Journal of the Society of Arts : Volume XLVIII, No. 2480 [‎685r] (19/24)

June i, igoo.]
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.
5^7
we still had the school of John Lawrence, Henry
Montgomery, and many others; and in Russia there
was a class of men of the same characteristics, called
the school of AbramofF, after whom was named a
boulevard in Samarcand, and who had left a grand repu
tation behind him in Central Asia. The district officers
and subordinates were about on a par with the same
class of men in India, and the people of Central Asia
were, on the whole, about as happy as those in our
own territory. He had no doubt that the change in
climate referred to was largely due to defective irri
gation. In 1780 Merv was the most glorious city
in Central Asia. The stems of vines there were as
thick as a man’s body, they bore tons of grapes,
and the fields yielded four or five crops a year—
all owing to enormous irrigation works; but when
the Amir of Bokhara invaded it in 1780 he destroyed
the grand embankment across the river above Merv,
and the whole country went out of cultivation. He
had ridden over miles and miles of desert, like the
Sahara, but scattered with ruins, and no doubt the
same process had been at work elsewhere. About the
time of our Queen Elizabeth the river Oxus suddenly
changed its course, and many thousands of square
miles, formerly watered by it, became a hopeless
desert.
Mr. E. E. Thorburn said you could not have irri
gation without water, and you could not have water
without rain, and according to his reading, the reason
why Central Asia was desiccated, was that owing to
the cutting down of the forests and other causes, the
rainfall had very much decreased. With regard to
the Chairman’s remark about the passing of agricul
tural land in the Punjab to professional money
lenders, chiefly Hindoos, he might say that there was
every probability of a law being passed this summer
at Simla, under which the power of alienation by
agriculturists to non-agriculturists would be limited
to a period of 15 years, after which the land would
return to the family of the alienor.
Mr. Martin Wood referring to the Chairman’s
remarks as to what was in everybody’s mind when
thinking of the advance of Russia in Central Asia,
said he thought the present paper tended to confirm
the opinion, now thoroughly established, that
whereas Russia was impregnable to us in Central
Asia, so we in India were impregnable to Russia.
With regard to the aridity of the country, it was
generally acknowledged that want of rain was owing
to want of forests, and the origin of this desiccation
must be the destruction of the forests by conquerors
and the improvidence of the people. Pie was glad to
hear from Mr. Skrine that coal existed there, and
also to hear his remarks on the Turkomans. They
must all regret the manner in which these were
massacred by their Russian conquerors, but he
thought that much the same kind of treatment was
applied to the Khirghiz as early as 1870.
Mr. Colquhoun, in reply, said in the present
paper it was not open to him to enter upon
the questions of policy and politics, in which he
was especially interested ; and in discussing these
countries and peoples, the line of demarcation
was so very indistinct, that it was difficult to say
where Central Asia ended and the neighbouring
countries began, and one had therefore to be
all the more cautious. It was very difficult
not to stray into subjects of much more vital
interest ; and, as the Chairman had indicated,
the real point of interest lay not in the countries cf
which he had been speaking, but in the Central As a
which was gradually approaching India, making ils
way steadily, year by year, down to the Persirn
Gulf, and which had already made its way across
thousands of miles to the Far East, and had now
firmly established itself in the China seas, and was
driving a wedge right through the whole Chinese
empire. But these questions were not within the
scope of the paper; he could only indicate briefly his
conviction that if Russia was as busy as she could be
in pushing forward her railways, the object was not
simply pacific and commercial, but strategic. Xo one
in his sober senses who had been in those regions, or
who took a map of Asia and tried to recall the stages
of the Russian advance, could bring himself to
believe that the object of this rapid expansion could
be anything but a political one. With regard to
the question of irrigation, no doubt many parts
of this region were very prosperous at one time,
and the Russians themselves entertained the hope
that by means of irrigation they might be restored to
their former fertility. Mr. Thorbum, the distinguished
author of “Our Asiatic Neighbours,” had rightly
indicated that irrigation would be extremely difficu t
in Central Asia. The conditions were very similar to
those in another part of the world, in which great
interest was taken just now, viz., South Africa, wheie
in the great central plateau reaching from Cape
Colony to the Zambesi and again northwards, the
timber which once existed had been cut down cr
wasted by fire, and the deficient rainfall had not
enabled it to be replaced. Afghanistan and Persia
were outside of his subject, but he must remind them
that Russia, though not actually in occupation cf
Herat, was near it, and was making her way
south, yet the whole of this movement did not
seem to attract any attention in this country. It
seemed inevitable under our political system that the
country could only give its attention to one thing at
one time, and while we were engaged in South Africa
most important events occurred elsewhere which no
one seemed to notice. Amongst these were what
was now happening in the north of China, in the
neighbourhood of Japan, and in Central Asia,
as well as what was being accomplished by the
partner of France in Morocco. He had no desire
to make too much of the contrast between the
Russian and British mqdes of administration, but
there was a great difference. He did not think that