Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/134

114 114 ENGLAND AND EUSSIA IN CENTEAL ASIA. Candaliar, and Shikarpore, is an actual road, and not a track, and that there are numerous places, such as Meshed and Herat in particular, whete it would be possible to maintain an army of fifty thousand men permanently. From the shores of the Caspian to Meshed, from Meshed to Herat, and from Herat to Candahar, are all strides in a road which is practically at the mercy of Russia so far as Meshed, and which leads direct to the most vulnerable points in the fron- tier of India. At the base of that road in Trans- Caucasia stands the army of the Caucasus — two hundred thousand fighting-men. But although that road has not yet been traversed by Russian troops, and although Persian soil has not yet been violated, the forward movement which has been steadily going on north of the Attock,* under the auspices of General Lomakine, has carried Russia, by a parallel and a less advantageous road, far on towards the same goal, which is Herat. With her hands fettered in this direction by the treaty which preserved the integrity of Persia, Russia had for long remained apparently apathetic in the region of the Atrek. The formation of the Trans- Caspian district provided the Tiflis authorities with that vent for which they had long been seeking, and afforded them the opportunity for entering into com- petition with the Tashkent Grovernment, which had of the mountains of Khorasan ; these are the Kuren and Kopet Daghs.
 * Attock means " the skirt," and is applied to the northern slope