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General Kuropatkine has just telegraphed permission for you to proceed to Askabad.” This precipitate remark evidently disconcerted the consul, who could only nod his head and say, “Oui, oui,” in affirmation. This news lifted a heavy load from our minds; our desert journey of six hundred miles, therefore, had not been made in vain, and the prospect brightened for a trip through the heart of Asia.
We had no authorization except the telegram to “come on,” received from General Kuropatkine at Askabad, and the verbal permission of Count Rosterzsoff at Samarkand to proceed to Tashkend.
“That, of course, is problematical,” we answered, with the embarrassment men of our age might feel at being instigated to talk politics with a prime minister. “What we do know, for certain, is that Russia is now, with her Transcaspian railroad, within about forty miles of Meshed, the capital of Persia’s richest province of Khorasan; that she now has a well-engineered and, for a great portion of the way, a macadamized road to that city across the Kopet Dagh mountains from Askabad, the capital of Russian Transcaspia; and that half that road the Persians were rather forcibly invited to construct.”
A curious incident, told to Lord Curzon, illustrates the dread in which Russian troops have since been held. At the opening of the railway to Askabad, five years later, the Russian military bands began to play. At once the women and children there present raised cries and shrieks of dread, while the men threw themselves on the ground.
On the morrow the invaders fell back on the River Atrek and thence made their way back to the Caspian in sore straits . This led Skobeleff to push on to Askabad after the capture of that place; but he found no strongholds. The next year witnessed the advent of a great soldier on the scene.
"Oh dear, no! I will telegraph to General Komaroff, at Askabad, to remove all obstacles, so that nothing shall interfere with your progress." Having received this positive assurance, we take our leave, Mr.
During the course of a dinner with him and his friends, he kindly assured us that no further recommendation was needed than the fact that we were American citizens to entitle us to travel from one end of the Russian empire to the other. From Askabad to Samarkand there was a break in the continuity of our bicycle journey.
Skobeleff himself estimated the number of the slain at 20,000 . Booty to the value of £600,000 fell to the lot of the victors. Since that awful day the once predatory tribes of Tekkes have given little trouble. Skobeleff sent his righthand man, Kuropatkin, to occupy Askabad, and reconnoitre towards Merv. But these moves were checked by order of the Czar.
The military road now completed between Askabad and Meshed reveals the extreme weakness of Persia’s defense against Russian aggression.
Referring to the small outline map of the trans-Caspian region, herewith, it will be seen that troops could embark from Odessa in the fleet of merchant steamers available, and, if not molested en route by hostile cruisers, would reach Batum in from 2 to 3 days, thence by rail to Baku in 24 hours, another 24 hours through the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk, a transfer in lighters to the landing at Michaelovsk, and the final rail transportation to the present terminus of the track beyond Kizil Arvat; this, it is said, will soon reach Askabad, 310 miles from Herat.
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