Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/22

2 signification to the term, and this is by no means easy. For we may give it too wide a significance or too narrow; and as the term is convenient rather than correct, we should seek to confine it to those limits which are required by convenience alone. Therefore it would seem that Central Asia is an elastic phrase that must yet be defined before we proceed any further, both for the sake of perspicuity and for the assistance of the ordinary reader.

The simplest definition we take to be the following: Central Asia is that portion of Asia which intervenes between the English and Russian frontiers wherever they now are, or wherever they in the future may be. It is consequently a variable tract of country in accordance as those frontiers advance or recede. Khokand and the districts Amou Darya and Trans-Caspiania are by this definition no longer in Central Asia; but Bokhara, Khiva, the Turcoman country, and Afghanistan remain included in it, and these countries, with Persia and the Pamir Khanates, actually constitute the whole of what may be called Central Asia. Beloochistan and Cashmere, which now extends to Baroghil, are within the practical limits of our Indian Empire, and Central Asia is consequently restricted to those countries and regions before mentioned. In this sense, therefore. Eastern Turkestan, which has passed once more into the possession of China, the third great power in Asia, is outside the sphere we have defined as Central Asia; but as some most interesting explorations have recently been made in the Tian Shan regions, it is proposed to include