of operations against the Turcomans, who were at that time very
troublesome. Several military expeditions set out from this point,
and every year detachments of troops were despatched to keep the
roads open toward Khiva, the Kepet Dagh, or the banks of the Attrek.
Within five years (1870-'75) the nomads living within the routes
named had become "good Turcomans," carried the Czar's mails to
Khiva, and furnished the Krasnovodsk-Khivan caravans with camels and
drivers. But the colonization scheme on the lower Caspian had once
more brought the Russians to the Persian boundary. In 1869 the Shah
had been rather officiously assured that Russia would not think of
going below the line of the Attrek; yet, as Colonel Veniukoff shows,
she now regrets having committed herself, and urges "geographical
ignorance" of the locality when the assurance was given, and the
fact that part of her restless subjects, on the Attrek, pass eight
months of the year in Russian territory and four in "so-called"
Persia; it is therefore not difficult to imagine the probable change
on the map of that quarter.

The march continued toward Khiva, and after the usual iron-hand-in-
velvet-glove introduction, General Kaufmann in 1873 pounced upon
that important khanate, and thus added another to the jewels of the
Empire. Nominally, Khiva is independent, but nevertheless collects
and pays to Russia a considerable contribution annually.

In 1868 Russia seized Samarcand, and established over the khanate of
Bokhara a similar supervision to that in Khiva. As the distinguished
Russian already quoted remarks: "The programme of the political
existence of Bokhara as a separate sovereignty was accorded to her
by us in the shape of two treaties, in 1868 and 1873, which defined
her subordinate relation to Russia. But no one looks at these acts