1869.] Geography. 615 



" Central Asia," by M. Pierre de Tchihatchef, Conseiller d'Etat, 

 S.M. I'Empereur de Kussie, attracted much interest and attention. 

 The author first referred to the intended pubhcation of a new, com- 

 plete, and correct edition of Humboldt's Asie Cenirale. Such a 

 work would, at present, be peculiarly important and strikingly 

 opportune, for it would dispel for ever the threatening clouds which, 

 during so many years, were gathering on those regions as gloomy 

 forebodings of a dreadful contest. While our knowledge of Central 

 Asia remained scanty and vague, the mysterious country must have 

 appeared, not only to the ignorant crowd, but also to many of the 

 most enlightened and sagacious statesmen, as the natural battle- 

 field where, sooner or later, England and Kussia had to meet in a 

 dogged, exterminating struggle. " The danger seemed so unavoid- 

 able and so urgent, that no expenses, no sacrifices were spared, in 

 order to postpone the disastrous crisis. Now, thanks to the exertions 

 of geographers, the ominous crisis, so positively prophesied and so 

 unanimously feared, turned out to be nothing more than a fantas- 

 tical dream ; for nothing, surely, could be more fantastic, nothing 

 more fitted to remind one of the Thousand and One Nights, than to 

 see a large army with heavy artillery, not only hover like ghosts 

 during two or three months over dense clouds and eternal snows, 

 but even after such an exhausting gymnastic feat, descend into the 

 coimtry of the enemy, and defeat the English troops quietly and 

 comfortably expecting their curious visitors." This, however, is 

 precisely the fact, which must be admitted by the advocates of a 

 Kussian invasion of India; for M. de Tchihatchef says we possess 

 numerous trustworthy documents which jjrove most positively that 

 even in the very probable case of the whole of Turkestan becoming 

 a Russian province — whatever might be the starting-point of the 

 Eussian army intended to reach the Punjab — no less than two, or 

 perhaps even three, months would have to be spent amidst snowy, 

 desert mountains, before such an army would be allowed to put its 

 frost-bitten feet on English territory. M. de Tchihatchef admitted 

 that amongst the advocates of Eussian invasion there are men of 

 deep science and unquestionable good faith ; but they all start from 

 two very arbitrary hypotheses, viz. that what has been done once 

 may be performed again, and that what is now impossible may be- 

 come possible. Alexander the Great and certain Mogul conquerors 

 may have crossed the mountains and marched victoriously onward j 

 but the conditions under which they performed these feats were 

 widely difierent to those which would be imposed upon an invading 

 Eussian army. The Abyssinian expedition brilliantly proved that 

 a European army might drag its ponderous artillery over large, 

 snowy, mountainous tracts ; but the result of that expedition might 

 not have been so glorious had the army of resistance been composed 

 of French, Eussian, or Prussian soldiers, instead of those of Theo- 



