FROM the day when the Emperor Paul uttered his insane threat of marching an army of Cossacks from Orenburg to India, the designs entertained by Russia on our eastern possessions, and the dangers to be apprehended in that quarter in the event of a war, have furnished a fertile topic of gloomy ratiocination to that class of alarmists, the constant tendency of whose speeches and writings has been to exalt the power and resources of the Muscovite empire as contrasted with our own; and, while loudly proclaiming the unbounded ambition and encroaching policy of that power, to deprecate any attempt at an opposition, which could only draw down on our heads the irresistible vengeance of the northern colossus. Sir Robert Wilson in 1817, and Colonel De Lacy Evans in 1829, stood pre-eminent above the rest for the confidence with which they predicted an expedition of the Russians against India, and the ruinous consequences which must inevitably result to our Oriental rule; while the opposite side of the question was sustained by the Quarterly Review, which contended in ably argued articles, that (even if the limited finances and cautious policy of Russia were not sufficient guarantees against her embarking in so Quixotic an expedition), the march of 2000 miles from Orenburg to Delhi, the impossibility of transporting guns and stores across the deserts of Turkistan, the want of provisions and water, and the unceasing hostility of the Turkoman tribes, would be a sufficient security that the invading army, if it ever reached our Indian frontier at all, could arrive there in no other condition than that of a diminished and exhausted remnant, destitute of supplies or artillery, and ready to fall an instant and easy prey to the numerous and effective Anglo-Indian forces which would encounter it. The total failure of the missions of Mouravief to Khiva in 1819, and of Negri to Bokhara in 1820, by means of which the Cabinet of Petersburg attempted to open more intimate and friendly relations with these Tartar or Turkoman sovereignties, showed that the opposition to be expected in that quarter, at least, had

not been overrated; while the equally rooted hostility and superior power of Persia appeared to interpose a still more effectual barrier to the route by the west of the Caspian: the friendly relations of Russia with Great Britain, and the improbability of her severing them for the doubtful chance of a remote and precarious conquest, were severally set forth and insisted on: and the result of all these arguments was, that most of our domestic politicians, after verifying the geographical positions laid down in the Quarterly, by a glance at the map of Asia, remained in a comfortable conviction that there was little fear of East India stock being frightened from its propriety, during the lives of the present generation, by the apparition of the Russian eagle on the Indus.

But these reasonings, however well founded they may have been fifteen years ago, have, in the present day, ceased to be applicable; for, by an unfortunate perversity, while the warnings of the alarmist writers above alluded to, and the solid facts which they adduced in support of them, fell almost unheeded on the public ear, the inconsistent policy of forbearance and concession to Russia, which was advocated as the only means of diverting the storm, has been scrupulously acted upon by each successive Ministry, and has been rewarded by a series of insults and indignities, increasing in due proportion to the tameness with which they were acquiesced in. When the Russian Emperor, in 1828, on finding that the obstinate valour of the Ottomans was not so easily overborne as he had expected, instituted a naval blockade of the Dardanelles (after having solemnly waived the rights of a belligerent in the Mediterranean, and received all due applause for his magnanimity), the indifference with which our Government viewed the detention of British vessels, and the maltreatment of British seamen, gave Russia an assurance of impunity of which she was not slow to avail herself; and the secret encouragement given to the Pasha of Egypt, the consequent treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, the capture of the Vixen, and the late authoritative attempt to place a veto on the con

clusion of the commercial treaty between England and the Porte, demonstrated in rapid succession to Europe the moderation of Russia, and the weakness or long-suffering of our foreign policy. In distant Persia, after her military power had been broken by the war which was terminated by the peace of Turkmanschai in 1828, the game of intervention was played even more openly; and no means were left untried to undermine and destroy the influence which a long alliance and constant diplomatic intercourse had procured for England at the Court of Teheran. During the life of Futteh Ali Shah, however, the Russian counsels never openly gained the ascendency. The wily old Kajar appreciated the sincerity of Russian treaties and promises too well to be cajoled by them; and his often quoted answer to a proposition for improving the internal communications of his dominions, shows his clear insight into the motives which dictated it:" The horses of the Irânis can go where the horses of their ancestors went; but if we make wide roads, the wheels of the Infidels will be speedily seen traversing them." But, with the death of the old sovereign, and the accession of his inexperienced grandson, a change came over the spirit of Persian politics, and the flimsy veil which had covered the designs of Russia was instantly thrown aside. Scarcely four years have elapsed since this young monarch, assailed on all sides by the pretensions and revolts of his innumerable uncles and cousins, was placed in secure possession of the throne by the vigorous exertion of British arms and influence under Sir Henry Bethune;* and he has repaid these services, which might have secured the gratitude of even an Asiatic despot, by insulting the British Minister, admitting Russian emissaries into his divan, and Russian troops into his capital, and lending himself as a willing tool to Russian intrigues which, under the pretext of assisting Persia in the recovery of her ancient possessions in Korassan, have for their real and scarcely veiled object the opening of a road through the Affghan and Seik tribes to the British frontier in India. In

furtherance of these views, Herat has been besieged by the forces of Persia, with the aid of Russian troops and artillery, under the direction of a Russian general; and, had it fallen, would, of course, have been re-fortified and occupied, nominally for the Shah, by a Russian garrison, as an advanced stronghold and place d'armes from which, whenever the favourable opportunity should present itself, a Russo-Persian army might have advanced to the Indus, by the route which has been followed by every invader of India on the Asiatic side, from Alexander to Nadir Shah. In the intoxication of anticipated triumph, even the common forms of diplomatic courtesy towards England were violated: and Mr Macniel found it necessary to break off all communication with the Persian court, and to quit the camp before Herat; while Mahommed Shah publicly declared that the capture of Herat would be only preliminary to a career of conquest which should rival the past achievements of Nadir, and carry the Persian arms once more in triumph to Delhi. In Europe, the language held by Russia and her agents was equally explicit ; the Augsburgh Gazette, after plainly avowing that the aim of the Russian operations in Persia, was "the opening a road to the most vulnerable of the English possessions," gave the following lucid commentary on that text: "England does not conceal from herself her weakness in the East Indies; she knows that on the day when the natives, better informed concerning their own interests, shall unite together in resistance, British dominion in Southern Asia will end. On the other hand, Russia also knows her task; she is aware, that to her is reserved to take the initiative in the regeneration of Asia; and it is this which explains the jealousy at present existing between the two powers." Surely this candid acknowledgment must be sufficient to convince the most determined believer in the infallibility of the Quarterly, that whatever might have been the case some years back, our Indian empire requires at the present day some more effectual bulwark than

either the hollow friendship still subsisting between the two powers, or the extent of desert interposed between the Siberian outposts and the Indus.

Let us, in the first place, examine of what real value are those geographical obstacles which have been so often referred to as placing insurmountable barriers in the way of a Russian march to India. The route by the east of the Caspian, by Khiva and Bokhara, requires little notice, since it is not likely that it will ever be attempted when a more commodious and easy road lies open; but even here we may remark, that the desert of Kharism, intervening between Khiva and Khorassan, and often represented as impassable by an army, was crossed in 1740 by Nadir Shah, with all his troops, stores, and artillery, when marching against Khiva, which he took, and put its Khan to death; and in the opposite direction, to the north of this oasis, it is currently reported in India, that the Kirghis desert has recently been traversed by a Russian corps, moving in the track of the caravans, and that to this unexpected diversion is attributable the non-arrival of the auxiliary troops of Khiva and Bokhara to the relief of Herat. But the Russian troops may be wafted on the long course of the Volga, from the heart of European Russia to Asterabad, the southernmost harbour of the Caspian; the exclusive navigation of which sea with armed vessels was ceded, by the way, to Russia, by the peace of 1828 with Persia; and from Asterabad to Herat, if the Persian territory be open to their passage, is a direct road of 450 miles, interrupted by no natural obstacle after the mountains of Mazanderan are crossed at the commencement of the march.

Asterabad, indeed, was once at tacked by Ahmed Shah Doorauni, the founder of the Afghan monarchy; and if he had succeeded in annexing it to his empire, the whole distance from the Caspian to Sirhind, within the present British frontier at Loodiana, would have been included within the limits of his single kingdom. From Herat, the emporium of Central Asia, and the depot of the commerce between Cabul, India, Cashmere, Persia, Bagdad, &c. the road to India, by whatever route, is more beaten and accessible than the internal communication between many parts of the Russian empire; and if

Nicholas could once display his ensigns on its ramparts, he might in scribe over its gates, "the road to Hindostan," as confidently as his grandmother, Catherine II., placed the vaunting inscription," This is the way from Moscow to Byzantium," over the southern portal of Kherson. A mili. tary map of the route, "constructed topographically with great care, by Herat, Candahar, Ghizni, and Cabul, to Attock," was even shown to Burnes at Lahore, by M. Court, a French officer in the service of Runjeet Singh ; he "pointed out the best routes for infantry and cavalry," and stated, that "though he had encountered jealousy from the Raja, he had still managed to complete a broad belt of survey from Attock to our own frontier!" This route, though not quite direct, is the one which would most probably be taken by an invading army; and the whole distance to be traversed from Asterabad to Delhi, would thus be about 1500 miles, or somewhat less than the distance from Paris to Moscow; the halting places are respectively distant from each other as follow-from Asterabad to Herat, 450 miles-from Herat to Candahar, 290, through a country unencumbered with mountains, and principally along the valleys of the Furrahrood and Helmund rivers-from Candahar by Ghizni to Cabul, about 230, the most moun. tainous part of the road-from Cabul to Attock on the Indus, 180-and thence through the Punjab, crossing three of its rivers, 180 miles more to Lahore or Amritsir-thence to Delhi, 270, crossing the two remaining ri vers of the Punjab between Lahore and Loodiani. By turning from Candahar southwards towards Mooltan, three of the rivers of the Punjab might be avoided, but the distance would be rather greater from Candahar to Mooltan, through the passes of the Suliman-Kok mountains, and over the Indus and Chenab, is 330 miles, and from Mooltan to Delhi 350. There is yet another route from Candahar, still farther to the south, by the confines of Seistan and Beloochistan, through a level country, and unobstructed by either mountains or rivers (except, of course, the Indus, which would be crossed near Shikarpoor); but the whole extent of this line passes through arid and uncultivated districts, destitute of provisions or water, being,

in fact, a continuation of the great sandy desert of Kerman, where Alexander and his army suffered such hardships on their return from India-it has, however, been more than once traversed by Asiatic armies. This detailed itinerary may, perhaps, seem tedious to our readers, but it is only by such dry matter-of-fact statements that we can dispel the vague idea of trackless steppes and immeasurable distances, which is popularly associated with the regions of the East, and which has led many to consider our Indian frontier as secure as if, like some of the kingdoms in the Arabians nights, a hundred years' journey intervened between it and the nearest neighbouring state.

The tidings of the siege of Herat were at first received with apathy by the mass of fire-side politicians in England, who, finding from their gazetteers that Herat was a city of Khorassan, and Khorassan a province of Persia, inferred nothing more than the Shah was intent on chastising a rebellious portion of his own dominions; and it was by slow degrees that the public mind was forced to comprehend the fact, that our faithful allies the Russians, were actively endeavouring, with every prospect of success, to subvert one of the bulwarks of India. The unceasing denunciations of the press have succeeded to a certain extent in undeceiving those, who, as long as we remained nominally at peace with Russia, and no Russian army of the Indus commenced its march with displayed banners across the desert, could not be persuaded that any real danger was to be apprehended from Russian machination: but open violence has never been the favourite game of Russia: she never advances to the assault of the citadel, till she has sapped and undermined the exterior defences: and it is before the walls of Herat that she has first emerged from the covered approaches which she has been for years silently constructing, even in the heart of the distant Birman empire, for the attack of Hindostan. Herat, in fact, is the Shumla, as the mountains of Afghanistan are the Balkan, of the exterior defences of India; and if we do not anticipate the Russians in the possession of them, they may, at no very distant period, complete the analogy by descending thence to the plains of

Hindostan, and dictating, from within the walls of Delhi, as formerly at Adrianople, a treaty by which the power and territory to be possessed by the Lords of Calcutta shall be regulated by the good will and pleasure of the White Khan (as his Asiatic subjects call him) of Petersburg.

It is true that the gallant and successful resistance which the Heratees have unexpectedly made, has postponed, for the present, the further prosecution of these schemes of conquest want of provisions, and the false alarm of the approach of the forces of Bokhara to the relief of the besieged city, have compelled the Persian monarch to withdraw his troops, and retreat in disorder towards his capital, after a desperate but fruitless attempt

to carry the place by storm, in which the assailants are said to have lost more than 2000 of their best men ; several Russian officers fell on this occasion, and their heads were fixed on the ramparts of the city. The retreat of the Shah was probably hastened by the news of a revolt rumoured to have broken out in Shiraz and Western Persia, in favour of one of the princes who visited England in 1836, and who are now resident at Bagdad. Their partizans in those provinces, of which their father for many years held the vice-royalty, are known to be numerous, and disaffected to the rule of Mohammed Shah, whose unnatural alliance with the hereditary foes of the Persian faith and nation has alienated from him the bulk of the population; and their hopes have been raised by the occupation, by an AngloIndian force, of the island of Karrack, which commands the harbour of Bushire, the principal port possessed by Persia on the Gulf. No detailed accounts, however, appear to have been hitherto received of the progress of the Persian revolters, or of the operations of the British troops subsequent to their establishment on Karrack; but it is obvious that an unpopular monarch, returning from an unsuccessful expedition with a broken and dispirited army, and an empty treasury, could oppose little effectual resistance to the insurrection of a warlike population, headed by a former claimant to the throne, if the powerful aid of British discipline were thrown into the scale against him. It was perhaps the anticipation of such a

crisis which led to the concentration of 50,000 Russian troops at Eriwan and along the frontier; and if a request for aid in reducing his rebellious subjects, on the part of the reigning monarch, had once given a pretext for pouring them into Persia, Mohammed Shah, with his throne surrounded, and his people awed into allegiance by foreign bayonets, must necessarily have sunk thenceforward into as subservient a vassal of Russia as Stanislaus Poniatowski was in Poland. The events of the campaign in Khorassan, however, appear to have shaken his faith in Russian promises; and his wavering counsels have been determined by the news that an armament had been set on foot in India for the purpose of restoring the dethroned monarch of Cabul and Candahar, in place of the present chiefs of those provinces, who have lately become allies of Persia; and the effect of this alteration of policy has been the reopening of a friendly correspondence with Colonel Stoddart and Mr Macneil; while, for the final adjustment of all differences, a Persian Ambassador has been dispatched to London, and is said to have already reached Constantinople. If the cession of Bushire, or some other naval station on the Persian Gulf, should be made the price of the renewal of the ancient alliance on the part of Great Britain, the acquisition would be doubly valuable, as affording a position in the flank of the Persian monarchy in the event of a future rupture, and as a present means of facilitating our direct communication with India. The demand of some such compensation for the insults offered to the British name in the person of our minister, and the violation of treaties, could not be considered either unreasonable or exorbitant; and the fickle and headstrong temperament of Mohammed Shah does not hold out much hope of the permanence of any arrangement which does not include an adequate security against future aggression.

The originally avowed object of the late campaign against Herat, was simply the re-union of that city, and the part of Khorassan dependent on it, to the Persian monarchy, from which it had been separated at the rise of the Doorauni dynasty in Afghanistan, about the middle of the last century; but during the progress of the

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXIX,

siege, ulterior schemes developed themselves, of such a nature and extent, as to justify the Government of India in dispatching a powerful expedition, as we have already stated, against Cabul, in order to subvert the power of the Barukzye chiefs, and reinstate the ex-king, Shah Shooja, under British protection. The particulars of these schemes of partition concluded in the Persian camp, as far as they have transpired in Europe, were to the effect that Dost Mohammed Khan of Cabul, the most powerful of the Barukzye chiefs, should have the title of King of Cabul, and be placed in possession of great part of the territories formerly comprised in the Doorauni monarchy, as far as Balkh and Cashmere, on the north, and should be assisted in conquering the latter territory from Runjet Singh; in consideration of which, Dost Mohammed pledged himself to interpose no opposition to the subjugation by Persia of Herat, Beloochistan, and Sinde; which extension of territory, if effected, would have carried the Persian frontier up to the Indus, and rendered it easy for any power in alliance with Persia to invade the Company's territories by the southernmost route; while the territories of Dost Mohammed would either have afforded a passage by the northern route, or have covered the flank of an army moving by the other. The intrigues of Rus sia were sufficiently evident in these arrangements; and it yet remains to be proved how far the restoration of the exiled king in Afghanistan, even if successful, will operate as a barrier to similar attempts in future; but if the adhesion of this warlike people to the British interest is effected, and their various tribes again united under a single monarch, they may be made, if properly supported, an almost impregnable barrier to any future invasion of India on the N. W. A sketch of the previous history and present political situation of these countries, whose names and positions on the map were almost unknown, previous to the late occurrences, to the majority of general readers in England, may be useful in elucidating their importance, both as an outlying defence to our frontier, and as a connecting link between the politics of Persia, Central Asia, and India.

The mountain country between Per

G