Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/109

Rh Bokhára, and who had no eye for other dangers than those which threatened him from a Russian march upon his capital. Before the close of 1839 Todd despatched Captain James Abbott across the wide Turkman steppe, to mediate with the Khán of Khíva for the deliverance of Russian captives held in bondage by his subjects. Abbott's stern courage and noble bearing made up for his ignorance of the language and the very vague character of his instructions. The Khán listened courteously to the young Envoy's overtures, and agreed to a treaty which Lord Auckland afterwards disavowed, on the plea that Todd's envoy had exceeded his powers. Meanwhile the Khán had deputed Abbott on a mission of amity to the Tzar himself. His place at the Khán's Court was presently filled by Captain Richmond Shakespeare, who had the pleasure of conducting to Orenburg four hundred Russian slaves set free by the Khán's orders.

It was fortunate perhaps for these poor creatures that their return to freedom was decreed before the utter collapse of Perovski's expedition became known at Khíva. In the course of November, 1839, Perovski had led out of Orenburg a force of 5,000 horse and foot with a score of guns and 10,000 camels, on his long and painful march through a country two-thirds of which was a howling desert. The march had been timed for the following April; but our feats of arms and freaks of diplomacy in Central Asia had provoked the Tzar into the folly of ordering it to begin with the first snows of a northern winter. This rash bravado