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 THE CASPIAN SEA. 395 undertake several other works for the embellishment and convenience of the city and neighbourhood of Tehran. It is illustrative of the soundness of the Ameer's judgment that, although no man could have been more anxious than he was to maintain the dignity and inde- pendence of his master, he preferred to give way, even when he felt that he was in the right, rather than risk the effects of a quarrel with his powerful northern neighbour. By the treaty of Gulistan, Persia had renounced the right of maintaining ships of war on the Caspian ; and about the year 1836 the Shah's govern- ment had applied to the Czar for naval assistance against the refractory Turkomans who infest the south-eastern shores of that sea. Following this application there had been made, when too late, a request that the Kussian naval commander might be placed under the orders of the governor of Astrabad, or that, failing this, the naval aid might be withheld. The Shah had subsequently intimated to the Eussian envoy that as he had without assistance been enabled to capture the island of Cherken, the presence of the Kussian vessels was no longer necessary. But the idea of the advantage of maintain- ing the police of the sea on the southern and eastern shores of the Caspian had not been relinquished at St. Petersburg, and in 1842 a Kussian squadron appeared off Astrabad, and commenced the salutary operation of putting a stop to the predatory expeditions of the Turkoman pirates. To the eastward of a tongue of land which juts out from the Persian coast of the bay of Astrabad there is a small island called Ashoradeh, and of this island the Kussian officer had taken possession, for the purpose of making