TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 171 



and uninvited visits. The same thing, but only in an opposite sense, may be said of 

 England and British India what a French poet said, speaking of honour as of a 

 rocky island from which one may get out hut never get in again, — 



" L'honneur est une ile escarpee et sans herds, 

 On n'y peut plus rentrer des qu'on en est dehors." 



Here, on the contrary, those who may get in will never be able to get out safely. Let 

 us, therefore, drop those chimerical but most dangerous illusions, which the study 

 of Central Asia has so happily dissipated, and let us mention another vahiable 

 advantage wliich such studies have bestowed upon us, showing that, if British India 

 is defended by an impregTiable natural bidwark, this bulwark is inaccessible only to 

 bloody representatives of war, but not to gentle messengers of peace ; for among 

 the results of recent explorations of Central Asia, one of the most remarkable and the 

 most satisfactory is the fact that those complicated mountainous ramifications, which 

 are spread, like a gigantic labyi'inth, over the whole of Central Asia, are not devoid 

 of numerous passes and even of considerable local depressions, in the shape of plains, 

 which hereafter may be very useful for the establishment of commercial communi- 

 cations between the remotest points of the stupendous chains of Thian-chan, 

 Kuenlun, Mustagh Dagh, and Himalaya. So, for instance, thanks to the important 

 explorations of the Kuenlun range by Mr. W. H. Johnson during the year 1866, we 

 know that, contrary to what has been admitted hitherto, even by Humboldt, 

 this lofty range does not spread itself beyond 100 miles to the east of the meridian 

 of Ilchi, where it is limited by long plains, through which caravans transporting 

 merchandise may cross the whole country between Ilchi and Leh, and consequently 

 almost as far as the superior valley of the Indus, only six miles distant from Leh. 

 A similar topographical featiu-e seems to characterize equally the vast country be- 

 tween Khatan and Aksu, the last city being situated on the southern slopes of the 

 Thian-chan range ; so that nature herself has indicated the lines which, worked out 

 by human art, may, in the future, connect the valley of the Indus with the Thian- 

 chan range, crossing in this manner from north to south a large portion of Central 

 Asia, and possessing the immense advantage of avoiding entirely the rugged in- 

 hospitable range of Kuenlun. Even the mysterious Bolor, with its cold gigantic 

 tableland of Pamir, seems not to be quite deprived of natural thoroughfares liable 

 to acquire hereafter a practical importance ; at least such a conclusion is suggested 

 by the map of that country constructed by Mr. Hayward, according to the itinerary 

 of a merchant of Jarkand,- — a map which will be replaced in a short time by a far 

 more accurate one, for the vast and unknown countries of the Bolor are about to 

 become the object of important explorations which science expects with impatience 

 from the accomplished geographer Colonel Walker, as well as fc-om Mr. Hayward 

 himself. Again, the compact network of various natural roads or paths which unite 

 the valley of the Indus with the range of Thian-chan is more or less connected with 

 other branches of natm-al communications which pen etrate across the mountains of 

 Turkestan and those of Southern Siberia into the hydrographical systems of the 

 Jaxartes, the Oxus, and Bi, as well as into the vast basin of the Balkasch Sea ; so, 

 for instance, there is a pass leading from Guldja to Aksu, across the Thian-chan, 

 and another one from the river Hi to Samarkand. 



Yet all those natural thoroughfares, although even now of some importance for com- 

 mercial communications, cannot be of any value to military purposes, because the 

 various passes and depressions are interrupted by rugged mountainous masses, which 

 would stop or delay almost at every step the movement of an army ; so that the 

 necessity of performing frequent and tortuous circuits would render the march of a 

 Russian army, encumbered by artillery, perhaps still longer than in a straight line 

 across the mountains, a passage which, as we have seen, is quite out of question. 

 The consequence is that, at the present moment, both roads are almost equally shut 

 to an invading Russia. Nevertheless one may ask if those natural thoroughfares, 

 once developed, would not become as favourable to the transport of troops as to the 

 conveyance of merchandise: no doubt some facility wQidd be offered to the servants of 

 Mars who could be tempted to creep through the open doors of the temple of Minerva; 

 but is not the creation of monuments of peace the best means to render war more odious 

 to the populations amongwhich they have been erected, imparting to them altogether 



