At length, after a journey of four hundred versts, Orenburg was reached. At this frontier town, situated almost on the verge of civilization, our traveller was compelled to make a short sojourn. He had letters of introduction to present, which procured him some useful friends; a servant to engage, provisions to purchase, information to collect about the route to Khiva, and his English gold and notes to convert into Russian coin. Through the good offices of a Moslem gentleman, he was able to engage a Tartar, named Nazar—not five feet high—as a servant; and after some delay he obtained from the military chief a podorojoraya, or passport, as far as Kasala, or Fort No. 1. This pass ran as follows: “By theorder of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander, the son of Nicolas, Autocrat of the whole of Russia, etc., etc. From the town of Orsk to the town of Kasala, to the Captain of the English service, Frederick, the son of Gustavus Burnaby, to give three horses, with a driver, for the legal fare, without delay. Given in the town of Orenburg, 15th December, 1875.”
The next day, Frederick, “the son of Gustavus Burnaby,” with his Tartar servant, took their departure from Orenburg, and in a few minutes were trotting along the frozen surface of the river Ural. Every now and then they fell in with a caravan of rough, shaggy, undersized camels, drawing sleighs laden with cotton from Tashkent; or a Cossack galloped by, brandishing his long spear; or a ruddy-faced Kirghiz slowly caracolled over the shining snow. Three stations were passed in safety, and Burnaby resolved on halting at the fourth, Krasnojorsk, for refreshment. But as the afternoon closed in, the Tartar driver began to lash his weary jades impatiently; as an excuse for his vehemence, pointing to the clouds that were rising before them, and the signs of a gathering snowstorm. Soon the air was filled with flakes; the darkness rapidly increased; the driver lost his way, and, at length, the team came to a standstill, breast deep in a snow-drift. What was to be done? It was equally impossible to go forward or to return; there was no wood in the neighbourhood with which to kindle a fire, no shovel with which to make a snow house; nothing could the belated wayfarer do but endure the bitter cold and the silent darkness, and wait for morning. Burnaby suffered much from the exposure, but the greatdifficulty was to prevent himself from yielding to the fatal lethargy which extreme cold induces—from falling into that sleep which turns inevitably into death. How he rejoiced when the day broke, and he was able to despatch the driver on one of the horses for assistance; and how he rejoiced when the man returned with three post horses and some peasants, and the road was regained, and the journey resumed, and the station reached at last! There they rested and refreshed themselves, before, with invigorated spirits, they dashed once again into the snow-bound depths of the steppes.
After a while the aspect of the country grew more cheery. The low chain of mountains to the north-east was sometimes abruptly broken, and a prominent peak thrust its summit into the interval. Through the fleecy snow various coloured grasses were visible. Olive-tinted branches, and dark forests of fir and pine, contrasted strongly with the whitely shining expanse that spread as far as the eye could see. Spider-like webs of frozen dew hung from the branches. The thin icicles glistened like prisms with all the colours of the rainbow. Thus, through a succession of fairy landscapes, such as the dwellers in Western lands can form but a faint idea of, the travellers dashed onward to Orsk.
Then the face of the country underwent another change. They were fairly in the region of the steppes—those wide and level plains which, during the brief summer, bloom with luxuriant vegetation, and are alive with the flocks and herds of the nomads, but in the long drear winter, from north to south and east to west, are buried deep beneath frozen snow.Wherever you direct your gaze it rests upon snow, snow, still snow; shining with a painful glare in the mid-day sun; fading into a dull, grey, melancholy ocean as noon lapses into twilight. “A picture of desolation which wearies by its utter loneliness, and at the same time appals by its immensity; a circle of which the centre is everywhere, and the circumference nowhere.” Travel, in this world-beyond-the-world, in this solitude which Frost and Winter make all their own, tests the courage and endurance of a man, for it makes no appeal to the imagination or the fancy, it charms the eye with no pleasant pictures, suggests no associations to the mind. But it has its dangers, as Major Burnaby experienced. He had left the station of Karabootak (three hundred and seventeen miles from Orsk), and as the road was comparatively smooth, and the wind had subsided, he leaned back in his sleigh and fell asleep. Unluckily he had forgotten to put on his thick gloves, and his hands, slipping from the fur-lined sleeves of his pelisse, lay exposed to the full potency of the cold air. In a few minutes he awoke with a feeling of intense pain; and looking at his hands, he saw that the finger-nails were blue, blue too the fingers and back of the hands, while the wrists and lower part of the arms had assumed the hue of wax. They were frost-bitten! He called his servant, and made him rub the skin with some snow in the hope of restoring the vitality. This he did for some minutes; but, meanwhile, the pain gradually ascended up the arms, while the lower portion of the arms was dead to all feeling, all sensation. “It is no good,” said Nazar, looking sorrowfully at his master; “we must drive on as fast as possible to the station.”
The station was some miles off. Miles? Each mile seemed to the tortured traveller a league; each league a day’s journey; the physical pain consumed him, wore him down as mental anguish might have done. But at last the station was reached; Burnaby sprang from the sleigh, rushed into the waiting-room, and to three Cossacks whom he met there showed his hands. Straightway they conducted him into an outer apartment, took off his coat, bared his arms, and plunged him into a tub of ice and water up to the shoulders. He felt nothing.
“Brother,” said the eldest of the soldiers, shaking his head, “it is a bad job; you will lose your hands.”
“They will drop off,” remarked another, “if we cannot get back the circulation.”
“Have you any spirit with you?” asked a third.
Nazar, on hearing this inquiry, immediately ran out, and returned with a tin bottle containing naphtha for cooking purposes; upon which the Cossacks, taking the Major’s arms out of the icy water, proceeded to rub them with the strong spirit.
Rub, rub, rub; the skin peeled under their horny hands, and the spirit irritated the membrane below. At last a faint sensation like tickling—we are using the Major’s own words—pervaded the elbow-joints, and he slightly flinched.
“Does it hurt?” asked the eldest Cossack.
“A little.”
“Capital, brothers,” he continued; “rub as hard as you can;” and after continuing the friction until the flesh was almost flayed, they suddenly plunged his arms again into the ice and water. This time, the pain was sharp.
“Good,” exclaimed the Cossacks. “The more it hurts, the better chance you have of saving your hands.” And after a short time they let him remove his arms from the tub.
“You are fortunate, little father,” said the eldest Cossack. “If it had not been for the spirit your hands would have dropped off, even if you had not lost your arms.”
“Rough, kind-hearted fellows were these poor soldiers,” adds Major Burnaby; “and when I forced on the oldest of them a present for himself and comrades, the old soldier simply said, ‘Are we not all brothers when in misfortune? Would you not have helped me if I had been in the same predicament?’”
The Major shook his hand heartily, and retired to the waiting-room to rest upon the sofa, as the physical shock he had undergone had for the moment thoroughly prostrated him. Moreover, his arms were sore and inflamed, the spirit having in some places penetrated the raw flesh; and several weeks elapsed before he thoroughly recovered from the effects of his carelessness.
At Terekli, about five hundred miles from Orenburg, our traveller entered the province of Turkistan, and found himself in the region which acknowledges the authority of General Kauffmann—a restless and ambitious soldier, to whose energy much of Russia’s recent advance eastward would seem to be due. He still pushed forward with characteristic resolution, braving the terrors of the climate and the dangers of the road in his determined purpose to reach Khiva. At one station no horses were to be obtained, and, instead,three gigantic camels were harnessed to the tiny sleigh. A strange spectacle! “I have tried many ways of locomotion in my life, from fire-balloons to bicycles, from canoes and bullocks to cows, camels, and donkeys; whilst in the East the time-honoured sedan of our grandfathers has occasionally borne me and my fortunes; but never had I travelled in so comical a fashion. A Tartar rode the centre camel. His head-gear would have called attention, if nothing else had, for he wore a large black hat, which reminded me of an inverted coal-scuttle, whilst a horn-like protuberance sticking out from its summit gave a diabolical appearance to his lobster-coloured visage. The hat, which was made of sheepskin, had the white wool inside, which formed a striking contrast to the flaming countenance of the excited Tartar. He had replaced the usual knout used for driving, by a whip armed with a thin cord lash, and he urged on his ungainly team more by the shrill sounds of his voice than by any attempt at flagellation, the Tartar seldom being able to get more than four miles an hour from the lazy brutes.
“All of a sudden the camel in the centre quickly stopped, and the rider was precipitated head-over-heels in the snow. Luckily, it was soft falling; there were no bones broken, and in a minute or two he was again in the saddle, having changed the system of harnessing, and placed one of the camels as leader, whilst the other two were driven as wheelers. We got on very fairly for a little while, when the foremost of our train having received a rather sharper application of the lash than he deemed expedient remonstrated with his rider by lying down. Coaxingand persuasion were now used; he was promised the warmest of stalls, the most delicious of water, if he would only get up. But this the beast absolutely declined to do, until the cold from the snow striking against his body induced him to rise from the ground.
“We now went even slower than before. Our driver was afraid to use his whip for fear of another ebullition of temper on the part of the delinquent, and confined himself to cracking his whip in the air. The sounds of this proceeding presently reaching the ears of the leader, perhaps made him think that his companions were undergoing chastisement. Anyhow, it appeared to afford him some satisfaction, for, quickening his stride, he compelled his brethren behind to accelerate their pace; and after a long, wearisome drive we arrived at our destination.”
Under the influence of milder weather the aspect of the country rapidly modified and brightened, and instead of a uniform sheet of frozen snow, broad patches of vegetation met the eye. On these the Kirghiz horses were browsing with evident delight. How they live through the winter is a mystery, as their owners seldom feed them with corn, and they are compelled to trust to the scanty grasses which may still be partially alive underneath the snow. Nor are they in any way protected from the cold. As a necessary consequence, the spring finds them reduced to mere skeletons, whose ribs are barely covered by their parchment-like skin; but they soon gain in flesh and strength when once the rich pasturage of the steppes is at their disposal. Their powers of endurance are wonderful; and without rest, or water, or food, they will accomplish surprising distances, maintaining afirst-rate speed. An instance is on record of a Kirghiz chief having galloped two hundred miles, over a rocky and mountainous ground, in twenty-four hours. A Russian detachment of cavalry, mounted on Kirghiz horses, marched 333 miles in six days.
Major Burnaby was soon apprised that he was nearing the Sea (or Lake) of Aral by the salt breeze which blew persistently in his face. The whole district for miles around was impregnated with salt, and the springs and streams had all a brackish taste and strong saline flavour. At Nicolaivskaya his road touched close upon the north-eastern extremity of the sea. This great inland basin of brackish water is separated from the Caspian by the dense plateau of Ust-Urt. It measures about 260 miles from north to south, and 125 from east to west. On the north-east it receives the waters of the Syr-Daria, or Jaxartes; on the south-east those of the Amu-Daria, or Oxus. As it is on the same level with the Caspian, we may reasonably suppose that both seas were at one time connected. Owing to the excessive evaporation which takes place, it is understood to be decreasing in size.
At Kasala, or Fort No. 1, our traveller struck the Syr-Daria, some forty or fifty miles above its outlet in the Aral. Kasala is inhabited by nomad Kirghiz, who pitch their kibitkas in its outskirts in the winter, to resume their migratory life with the first breath of spring; by Russian and Tartar merchants, who dwell in one-storied houses, built of brick or cement; and by a motley population of Greeks, Khivans, Bokharans, Tashkentians, and Turcomans generally, attracted thither by the hope ofgain. Owing to its geographical position, it is the centre of a considerable trade; for all goods to Orenburg from Western Turkistan must pass through it. Its civil population numbers about 5000 souls; its garrison consists of about 350 infantry and 400 cavalry, and it is also the head-quarters in winter of the sailors of the Aral fleet, which is made up of four small steamers of light draught. As for the fort, it is simply an earthwork, constructed in the shape of a half-star, with a bastion on the south extending to the bank of the Syr-Daria. A dry ditch, thirty feet broad by twelve feet deep, and a parapet, eight feet high and twelve feet thick, surround it. Sufficiently strong to overawe the Kirghiz, it could offer no effective resistance to an European force.
Major Burnaby paid a visit to a Kirghiz kibitka, or tent, and his description of it may be compared with Mr. Atkinson’s. Inside it was adorned with thick carpets of various hues, and bright-coloured cushions, for the accommodation of the inmates. In the centre a small fire gave out a cloud of white smoke, which rose in coils and wreaths to the roof, and there escaped through an aperture left for the purpose. The fuel used is saxaul, the wood of the bramble tree, and it emits an acrid, pungent odour. The women in the tent had their faces uncovered; they received their visitor with a warm welcome, and spread some rugs for him to sit down by their side. They were all of them moon-faced, with large mouths, but good eyes and teeth.
The master of the kibitka, who was clad in a long brown robe, thickly wadded to keep out the cold,poured some water into a large caldron, and proceeded to make tea, while a young girl handed round raisins and dried currants. A brief conversation then arose. The Kirghiz were much surprised to learn that their visitor was not a Russian, but had come from a far Western land, and were even more surprised to find that he had brought no wife with him—a wife, in the opinion of the Kirghiz, being as indispensable to a man’s happiness as a horse or camel. In entering into matrimony, the Kirghiz have one great advantage over the other Moslem races; they see the girls whom they wish to marry, and are allowed to converse with them before the bargain is concluded between the parents, one hundred sheep being the average price given for a young woman.
On the 12th of January Major Burnaby left Kasala for Khiva. His retinue consisted of three camels, loaded with a tent, forage, and provisions, his Tartar servant, who bestrode the largest camel, and a Kirghiz guide, who, like himself, was mounted on horseback. His provisions included stchi, or cabbage soup, with large pieces of meat cut up in it, which, having been poured into two large iron stable buckets, had become hard frozen, so that it could be easily carried slung on a camel’s back. He also took with him twenty pounds of cooked meat. A hatchet, to chop up the meat or cut down brushwood for a fire, and a cooking lamp, with a supply of spirit, formed part of his equipment.
Crossing the icy surface of the Syr-Daria, our traveller once more plunged into the solitude of thesteppes, bravely facing the storm-wind and the ridges of snow which rolled before it, like the wave-crests of a frozen sea. After a five hours’ march, he called a halt, that the camels might rest and be fed—for they will feed only in the daytime; wherefore it is wise to march them as much as possible during the night. Their ordinary pace is about two miles and a third in an hour; and the best plan is to start at midnight, unload them for about two hours in the day to feed, and halt at sunset: thus securing sixteen hours’ work per day, and accomplishing a daily journey of at least thirty-seven miles.
The kibitka was soon raised. “Imagine,” says our traveller, “a bundle of sticks, each five feet three inches in length, and an inch in diameter; these are connected with each other by means of cross sticks, through the ends of which holes are bored, and leather thongs passed. This allows plenty of room for all the sticks to open out freely; they then form a complete circle, about twelve feet in diameter, and five feet three in height. They do not require any pressing into the ground, for the circular shape keeps them steady. When this is done, a thick piece of cashmar, or cloth made of sheep’s wool, is suspended from their tops, and reaches to the ground. This forms a shield through which the wind cannot pass. Another bundle of sticks is then produced. They are all fastened at one end to a small wooden cross, about six inches long by four broad; a man standing in the centre of the circle raises up this bundle in the air, the cross upwards, and hitches their other ends by means of little leather loops one by one on the different upright sticks which form the circular walls.The result is, they all pull against each other, and are consequently self-supporting; another piece of cloth is passed round the outside of this scaffolding, leaving a piece uncovered at the top to allow the smoke to escape. One stick is removed from the uprights which form the walls. This constitutes a door, and the kibitka is complete.”
While the Major and his followers were enjoying a meal of rice and mutton, and a glass of hot tea, three Khivans rode up to them—a merchant and his two servants. The Khivan merchant was strongly built, and about five feet ten inches in height. He wore a tall, conical black Astrakhan hat; an orange-coloured dressing-gown, thickly quilted, and girt about the loins with a long, red sash; and over all, enveloping him from hand to foot, a heavy sheepskin mantle. His weapons consisted of a long, single-barrelled gun, and a short, richly mounted sabre. An exchange of civilities followed, and then both parties retired to rest. At about three o’clock in the morning, after some difficulty with his guide and camel-driver, the Major resumed his march, and for six hours the weary tramp and toil over the frost-bound plain continued. At nine a halt was called, soup was made, and the party breakfasted. By the time they were ready to set out again, the Khivan merchant’s caravan had come up, and all went on together.
In advance rode the guide, singing a song in praise of mutton, and descriptive of his partiality for that succulent meat. The Kirghiz poets make the sheep the special subject of their metrical eulogium; in truth, it fills in their poetry as conspicuous a place asthe dove in the love-songs of the Latin bards. Nor is to be wondered at. The sheep represents the wealth, the property of the nomads. During the summer and autumn they live upon their milk, and never think of killing them except to do honour to a guest by serving up before him a leg of mutton. In the winter they are, of course, obliged very frequently to sacrifice the highly esteemed animal, but they live upon horseflesh and camel’s flesh as much as they can. Their clothing is furnished by the sheep, being made entirely of sheep’s wool wrought into a coarse homespun. Finally, if they want to buy a horse, a camel, or a wife, they pay in sheep; and a man’s worth in the world is reckoned by the numbers of his flock.
On the following day, in the course of their march, the travellers came upon a Kirghiz encampment, the members of which were considerably excited by Major Burnaby’s announcement of his desire to purchase a whole sheep. The head of the principal kibitka, accompanied by a pretty Kirghiz girl, hastened to conduct him to the sheepfold, that he might select an animal, and the fattest of the flock became his for the small sum of four roubles. The pretty young girl acted as butcher, receiving the skin and head in acknowledgment of her trouble, and the carcase was conveyed to the Major’s tent, where it was duly cooked, and devoured by his followers, who showed the most intense appreciation of his liberality.
The march being resumed, Major Burnaby made for a place called Kalenderhana, instead of the Russian settlement of Petro-Alexandrovsky, having a shrewd suspicion that if he went thither, as thegovernor of Kasala had desired, he would, in some way or other, be prevented from reaching Khiva. Pushing forward steadily, he left his Khivan merchant far behind, and strode across an undulating country in the direction of south-south-west. Next he came into a salt district, barren and dreary; and afterwards reached the desert of Jana-Daria, the dried-up bed of a river, which is lost in the sand. Still continuing his march, he came upon an unbounded ocean of sand, which, in the glaring sunshine, glittered like a sea of molten gold. When this was traversed, the country grew pleasanter and more fertile. Traces of game appeared. Sometimes a brown hare darted through the herbage; while in the distance herds of saigak, or antelopes, bounded with elastic tread across the sward. A chain of mountains running east and west rose up before the wanderer’s path, and presented a picturesque spectacle, with their broken crests, sharp pinnacles, and masses of shining quartz. Upon their rugged sides could be traced the furrows ploughed by the torrents which the spring lets loose and feeds with its abundant rains. Through a dark and deep defile, about seven miles long, the little company penetrated the mountain barrier of the Kazan-Tor, and descended into a broad plain, overspread by a network of canals for irrigation, where a striking indication of the desultory but ceaseless hostilities waged between the Kirghiz and the Turcomans was presented in the rude fortifications, a high ditch and a wattled palisade, that encircled every little village. Kalenderhana was fortified in this manner. Here Major Burnaby was warmly welcomed, and in great state escorted to his Kirghizguide’s house, or kibitka, where a curious throng quickly surrounded him, and proceeded to examine, and comment unreservedly upon, every part of his attire. Major Burnaby, if less outspoken, was not less curious, and carefully noted that the hostess was a good-looking woman, clad in a flowing white dressing-gown, with a whiter turban, folded many times around her small head. The brother-in-law, a short hump-backed fellow, had a horse to sell, which Major Burnaby expressed his willingness to purchase, if he went to Khiva. The guide had been ordered by the Russian governor of Kasala to conduct the Englishman to Petro-Alexandrovsky, and at first he was reluctant to run the risk of punishment; but the domestic pressure put upon him could not be resisted, and he agreed to go to Khiva, on condition that the Major completed his bargain with the horse-dealer. This was at last arranged, and a Tartar being sent forward with a letter to the Khan, requesting permission to visit his capital, the traveller resumed his journey, with Nazar proudly seated astride the new purchase.
A brief ride carried them to the bank of the great Amu-Daria, the Oxus of Alexander the Great, which at this time was frozen over, presenting a solid highway of ice, half a mile in breadth. There they met with some Khivan merchants—stalwart men, with dark complexions and large eyes, dressed in long red thickly wadded dressing-gowns and cone-shaped black lambskin hats. A caravan of camels was crossing the river, and numerous arbas, or two-wheeled carts, each drawn by one horse, passed to and fro. Every man whom they encountered saluted them with thecustomary Arab greeting, “Salam aaleikom!” to which the response was always given, “Aaleikom salam!” Soon after crossing the frozen river, Major Burnaby determined to halt for the night; and the guide began to look about for suitable quarters. He pulled up at last by the side of a large, substantial-looking square building, built of clay. A rap at the high wooden gates brought out an old man bent nearly double with age, who, on hearing that the travellers wanted a night’s hospitality, immediately called to his servants to take charge of the horses and camels, and across the square-walled courtyard ushered Major Burnaby into his house. The guest-room was spacious and lofty. One end of it was covered with thick carpets; this was the place of honour for visitors. In the centre a small square hearth was filled with charcoal embers, confined within a coping about three inches high. On the coping stood a richly chased copper ewer—which might have been dug out of the ruins of the buried Pompeii, so classic was it in shape and appearance—with a long swan-like neck, constructed so as to assist the attendant in pouring water over the hands of his master’s guests before they began their repast. On one side of the hearth was a square hole about three feet deep, filled with water, and reached by a couple of steps. It was the place of ablution—something like theimpluviumin a Roman villa—and its sides were lined with ornamental tiles. The windows were represented by two narrow slits, each about two feet long by six inches wide, while some open wooden trellis-work supplied the place of glass.
After a brief absence the host reappeared, carryingin his hand a large earthenware dish full of rice and mutton, while his servants followed, with baskets of bread and hard-boiled eggs. A pitcher of milk was also produced, and an enormous melon, weighing quite twenty-five pounds. When the host and his visitor had completed their repast, they began to converse, the Khivan asking many questions about the countries which the Englishman had travelled. To his inquiry whether there were camels in England, Major Burnaby replied with an amusing description of our railways and locomotives.
“We have trains,” he said, “composed of arbas with iron wheels; they run upon long strips of iron, which are laid upon the ground for the wheels to roll over.”
“Do the horses drag them very fast?” asked the Khivan.
“We do not use live horses, but we make a horse of iron and fill him with water, and put fire under the water. The water boils and turns into steam. The steam is very powerful; it rushes out of the horse’s stomach, and turns large wheels which we give him instead of legs. The wheels revolve over the iron lines which we have previously laid down, and the horse, which we call an engine, moves very quickly, dragging the arbas behind him; they are made of wood and iron, and have four wheels, not two, like your arbas in Khiva. The pace is so great that if your Khan had an iron horse and a railway, he could go to Kasala in one day.”
Next morning, after remunerating his host for his hospitality, Major Burnaby proceeded towards the goal of his daring enterprise. He passed throughthe busy trading town of Oogentel, the first in Khivan territory on the road from Kalenderhana, and, as an Englishman, attracted the attention of the population. This attention grew into wild excitement, when he found his way to a barber, intent upon getting rid of a beard of thirteen weeks’ growth. In Oogentel the people shave their heads and not their chins; so that the traveller’s desire to have his chin shaved, instead of his head, begat an extraordinary sensation. An increasing crowd gathered round the barber’s shop; moullahs (or priests), camel-drivers, and merchants jostling one another in their anxiety to obtain good points of view, like the London populace on the Lord Mayor’s Show day. The thought occurred to Major Burnaby that this fanatical Moslem multitude might not be displeased if the barber cut an unbeliever’s throat, and it was not without a qualm he resigned himself to his hands. No such catastrophe happened, however; but the barber, rendered nervous by the accumulated gaze of hundreds of eyes, let slip the thin strip of steel which did duty for a razor, and inflicted a slight wound on his customer’s cheek. As no soap was used, and the substitute for a razor was innocent of “edge,” the operation was sufficiently disagreeable; and if the crowd were sorry, Major Burnaby was heartily rejoiced when it came to an end and he was free to continue his journey.
At nine versts from Oogentel he and his party crossed the canal of the Shabbalat, and rode through a barren tract of sand until they arrived at a cemetery. The tombs were made of dried clay, and fashioned into the strangest shapes; while over several of thelarger floated banners or white flags, from poles ten or twelve feet high, indicating the last resting-place of some unknown and unchronicled hero.Multi fortes vixerunt ante Agamemnona; but they have found no bard to record their deeds of prowess in immortal verse. The Khivan warriors who fell in defence of their wild father-land must sleep for ever in nameless graves.
At a village called Shamahoolhur, the traveller was received with true Khivan hospitality. His entertainer was a fair-looking man, with a genial address and a hearty glance in his dark eyes, and appeared, from his surroundings, to be possessed of considerable wealth. He was a sportsman, and kept several hawks; these birds being used in Khiva to fly at the saigahs and hares. The bird strikes his victim between its eyes with a force which stuns or confuses it, so that it can make no resistance or attempt at escape when the hounds seize it.
“Do you not hunt in this way in your country?” said the Khivan.
“No; we hunt foxes, but only with hounds, and we ourselves follow on horseback.”
“Are your horses like our own?” he asked.
“No; they are most of them stouter built, have stronger shoulders, and are better animals; but though they can gallop faster than your horses for a short distance, I do not think they can last so long.”
“Which do you like best, your horse or your wife?” inquired the man.
“That depends upon the woman,” I replied; and the guide, here joining in the conversation, said thatin England they did not buy or sell their wives, and that I was not a married man.
“What! you have not got a wife?”
“No; how could I travel if I had one?”
“Why, you might leave her behind, and lock her up, as our merchants do with their wives when they go on a journey!”
The next morning Major Burnaby encountered on the road the messenger he had despatched to Khiva. He was accompanied by two Khivan noblemen, one of whom courteously saluted the English traveller, and explained that the Khan had sent him to escort him into the city, and bid him welcome.
They rapidly approached the capital, and above its belt of trees could see its glittering crown of minarets and domes. The landscape round about it was very pleasant to see, with its leafy groves, its walled orchards, and its avenues of mulberry trees; and recalled to the traveller’s mind the descriptions which figure in the pages of Oriental story-tellers. A swift ride brought the party to the gates of Khiva. The city is built in an oblong form, and surrounded by two walls; of which the outer is not less than fifty feet in height, and constructed of baked bricks, with the upper part of dried clay. This forms the first line of defence. At a quarter of a mile within it rises the second wall, somewhat lower than the first, and protected by a dry ditch. It immediately surrounds the tower. The space between the two walls is used as a market, and high above the throng of vendors and buyers, and the press of cattle, horses, sheep, and camels, rises the cross-beam of the ghastly gallows, on which all people convicted of theft are executed.
But as we have already spoken of this now famous city, we must confine ourselves in these pages to Major Burnaby’s individual adventures. Lodging was provided for him in the house of his escort, and directly on his entry he was served with refreshments. Afterwards he was conducted to the bath. In the evening a succession of visitors arrived; and it was late when the Major was at liberty to seek repose.
In the afternoon of the following day two officials arrived from the Khan, with an escort of six men on horseback and four on foot, to conduct the English officer to the palace. Mounting his horse, he rode forth, preceded by the six horsemen, and with an official on either side; the rear being brought up by Nazar, with some attendants on foot, who lashed out freely with their long whips when the staring crowd drew inconveniently near thecortége. Fresh sightseers arrived every moment, for the name of England exercises a charm and a power in Khiva, where people are never weary of talking of the nation which holds in fee the gorgeous Indian empire, and is regarded as the rival and inevitable foe of the White Czar. The very housetops were lined with curious eyes. Through the hum and din of voices the Englishman proceeded to the Khan’s residence; a large building, with pillars and domes reflecting the sun’s rays from their bright glazed tiles. At the gates stood a guard of thirty or forty men with flashing scimitars. The company passed into a smallcourtyard, from which a door opened into a low passage, and this led to some squalid corridors, terminating in a large square room, where was seated the treasurer, with three moullahs, busily engaged in counting up his money. He made a sign to the attendants, and a large wooden box was at once pushed forward, and offered to Major Burnaby as a seat. An interval of fifteen minutes, as the playwrights say, followed. Then a messenger entered the room, and announced that the Khan was at liberty to receive the stranger. Away through a long corridor, and across an inner courtyard, to the reception-hall—a large dome-shaped tent or kibitka. A curtain was drawn aside, and the Englishman found himself face to face with the celebrated Khan.
The portrait he draws of the Khivan potentate differs in some particulars from that drawn by Mr. MacGahan (see p. 283):—“He is taller than the average of his subjects, being quite five feet ten in height, and is strongly built. His face is of a broad massive type; he has a low square forehead, large dark eyes, a short straight nose, with dilated nostrils, and a coal-black beard and moustache. An enormous mouth, with irregular but white teeth, and a chin somewhat concealed by his beard, and not at all in character with the otherwise determined appearance of his face, must complete the picture. He did not look more than eight and twenty, and had a pleasant genial smile, and a merry twinkle in his eye, very unusual amongst Orientals; in fact, a Spanish expression would describe him better than any English one I can think of. He ismuy simpatico. . . . The Khan was dressed in a similar sort of costume to thatgenerally worn by his subjects, but it was made of much richer materials, and a jewelled sword was lying by his feet. His head was covered by a tall black Astrakhan hat, of a sugar-loaf shape.”
Tea having been served in a small porcelain cup, the Khan entered into conversation with his visitor, through the medium of Nazar, a Kirghiz interpreter, and a moullah. At first it turned upon the relations existing between England and Russia, the Crimean War, the Indian Government, and other branches ofla haute politique; the Khan displaying a quick and clear intelligence. At last he said—
“You do not have a Khan at the head of affairs?”
“No,” replied Burnaby, “a Queen; and her Majesty is advised as to her policy by her ministers, who for the time being are supposed to represent the opinion of the country.”
“And does that opinion change?”
“Very frequently; and since your country was conquered we have had a fresh Government, whose policy is diametrically opposite to that held by the previous one; and in a few years’ time we shall have another change, for in our country, as the people advance in knowledge and wealth, they require fresh laws and privileges. The result of this is, they choose a different set of people to represent them;” and the Major entered on a brief exposition of constitutional principles, which to the Khan must surely have been unintelligible.
“Can your Queen have a subject’s head cut off?”
“No, not without a trial before our judges.”
“Then she never has their throats cut?” [the Khivan punishment for murder].
“No.”
“Hindostan is a very wonderful country,” continued the Khan; “the envoy I sent there a few years ago[359]has told me of your railroads and telegraphs; but the Russians have railroads, too.”
“Yes,” replied Burnaby; “we lent them money, and our engineers have helped to make them.”
“Do the Russians pay you for this?” he inquired.
“Yes; so far they have behaved very honourably.”
“Are there not Jews in your country like some of the Jews at Bokhara?”
“One of the richest men in England is a Jew.”
“The Russians do not take away the money from the Jews?”
“No.”
Here the Khan said a few words to his treasurer, and then remarked, in allusion to the tribute he pays to Russia annually:—“Why do they take money from me, then? The Russians love money very much.” As he said this, he shook his head sorrowfully at the treasurer; and the latter, assuming a dolorous expression, poured out with a pitiful accent the monosyllable “Hum!” which, in Khivan language, seems to convey as pregnant a meaning as Lord Burleigh’s shake of the head in “The Critic.”
With a low bow from the Khan, the interview terminated.
On the following day Major Burnaby visited the Khan’s gardens, which lie about three-quarters of a mile from the town. They are five in number, surrounded by high walls of sun-dried clay, and each from four to five acres in extent. Entering one ofthem, our traveller discovered that it was neatly laid out and trimly kept. The fruit trees, arranged in long avenues, were carefully cut and pruned; apple, pear, and cherry trees abounded. In the spring melons are grown on a large scale; and in the summer trellis-work arbours of vines, loaded with grapes, afford a delightful shelter from the sun’s fierce glare. In a small summer-palace here, the Khan holds his court in June and July, and on a raised stone daïs outside sits to administer justice.
Returning to Khiva, Burnaby visited the prison and the principal school—the invariable accompaniments of civilization, however imperfect. But may we not hope that, some day, the school will destroy the gaol, and relieve civilization from the reproach of barbarism that still attaches to it? Meanwhile, Nazar was preparing for the Major’s contemplated expedition to Bokhara, his tour to Merv and Meshed, and his journey from Persia into India, and so back to England. It was the 27th of January, and he had determined to spend only one more day in Khiva. But his plans were upset by an unexpected incident. On the morning of the 28th, just after his return from a ride through the market, he was “interviewed” by two strangers, who presented him with a letter from the commandant of Petro-Alexandrovsky, the Russian fort he had so determinedly avoided. It was to the effect that a telegram, which had been forwardedviâTashkent, awaited him at the fort, whither he must be pleased to repair to receive it. How or why any person should consider him of importance enough to despatch a telegram so many thousands of miles, and should go to the expense a sending it from Tashkentwhere the telegraph ends, to Khiva, a distance of nine hundred miles, by couriers with relays of horses, Burnaby could not understand. But there was no help for it. He must hasten to Petro-Alexandrovsky, where he did not want to go, and abandon his trip to Bokhara and Merv, where he very much wished to go. So he paid a visit to the bazar, and afterwards took leave of the Khan, who bestowed upon him the honourable gift of a khalat, or dressing-gown, and on the 29th bade adieu to Khiva.
He reached Petro-Alexandrovsky on the second day, and found that the important telegram which had travelled so far was one from the Duke of Cambridge, Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, requiring his immediate return to European Russia. He found also that the Russian Government had given orders for his return by the shortest route to Kasala. All hope of further exploration and adventure in Central Asia had to be abandoned. Before leaving Petro-Alexandrovsky, the disappointed traveller had an opportunity of accompanying a coursing party, and sharing in a day’s novel sport. There were horses and men of all kinds and shapes, Russians, Bokharans, Kirghiz, short-legged men on giant steeds, and long-legged men on short-legged horses. A short colonel, said to be well versed in the pastime, acted as master of the hunt. Behind him were led seven or eight greyhounds in couples; while a stalwart Khivan bore on his elbow a hooded falcon, graceful enough to have figured in Mr. Tennyson’s poetical little drama. Amid a storm of cries and shouts and yells, the hunters rode forward at a rattling pace, crossing a flat open country, intersected by a ditch or two;until, after an eight miles’ run, they arrived at the cover, a narrow tract of bush and bramble-covered ground stretching down to the bank of the frozen Oxus. Forming in a line, at a distance of twenty yards from one another, the horsemen rode through bush and bramble. A sharp yell from a Kirghiz, and after a startled hare, which had left its covert, dashed Russians, Bokharans, Englishman, and hounds. On they went, down the slippery river bank, across the shining ice, towards a dense bit of copse, where it looked as if poor puss might find an asylum from her pursuers. But at this moment the falcon was launched into the air. A swift swooping flight, and whir of wings, and in a second it was perched on its victim’s back, while around it gathered the well-trained dogs, with open mouths and lolling tongues, not daring to approach the quarry. The master galloped up, seized the prize, and in a few minutes more the hunt was resumed; nor did the horsemen turn their faces homeward until five hares had rewarded their chivalrous efforts.
In company with two Russian officers, and an escort of ten Cossacks, Major Burnaby, after a pleasant sojourn at Petro-Alexandrovsky, set out on his return to Kasala. As the weather was warmer, and the snow had begun to melt, the three officers travelled in a tarantass, drawn by six Kirghiz horses; the said tarantass closely resembling a hansom cab which, after its wheels have been removed, has been fastened in a brewer’s dray. It has no springs, and it runs upon small but solid wooden wheels. They had gone but a few miles before they came again into a land of snow; the horses had to be taken out,and a couple of camels substituted. At night they bivouacked, resuming their journey before daybreak. It was a picturesque sight:—“First, the Cossacks, the barrels of their carbines gleaming in the moonlight, the vashlik of a conical shape surmounting each man’s low cap, and giving a ghastly appearance to the riders. Their distorted shadows were reflected on the snow beneath, and appeared like a detachment of gigantic phantoms pursuing our little force. Then the tarantass, drawn by two large camels, which slowly ploughed their way through the heavy track, the driver nodding on his box but half awake, the two officers in the arms of Morpheus inside, and the heavy woodwork creaking at each stride of the enormous quadrupeds. In the wake of this vehicle strode the baggage camels. The officers’ servants were fast asleep on the backs of their animals, one man lying with his face to the tail, and snoring hard in spite of the continued movement; another fellow lay stretched across his saddle, apparently a good deal the worse for drink. He shouted out at intervals the strains of a Bacchanalian ditty. Nazar, who was always hungry, could be seen walking in the rear. He had kept back a bone from the evening meal, and was gnawing it like a dog, his strong jaws snapping as they closed on the fibrous mutton. I generally remained by our bivouac fire an hour or so after the rest of the party had marched, and seated by the side of the glowing embers, watched the caravan as it vanished slowly in the distance.”
At mid-day, on the 12th of February, Burnaby and his companions galloped across the frozen highway of the Syr-Daria, and into the streets of Kasala, havingridden three hundred and seventy one miles in exactly nine days and two hours. He remained at Kasala for a few days, endeavouring to obtain permission to return to European RussiaviâWestern Siberia; but his application failed, and he was informed that the authorization he had received to travel in Russian Asia had been cancelled. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to complete the necessary preparations for his journey to Orenburg. A sleigh was hired, and amid a chorus of farewells from his Russian acquaintances, who showed themselves more friendly than their Government, he started on his homeward route, having undergone some novel experiences, and seen Khiva, but gathered no information of any value to geographers or men of science. In fact, the chief interest attaching to Major Burnaby’s expedition is personal: it shows that he was a man of much energy, resolution, and perseverance, and he may fairly be complimented on the good use he made of these qualities in his bold but unsuccessful Ride to Khiva.[364]
Oflate years the Lake Regions of Central Africa have offered a fertile and attractive field to the explorer. The interest of the public in African discovery, which had for some time been dormant, was revived in 1849, by the achievements of Dr. Livingstone, who, starting from the south, crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and penetrated to the shores of Lake Ngami. In 1853 to 1856 the same great traveller traced the course of the river Leeambye or Zambési, and traversed the entire breadth of the “black continent” from Angola on the west coast to Zanzibar on the east. In 1865 he resumed his labours, striking into the very heart of Africa, with the view of tracing out the Sources of the Nile, and entering into a fertile country, the resources of which he found to be capable of immense development. For the first two or three years of his absence his letters and despatches reached England with some degree of regularity, but at length a veil of silence fell across his path, and it began to be feared thathe, like other explorers, had fallen a victim to his enthusiasm. An expedition in search of the missing traveller was equipped by Mr. Gordon Bennett, proprietor of theNew York Herald, in 1871, and placed in charge of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, who had the good fortune to find Livingstone at Ujiji, near Unyanyembé, on the 10th of November. He remained with him until the 14th of March, 1872, when he returned to England with his diary and other documents. Dr. Livingstone at this time reported that, in his belief, the Nile springs up about six hundred miles to the south of the southernmost point of Lake Victoria Nyanza. In November, 1872, a relief or auxiliary expedition, under Lieutenant V. Lovett Cameron, started from Zanzibar; but in October, 1873, while at Unyanyembé, its leader received the intelligence of Livingstone’s death, which had taken place at Ujiji, and soon afterwards the corpse arrived in charge of his faithful followers. Cameron then took up the work of exploration, and in spite of immense difficulties, great mental and physical suffering, and obstacles of every kind, he made his way to Lake Tanganyika, thence to Nyangwé, and after identifying the Lualaba with the Kongo, struck to the southward, and passing through regions hitherto unexplored, struck the west coast at Benguela. As a result of his observations, Lieutenant Cameron thus sketches the river system of Africa:—
“The basin of the Nile is probably bounded on the south-west by the watershed reached by Dr. Schweinfurth; on the south of the Albert Nyanza, by the high lands between that lake and the Tanganyika, whence the watershed pursues a tortuous course toUnyanyembé (where, I believe, the basins of the Nile, Kongo, and Lufiji approach each other), and then follows a wave of high land running east till it turns up northwards along the landward slopes of the mountains dividing the littoral from the interior. Passing by Mounts Kilima Njaro and Kenia, it extends to the mountains of Abyssinia, where the sources of the Blue Nile were discovered by Bruce [1770], and so on to the parched plains bordering the Red Sea, where no rains ever fall. The western boundary of the Nile basin is, of course, the eastern portion of the desert.
“The basins of the Niger and the Ogowai cannot yet be defined with any degree of exactitude, and the northern boundary of the basin of the Kongo has still to be traced.
“The Zambési drains that portion of the continent south of the Kongo system, and north of the Kalahari desert and the Limpopo, the northern boundary of the Transvaal Republic; some of its affluents reaching to within two hundred and fifty miles of the west coast.
“The mighty Kongo, king of all the African rivers, and second only to the Amazon (and perhaps to the Yang-tse-Kiang) in the volume of its waters, occupies a belt of the continent lying on both sides of the equator, but most probably the larger area belongs to the southern hemisphere. Many of its affluents fork into those of the Zambési on a level tableland, where the watershed is so tortuous that it is hard to trace it, and where, during the rainy season, floods extend right across between the head-waters of the two streams.
“The Kelli, discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth, may possibly prove to be the Lowa, reported to me as a large affluent of the Lualaba [or Kongo] to the west of Nyangwé; or, if not an affluent of the Lualaba, it most probably flows either to the Ogowai or the Tchadda, an affluent of the Niger.”
In 1874 another expedition of discovery was fitted out, at the joint expense of the proprietors of the LondonDaily Telegraphand theNew York Herald, and Mr. H. M. Stanley was appointed to the command. In 1875 he reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, and through the good offices of Mtesa, King of Uganda, obtained a flotilla of canoes, with which he circumnavigated the lake. It proved to be the largest basin of fresh water in the world, occupying the immense area of sixty thousand square miles. Mr. Stanley next pushed on to Lake Albert Nyanza; afterwards circumnavigated the northern half of Lake Tanganyika; struck westward to the Lualaba at Nyangwé (1876), and thence descended the Lualaba as far as the Isangila Falls (June, 1877), whence he crossed the country to Kalinda, on the west coast.