THE TRANSPORT DIFFICULTY. 165 



likewise regarded with little favour by the Gov- 

 ernment at St Petersburg, and soon fell into the 

 background, where it was doomed to slumber till 

 wakened thirty years later by the powerful hand 

 of M. Witte. 



With the failure of such schemes the idea of a 

 railway to Central Asia was for the time being 

 banished, and it was not until 1879, when Lomakin 

 suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Turk- 

 omans, that the project was again brought to the 

 forefront of Russian policy in Asia, this time to 

 take definite form, and to come into being in after- 

 years in the shape of the military Transcaspian 

 railway. 



The reverse suffered by the Russians at the hands 

 of an Asiatic foe was one which shook the whole 

 fabric of Muscovite power in Central Asia, requir- 

 ing an immediate and decisive campaign of revenge 

 to re-establish the shaken structure on a firm base 

 once more, and operations were at once taken in 

 hand to repair the damage which had been sustained. 



The chief difficulty encountered was occasioned by 

 the want of suitable transport, the utter futility of 

 relying upon camels for this purpose having already 

 been amply demonstrated by the expeditions of 1879 

 and 1880, in the former of which two-thirds of the 

 camels used had succumbed, while only 350 out of 

 a total of 12,596 had survived the advance of 1880.^ 

 To overcome this difficulty a service of traction-engines 

 was proposed by General Petrusevitch, and later on 

 the construction of a tramway between Tchikishlar 



1 These are the figux^ea given in Lord Curzon'a 'Eussia in Central 

 Asia.' In General Annenkoff's 'Akhal Tekke Oasis,' already quoted, he 

 says: "During the Akhal Tekke expedition of 1879 as many as 9600 

 camels perished out of 10,000." 



