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Rh military operations were considered undesirable or useless, they would bring an increased amount of prosperity to a region already Russian or about to become Russian. In fact, the schemes which have for many years been suggested with regard to the Oxus, of which we shall treat specifically by and by, must either enable Russian troops to be carried more easily to the Indian frontier, or must prove that the undertaking of invading India from Turkestan is an impossibility. In the latter case the diversion of the Oxus from its present course to one disemboguing into the Caspian, will at all events have fertilised a region that is now desert, and will have opened up an easy trade route between Russia and Bokhara, the central mart of Western Asia. Even as a pis aller the schemes which we have referred to would have accomplished this much; so it is not to be wondered at that Prince Gortchakoff himself, and other responsible persons, should have patronised them in some special manner.

But although the history of the Oxus is so full of historical interest and of practical importance, it would be rash, however, to narrate it here after the very instructive account Major Wood has placed before the English reader in his "Shores of Lake Aral." A recent event, nothing less than a diversion, however slight, in the course of this river, gives a fresh aspect to the subject, and admits of some description in amplification of that for which we are indebted to the