desert-girdled khanate of Khokand. Steamers were brought in sections from Sweden, being carried with great labor across the desert to the inland sea, on whose banks they were put together and launched. Armed with cannon, they quickly made their appearance on the navigable waters of the Syr.

The Amu-Daria is not navigable, so that the Syr at that time formed the only ready channel of approach to Khokand, and from this to the other khanates, none of which could be otherwise reached without a long and dangerous desert march. Russia thus, by planting herself at the mouth of the Syr, had gained the most available position from which to begin a career of conquest in Central Asia.

War necessarily followed these steps of invasion. In 1853 the Russians besieged and captured the fort of Ak Mechet, on the Syr, thought by its holders to be impregnable. Up the river, bordered on each side by a narrow band of vegetation from which a desert spread away, the Russians gradually advanced, finally planting a military post within thirty-two miles of Tashkend, the military key of Central Asia.

Such was the state of affairs in 1862, when war arose between the khanates themselves, and the Emir of Bokhara invaded and conquered Khokand. Russia looked on, awaiting its opportunity. It came at length in an appeal from the merchants of Tashkend for protection. The protection came in true Russian style, a Cossack force marching into and occupying the town, which has since then remained in Russian hands. The movement of invasion went on until a large portion of Khokand was seized.

This audacious procedure of the Muscovites, as the Emir of Bokhara regarded it, roused that ruler to a high pitch of fury and fanaticism.

He imprisoned Colonel Struve, an eminent Russian astronomer who was on a mission to his capital, and declared a holy war against the invading infidels.

The emir had little fear of his foes, having what he considered two impa.s.sable lines of defence. Of these the first was the desert, which enclosed his land as within a wall of sand. The second, and in his view the more impregnable, was the large number of saints that lay buried in Bokharan soil, before whose graves the infidel host would surely be stayed.

He probably soon lost faith in the saints, for the Russians quickly drove his troops out of Khokand and then invaded Bokhara itself, defeating his troops near the venerable and famous city of Samarcand, of which they immediately afterwards took possession. These infidel a.s.saults soon brought the holy war to an end, the emir being forced to cede Samarcand and three other places to Russia, the four being so chosen as to give the invaders full military control of the country.

This disaster, which fell upon Bokhara in 1868, was repeated in Khiva in 1873. Bokharan troops aided the Russians, and Bokhara was rewarded with a generous slice of the conquered territory. Khiva was overthrown as quickly as the other oases had been, and the whole of Central Asia became Russian soil. It is true that a shadow of the old government is maintained, the khans of Bokhara and Khiva still occupying their thrones. But they are mere puppets to move as the Czar of Russia pulls the strings. As for Khokand, it has disappeared from the map of Asia, being replaced by the Russian province of Ferghana.

We have thus in few words told a long and vital story, that of the steps by which Russia gained its strong foothold in Asia, and extended its boundaries from the Ural Mountains and Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean and the boundaries of China, Persia, and India, all of which may yet become part of the vast Russian empire, if what some consider the secret purpose of Russia be carried out.

Asia has been won by the sword; it is being held by other influences.

Schools have been founded among the Kirghis, and a newspaper is printed in their language. Their plundering habits have been suppressed, agriculture is encouraged, and luxuries are being introduced into the steppes, with the result of changing the ideas and habits of the nomads.

Thriving Cossack colonies have grown up on the plains, and the wandering barbarians behold with wonder the ways and means of civilization in their midst.

The same may be said of Turkestan, in which violence has been suppressed and industry encouraged, while the Russian population, alike of the steppes and of the oases, is rapidly increasing. A railroad penetrates the formerly mysterious land, trains roll daily over its soil, carrying great numbers of Asiatic pa.s.sengers, and an undreamed-of activity of commerce has taken the place of the old-time plundering raids of the half-savage Turkoman hors.e.m.e.n.

The Russian is thoroughly adapted to deal with the Asiatic. Half an Asiatic himself, in spite of his fair complexion, he knows how to baffle the arts and overcome the prejudices of his new subjects. The Russian diplomatist has all the softness and suavity of his Asiatic congeners.

He conforms to their customs and allows them to delay and prevaricate to their hearts' content. He is an adept in the art of bribery, has emissaries everywhere, and is much too deeply imbued with this Asiatic spirit for the bluntness of European methods. "You must beat about the bush with a Russian," we are told. "You must flatter them and humbug them. You must talk about everything but _the_ thing. If you want to buy a horse you must pretend you want to sell a cow, and so work gradually round to the point in view."

Thus the shrewd Russian has gained point after point from his Oriental neighbors, and has succeeded in annexing a vast territory while keeping on the friendliest of terms with his new subjects. He has respected their prejudices, left their religions untouched, dealt with them in their own ways, and is rapidly planting the Muscovite type of civilization where Asiatic barbarism had for untold ages prevailed.

No man can predict the final result of these movements. Asia has been in all ages the field of great invasions and of the sudden building up of immense empires. But the movements of the Muscovite conquerors have none of the torrent rush of those great invasions of the past. The Russian advances with extreme caution, takes no risks, and makes sure of his game before he shows his hand. He prepares the ground in front before taking a step forward, and all that he leaves in his rear falls into the strong folds of the imperial net. Gold and diplomacy are his weapons equally with the sword, and in the progress of his arms we seem to see Europe marching into Asia with a solid and unyielding front.

_THE RAILROAD IN TURKESTAN._

On the 24th of January, 1881, Edward O'Donovan, a daring traveller who had journeyed far through the wastes and wilds of Turkestan, found himself on a mountain summit not far removed from the northern boundary of Persia, from which his startled eyes beheld a spectacle of fearful import. Below him the desert stretched in a broad level far away to the distant horizon. Near the foot of the range rose a great fortress, within which at that moment a frightful struggle was taking place.

Bringing his field-gla.s.s to bear upon the scene, the traveller saw a host of terror-stricken fugitives streaming across the plain, and hot upon their steps a throng of merciless pursuers, who slaughtered them in mult.i.tudes as they fled. Even from where he stood the white face of the desert seemed changing to a crimson hue.

What the astounded traveller beheld was the death-struggle of the desert Turkomans, the hand of retribution smiting those savage brigands who for centuries had carried death and misery wherever they rode. These were the Tekke Turkomans, the tribes who haunted the Persian frontier, and whose annual raids swept hundreds of captives from that peaceful land to spend the remainder of their days in the most woful form of slavery. For a month previous General Skobeleff, the most daring and merciless of the Russian leaders, had besieged them in their great fort of Geop Tepe, an earthwork nearly three miles in circuit, and containing within its ample walls a desert nation, more than forty thousand in all, men, women, and children.

On that day, fatal to the Turkoman power, Skobeleff had taken the fort by storm, dealing death wherever he moved, until not a man was left alive within its walls except some hundreds of fettered Persian slaves.

Through its gateways a trembling mult.i.tude had fled, and upon these miserable fugitives the Russian had let loose his soldiers, horse, foot, and artillery, with the savage order to hunt them to the death and give no quarter.

Only too well was the brutal order obeyed. Not men alone, but women and children as well, fell victims to the sword, and only when night put an end to the pursuit did that terrible ma.s.sacre cease. By that time eight thousand persons, of both s.e.xes and all ages, lay stretched in death upon the plain. Within the fort thousands more had fallen, the women and children here being spared. Skobeleff's report said that twenty thousand in all had been slain.

Such was the frightful scene which lay before O'Donovan's eyes when he reached the mountain top, on his way to the Russian camp, a spectacle of horrible carnage which only a man of the most savage instincts could have ordered. "b.l.o.o.d.y Eyes" the Turkomans named Skobeleff, and the t.i.tle fairly indicated his ruthless l.u.s.t for blood. It was his theory of war to strike hard when he struck at all, and to make each battle a lesson that would not soon be forgotten. The Turkoman nomads have been taught their lesson well. They have given no trouble since that day of slaughter and revenge.

Such was one of the weapons with which the Russians conquered the desert,--the sword. It was succeeded by another,--the iron rail. It is now some twenty years since the idea of a railroad from the Caspian Sea eastward was first advanced. In 1880 a narrow-gauge road was begun to aid Skobeleff, but that daring and impetuous chief had made his march and finished his work before the rails had crept far on their way. Soon it was determined to change the narrow-gauge for a broad-gauge road, and General Annenkoff, a skilful engineer, was placed in charge in 1885, with orders to push it forward with all speed.

It was a new and bold project which the Russians had in view. Never before had a railroad been built across so bleak a plain, a treeless and waterless expanse, stretching for hundreds of miles in a dead level, over which the winds drove at will the shifting sands, constantly threatening to bury any work which man ventured to lay upon the desert's broad breast. West of Bokhara and south of Khiva stretched the great desert of Kara-k.u.m, touching the Caspian Sea on the west, the Amu-Daria River on the east, the home of the wandering Turkomans, the born foes of the settled races, but from whom all thought of disputing the Russian rule had for the time been driven by Skobeleff's death-dealing blade.

The total length of the road thus ordered to be built--extending from the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian Sea, the outpost of European Russia, to the far-away city of Samarcand, the ancient capital of Timur the Tartar, and the very stronghold of Asiatic barbarism--was little short of a thousand miles, of which several hundred were bleak and barren desert. Two immense steppes, waterless, and scorching hot in summer, lay on the route, while it traversed the oases of Kizil-Arvat, Merv, Charjui, and Bokhara. In the northern section of the last lay the famous city of Samarcand, the eastern terminus of the road. The western terminus was at Usun-ada, on the Caspian, and opposite the petroleum region of Baku, perhaps the richest oil-yielding district in the world.

General Annenkoff had special difficulties to overcome in the building of this road, of a kind never met with by railroad engineers before.

Chief among these were the lack of water and the instability of the roadway, the wind at times manifesting an awkward disposition to blow out the foundation from under the ties, at other times to bury the whole road under acres of flying sand.

These difficulties were got rid of in various ways. Fresh water, made by boiling the salt water of the Caspian and condensing the steam, was carried in vats or tuns over the road to the working parties. At a later date water was conveyed in pipes from the mountains to fill cisterns at the stations, whence it was carried in ca.n.a.ls or underground conduits along the line, every well and spring on the route being utilized.

To overcome the shifting of the sand, near the Caspian it was thoroughly soaked with salt water, and at other places was covered with a layer of clay. But there are long distances where no such means could be employed, at least two hundred miles of utter wilderness, where the surface resembles a billowy sea, the sand being raised in loose hillocks and swept from the troughs between, flying in such clouds before every wind that an incessant battle with nature is necessary to keep the road from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the wilderness, the _saxaoul_, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but whose st.u.r.dy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only the tops are now visible.

Yet despite all these efforts the sands creep insidiously on, and in certain localities workmen have to be kept employed, shovelling it back as it comes, and fighting without cessation against the forces of the desert and the winds. In the building of the road, and in this battling with the sands, Turkomans have been largely employed, having given up brigandage for honest labor, in which they have proved the most efficient of the various workmen engaged upon the road.

Aside from the peculiar difficulties above outlined, the Transcaspian Railway was remarkably favored by nature. For nearly the whole distance the country is as flat as a billiard-table, and the road so straight that at times it runs for twenty or thirty miles without the shadow of a curve. In the entire distance there is not a tunnel, and only some small cuttings have been made through hills of sand. Of bridges, other than mere culverts, there are but three in the whole length of the road, the only large one being that over the Amu-Daria. This is a hastily built, rickety affair of timber, put up only as a make-shift, and at the mercy of the stream if a serious rise should take place.

The whole road, indeed, was hastily made, with a single track, the rails simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling the saints in their graves.

Over such a road no great speed can be attained. Thirty miles an hour is the maximum, and from ten to twenty miles the average speed, while the stops at stations are exasperatingly long to travellers from the impatient West. To the Asiatics they are of no concern, time being with them not worth a moment's thought.

In the operation of this road petroleum waste is used as fuel, the refining works at Baku yielding an inexhaustible supply. The carriages are of mixed cla.s.ses, some being two stories in height, each story of different cla.s.s. There are very few first-cla.s.s carriages on the road.

As for the stations, some of them are miles from the road, that of Bokhara being ten miles away. This method was adopted to avoid exciting the prejudices of the Asiatics, who at first were not in favor of the road, regarding it as a device of Shaitan, the spirit of evil. Yet the "fire-cart," as they call it, is proving very convenient, and they have no objection to let this fiery Satan haul their grain and cotton to market and carry themselves across the waterless plains. The camel is being thrown out of business by this shrill-voiced prince of evil. The road is being extended over the oases, and will in the end bring all Turkestan under its control.

It almost takes away one's breath to think of railway stations and time-tables in connection with the old-time abiding-place of the terrible Tartar, and of the iron horse careering across the empire of barbarism, rushing into the metropolis of superst.i.tion, and waking with the scream of the steam whistle the silent centuries of the Orient.

Nothing of greater promise than this planting of the railroad in Central Asia has been performed of recent years. The son of the desert is to be civilized despite himself, and to be taught the arts and ideas of the West by the irresistible logic of steel and steam.

But this enterprise is a minor one compared with that which Russia has recently completed, that of a railway extending across the whole width of Siberia, being, with its branches, more than five thousand miles long--much the longest railway in the world. Work on this was begun in 1890, and it is now completed to Vladivostok, the chief Russian port on the Pacific, a traveller being able to ride from St. Petersburg to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean without change of cars. A branch of this road runs southward through Manchuria to Port Arthur, but as a result of the war with j.a.pan this has been transferred to China, Manchuria being wrested from the controlling grasp of Russia. It is a single-track road, but it is proposed to double-track it throughout its entire length, thus greatly increasing its availability as a channel of transport alike in war and peace.

All this is of the deepest significance. The railroad in Asia has come to stay; and with its coming the barbarism of the past is nearing its end. The sleeping giant of Orientalism is stirring uneasily in its bed, its drowsy senses stirred by the shrill alarum of the locomotive whistle. New ideas and new habits must follow in the track of the iron horse. The West is forcing itself into the East, with all its restless activity. In the time to come this whole broad continent is destined to be covered with railroads as with a vast spider-web; new industries will be established, machinery introduced, and the great region of the steppes, famous in the past only as the starting-point of conquering migrations, must in the end become an active centre of industry, the home of peace and prosperity, a new-found abiding-place of civilization and human progress.

_AN ESCAPE FROM THE MINES OF SIBERIA._

The name Siberia calls up to our minds the vision of a stupendous prison, a vast open penitentiary larger than the whole United States, a continental place of captivity which for three centuries past has been the seat of more wretchedness and misery than any other land inhabited by the human race. To that far, frozen land a stream of the best and worst of the people of Russia has steadily flowed, including prisoners of state, religious dissenters, rebels, Polish patriots, convicts, vagabonds, and all others who in any way gave offence to the authorities or stood in the way of persons in power.

Not freedom of action alone, but even freedom of thought, is a crime in Russia. It is a land of innumerable spies, of secret arrest and rapid condemnation, in which the captive may find himself on the road to Siberia without knowing with what crime he is charged, while his friends, even his wife and family, may remain in ignorance of his fate.

Every year a convoy of some twenty thousand wretched prisoners is sent off to that dismal land, including the ignorant and the educated, the debased and the refined, men and women, young and old, the horror of exile being added to indescribably by this mingling of delicate and refined men and women with the rudest and most brutal of the convict cla.s.s, all under the charge of mounted Cossacks, well armed, and bearing long whips as their most effective arguments of control.

It may be said here that the misery of this long journey on foot has been somewhat mitigated since the introduction of railroads and steamboats, and will very likely be done away with when the Trans-siberian Railway is finished; but for centuries the horrors of the convict train have piteously appealed to the charity of the world, while the sufferings and brutalities which the exiles have had to endure stand almost without parallel in the story of convict life.

The exiles are divided into two cla.s.ses, those who lose all and those who lose part of their rights. Of a convict of the former cla.s.s neither the word nor the bond has any value: his wife is released from all duty to him, he cannot possess any property or hold any office. In prison he wears convict clothes, has his head half shaved, and may be cruelly flogged at the will of the officials, or murdered almost with impunity.

Those deprived of partial rights are usually sent to Western Siberia; those deprived of total rights are sent to Eastern Siberia, where their life, as workers in the mines, is so miserable and monotonous that death is far more of a relief than something to be feared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUP OF SIBERIANS.]