Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/63

Rh required of them. The delta of the Oxus became more and more the almost useless swamp which it is at present; and the invaluable waters of the great river have been wasted on the Aral sea, which it would be far better disappeared altogether than to remain in its present useless state. The damming of the Loudon canal effected a temporary good, but at a serious price, for it aggravated evils which were already bad enough. It remains to be seen what its re-flooding signifies.

About the middle of October last the Russian papers announced that the Amou Darya had returned to its original bed. No details were vouchsafed to us, but with an air of triumph — as with reason they might have been triumphant had what they said been literally true — the Russian journalists proclaimed that it was only necessary to make this change definitive, and thus create a new route to India — the shortest and easiest — as well as secure the connection of the Russian possessions in Central Asia with the rest of the empire. Had that, which the Russians in their first glow of hope imagined had, occurred, there can be no doubt that even the wild suggestions of the Moscow and St. Petersburg press during the first week after the receipt of the news would not have been too far- fetched or exaggerated. To say that it would have been of great military and political importance is to treat with a light heart a circumstance that would have simply been a complete revolution in Central Asian affairs of the most momentous kind. But it is idle to speculate on what might have been, as the original news was entirely false and misleading. The