Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/85

65 THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT IN TURKESTAN. 65 trjmen of the Osesars. To the more ordinary view a Eussian does not present the same attractive or striking appearance that he evidently does to his panegyrist and compatriot ; and some are found to maintain that he is only a Tartar of the same race as those whom, by the aid of Western science, he has subdued, and who may yet, in future times, drive back the Muscovite, by the same means that he himself has employed, to the walls of Moscow and the shores of the Euxine. The formation of the governorship of Turkestan was not unopposed. It may even be said that it was carried out despite the opposition of many influential persons and the adverse opinion of at least one State inquiry. The Steppe Commission, which had been appointed to the task of exploring the steppe early in the year 1867, had done good service, and the principal and permanent result of its labours had been that a definite scheme was placed before the Russian Government for the prosecution of military enterprises in Central Asia on a settled plan. Once for all, the old hap-hazard way of attempting to achieve what had been foreshadowed in the mythical programme called Peter the Great's Will, was to give place to a logical and clearly defined method, which would enable a settled government to carry on systematic encroachments in Turkestan, beyond the Oxus, and at last in Cabul, and thus bring Eussian bayonets in triumph to the Hindoo Koosh and Persia, and perhaps ultimately, in some weak hour of confidence on the part of a British Government, to the passes of the