Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/343

Rh up the former and stop short at the limit of the latter.

“These three principles supply a clear, natural, and logical explanation of our last military operations in Central Asia. In fact, our original frontier line extending along the Syr-Darya to Fort Peroffsky on one side, and on the other to the lake Issyk-Kul, had the drawback of being almost on the verge of the desert. It was broken by a wide gap between the two extreme points; it did not offer sufficient resources to our troops, and left unsettled tribes over the border, with which any settled arrangement became impossible.

“In spite of our unwillingness to extend our frontier, these motives had been powerful enough to induce the Imperial Government to establish this line between Lake Issyk-Kul and the Syr-Darya by fortifying the town of Tchimkent, lately occupied by us. By the adoption of this line we obtain a double result. In the first place, the country it takes in is fertile, well wooded, and watered by numerous watercourses; it is partly inhabited by various Khirghiz tribes which have already accepted our rule; it consequently offers favourable conditions for colonisation and the supply of provisions to our garrisons. In the second place, it puts us in the immediate neighbourhood of the agricultural and commercial populations of Khokand. We find ourselves in the presence of a more solid and compact, less unsettled, and better organized social state, fixed for us, with geographical precision, the limit up to which we are bound to advance, and at 21 *