Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/82

62 necessity, and on the 17tli of that month General Kaufmann arrived in Tashkent as the representative of the Czar. Before that time Kaufmann had been an offecer attached to the staff of the Czar. He had never been in Central Asia, and he possessed no knowledge of the subject over which he was henceforth to exercise supreme control. But these were not his only faults, for, being naturally of an extremely vain disposition, it was not long before he became persuaded of his own special qualifications for the high office which he held, and strove in many ways to add a lustre to his administration by the prosecution of numerous campaigns, and by a series of conquests that have so far been unprofitable. The state which he maintains at Tashkent, his Cossack guard, the strict etiquette which fences him around, and the court balls that are given in close imitation of those held at St. Petersburg, all these are now well known, thanks to Mr. Schuyler, and have earned for the Czar's representative the nickname of Yarim Padishah, or half-king. But the actual result of all this sham State ceremony is that in practical affairs General Kaufmann is a cypher. He knows nothing of the subject which he is supposed to decide upon, and is consequently bound to guide his own impulse by the advice of such men as Abramoff and Kolpakoffsky. There are others in the civil administration who are equally influential, though less honour-ably distinguished, and in all directions in Turkestan an autocratic officialism works its own way and for its own ends, seeking only to flatter and to pander to the