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56 the main channel to the Aral, and that can certainly be best accomplished at Hazarasp. The Russians themselves can onlj aspire to cope with this question in the spirit of those who have learnt the old Latin proverb that (Fortuna adjuvat fortes). The question of the Amou Darya is a great question. The difficulty its solution presents is no slight one. Yet the Russians can have no claims to be held a great ruling power if they decline to attempt its solution because it is not easy. They cannot be compared to the Romans or the English, or even to several Asian nations, such as the Chinese and the Persians, if they treat with apathy and indifference this great problem on which the peaceful progress of their empire in Turkestan may be held to depend. It is improbable that they will much longer remain supine. They are urged into activity by the belief, well founded as it un-doubtedly is, that to divert the Oxus into the Aral means increased prosperity for their Asiatic dominions ; but they are still more impelled by a hope that in the solution of this question lies the best step towards an invasion of India. With a waterway from Derbend to Charjui, a distance of only nine hundred miles, Russia would have bridged that inhospitable gulf of steppe-land which intervenes between Orenburg and Tashkent. Without a war she would have con- nected the Caucasus and Western Turkestan, and by so doing enabled her generals to concentrate at Herat and Balkh those forces which, vast as they are, are now useless through their immobility and the distances which separate them from each other and from their