Then, Frederic William of Prussia is, by intermarriage, related to Nicholas, in the same degree that the Emperor Francis was to Napoleon, but with infinitely greater inducement to a collusion of views. And, lastly, as the son of the ex-King of Sweden is (or is to be) married into the house of Orange, so closely and confidentially allied with that of Russia, the succession of the family of Bernadotte seems very questionable, and consequently his measures can scarcely be unembarrassed, conscious as he must be of the illegitimacy of his title, and that the muzzles of the Russian guns are almost within sight of his councilchamber.' If we had not abundant proofs how readily the ties of relationship give way to political expediency, we should despair entirely of Colonel Evans's confederation. We have no apprehensions, however, of the civilized nations of the west submitting to receive laws from the northern barbarians: and, without wishing to undervalue the talent of this author, hope we may be permitted to say that he has written too rashly and hastily, considering the extent and complexity of his subject.

We agree then with the general principle laid down by the writer of A Few Words,' that the extension of Russian dominion would not add any thing to its power of aggression, and might very considerably weaken it by lengthening its line of defence; that' an extension of the dominion of Russia over the rude nations, its neighbours, is not so much an increase of resources as a channel for draining them;' and that the secondary estates of the continent, in the event of Russian aggression, would, no doubt, range themselves under the banners of their more immediate neighbours the French, even if their interests and their inclinations did not determine them to that side.' And as to this country, the author says,—

2

'I may assert, without fear of contradiction, that, since the period of the great territorial acquisitions of Russia-since the Turks were compelled to cede Bessarabia and half of Moldavia; since the second partition of Poland, and the conquest of Georgia, Great Britain has, notwithstanding the enormous dilapidation of capital occasioned by the intervening war of the French Revolution, made strides in wealth, and in power the consequence of wealth, previously unexampled. What measure of progress shall we take? The extension of surface under the plough, or the general improvement in the arts of tillage; the growth of our commerce in every sea and every port of the world where commodities can be exchanged for commodities; the prodigious increase of the quantity of manufactured produce, and of mechanical inventions, yearly accelerating the ratio of that increase; the progress of building in every direction; the constant additions to enjoyment and convenience; former luxuries now become ordinary comforts, and

VOL. XXXIX. NO. LXXVII.

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the

the class of those enjoying them increased beyond precedent.'A Few Words, pp. 37, 38.

But the case with Russia is widely different.

Oppressed as she is,' says the Bishop of Calcutta, by an autocratical government, with an all-powerful nobility, with an half-digested feodal system, with an incapacitating spirit of corruption in every branch of administration, with foreigners in possession of every post of honour or profit, it is not too much to say that Russia has reached in the present reign (that of Alexander) the highest pinnacle of rank and power which her circumstances can ever admit her to attain.'*

The Bishop observes that no government has so little command of money, with so much real wealth, or so small an available military force in comparison with the amount of her standing army. The truth is, the accounts of the Russian army, of its discipline and valour, have been most grossly exaggerated. It never amounted, at any one time, to 400,000 efficient troops, spread over a surface equal to one-tenth part of the habitable globe. Its commissariat is in a miserable state; and as to its discipline, we can state on good authority, that when the battering train was brought up before Varna, it was found that the shot would not fit the cannon, and they were obliged to send to Moscow and Petersburg for a supply. As to their valour, it is, probably, on a par with that which is common to most armed bodies. The want of discipline in the Turks, judging from the results, could only have been compensated by, if not a superior, at least an equal degree of valour. The long protracted sieges of Chumla and Varna have fully established this point. Here the Russians have gained no reputation, but, on the contrary, have lost character, by purchasing the surrender of the latter fortress from a Macedonian traitor, half Greek and half Turk, the price, as we have been informed, being 500,000 roubles, argent comptant, protection to himself and followers, and an establishment on the Crimea, where this base wretch will live suspected and despised, and perhaps die à la Czar.

In Persia it required two campaigns, with the best soldiers that Russia could bring forward, to subdue the undisciplined troops of Abbas Mirza, and a whole campaign has been wasted before the entrenched camps of Varna, Chumla, and Silistria, the losses of which have required a new levy of one hundred thousand men (some make it double). The Russians fought well, it is true, on their own soil, against Napoleon, but without once gaining a decisive battle; and, in conclusion, to use the words of LieutenantColonel Evans himself,

Journal of a Tour in Russia, &c., by the Rev. T. James, A.M.

'Suffice

Suffice it to say,-that since about a hundred thousand Frenchmen, incumbered with twenty thousand sick and wounded, were enabled, though two thousand miles distant from their own frontiers, to remain unmolested masters for nearly seven weeks of the antique capital of the invaded empire, situated as it is in the very heart of its dominion, eventually also only voluntarily retiring from it, while still decidedly superior in the field,—it must in candour be conceded that the invulnerability of Russia is yet to be proved.'-pp. 218, 219. And this admission is made after all the gloomy prognostics with which the gallant colonel had shaken the nerves of his readers.

Leave we, then, the west to take care of itself, and say a few words on the too oft repeated and hackneyed topics, a Russian invasion of India, and the destruction of our India and China trade, by diverting it into a new channel overland. On these subjects, which since the days of the Czar Peter have become, as we have elsewhere observed, a sort of periodical nervous intermittent,Colonel Evans appears to us to be completely floating adrift, without sail or compass. With regard to the first point-the army destined for the invasion of India is supposed to assemble at Orenburg, march for Attock by Herat, Bokhara, Khiva, and Samarcand, which are stated to be as good, if not more advantageous intermediary stations, than any between Delhi and Attock.' This is as new to us as it is bold on the part of the writer. He goes on to state, that a considerable commerce is carried on between Orenburg and Khiva, Samarcand, &c., a position which we are obliged to deny, and to state distinctly that no commerce is carried on by Russia with these countries; its only Asiatic commerce being with China, at Kiakta, to the value of about five millions of roubles.* He further states, that the property of the country consists in cattle, camels, and horses; that the latter are in droves of thousands together;' this, we shall content ourselves by observing, is physically impossible. Where the colonel has discovered that the deserts (that of the Kirghis being one of them) in geographical maps, by no means invariably infer sterility,' we are at a loss to find out, and all the information that we possess entirely negatives the assertion, that the means of transport are here more abundant than in any part of the world' !

Having crossed the desert (of which more by and bye), we come to Bokhara, which, in the inflated style of oriental hyperbole, the Arabian and Persian writers designate as one of the three terrestrial paradises.' Sir William Ouseley, the only authority of Colonel Evans, in the same flowery style of the Persians, (from which we believe he translates,) says, If a person stand on the Kohendis (or ancient castle) of Bokhara, and cast his eyes

* Tableaux Statistiques, &c., de Weydemeyer.

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around,

around, he shall not see any thing but beautiful and luxuriant verdure on every side of the country; so that he would imagine the green of the earth, and the azure of the heavens, were united; and as there are green fields in every quarter, so there are villas interspersed among the green fields.' How charming! If Sir William should happen to be perched on the top of Amesbury House, 'he shall not see anything but beautiful and luxuriant verdure,' &c., although Salisbury Plain be within half a dozen bow-shots.

But to the facts; and these we cannot do better than glean from Baron Meyendorf, who wrote the account of M. de Negri's Embassy to Bokhara; and from Captain Mouraviev, who was sent by General Yermoloff from Georgia to the khan of Khiva. These two recent works were reviewed in our Seventy-first Number, as the groundwork for a detailed inquiry into the practicability of a Russian invasion of India; and we cannot but think that, if Colonel Evans had fallen in with those books, and condescended to cast his eye over our remarks on them, he would at least have dropped this part of his gloomy speculation. Meyendorf's party left Orenburg on the 10th October; the distance to Bokhara is about a thousand miles; the time of performing it seventy days. With the exception of a few naked mountains, and here and there a deep ravine, the whole was found to be one uniform plain characterised by aridity, and melancholy uniformity; the scanty vegetation burnt up, and nothing left but a few stunted and shrivelled plants, chiefly of a species of wormwood. For the distance of two hundred and fifty miles, not a drop of water could be had, except in salt lakes, or in the bottoms of the dry clayey beds of what had once been lakes, but now covered with a thin coating of salt. The only verdure was a strip running along the line of the Sir or Gihon, which was frozen over, and the temperature at 221 below the freezing point of Fahrenheit! Well might this inclement weather call to the Baron's recollection what Shereffedin tells us the army of Timour suffered on the Sir. 'Some lost their noses and ears, others their feet and their hands; the sky was but one cloud, and the earth but one mass of snow.' little relief to the eye, and to the cattle, which this verdant strip afforded, was succeeded by a desert of red sand (Kizil-coum), extending east and west from the sea of Aral to Khokan, at least three hundred miles; that part crossed by Meyendorf employed them five days, without a drop of water. We really must extract the traveller's account of this desert of the Kerghis, not only for Colonel Evans's information, but also to justify the observation we have made on this part of the subject.

The

The surface of the Kizel-coum is interspersed with sandy hillocks, raised to the height of twenty to sixty feet above the general level;

but

but there is a cluster of five sand-hills, about a hundred and eighty feet high. From the summit of the most elevated of these, the uninterrupted view across the immense surface is like to a sea in a storm, which had been suddenly transformed into sand. In vain is a single object sought to fix the attention; nothing is seen on every side but a desert, to an extraordinary degree gloomy and monotonous.'

We would ask Colonel Evans whether this be one of the deserts on geographical maps that by no means infer sterility'? Here the party left the last remaining waggon of the five and twenty they started with, no less than eight draught horses, having been abandoned to their fate in one day. And yet it is precisely over these deserts, that Colonel Evans tells us the means of transport are more abundant than in any part of the world.' At length, the exhausted party, having passed some hills covered with snow, and twenty miles of deep sand, reached the Oasis of Bokhara, where fifty of their horses died with eating green food, and drinking water, after their long previous starvation.

After the passage of such a desert, even a field of sesamum would stamp on Bokhara the name of a paradise, though an unfortunate Russian slave, speaking of the want of rain and water to drink, said to Meyendorf, it is a country which God must have created in his wrath. Still, as an intermediary station,' it might, perhaps, feed the invading army, if it ever got there, for a week. The Colonel has not ventured to state the number of men who are to pour in upon India from Attock; but we think that he could not start fewer than fifty thousand from Orenburg, to have twenty-five thousand effective fighting men for the first coup d'essai towards reestablishing the Mogul on the throne of Delhi. We imagine, however, that fresh troops might be spared out of the three hundred thousand men which our Indian army consists of, to dispute the point with these emaciated Russians; particularly as it was but the other day that the Duke of Wellington publicly said he had seen all the armies of Europe, and none better than that of the East India Company.' Now, fifty thousand men, by taking as a scale of calculation what was found necessary to transport the party of Meyendorf across the desert, would require forty-one thousand six hundred camels, forty-six thousand five hundred horses, and three thousand waggons. If the last article could be moved at all as far as the Sir, where the whole of Meyendorf's were left behind, does Colonel Evans really suppose that the poor miserable Kirghis, scattered thinly over a thousand miles of desert, could afford relays of horses to the extent that would be required to drag these waggons? We venture to assure him, not to the extent of one hundredth part. Our decided opinion is, that if the Emperor Nicholas should, at any time, wish to get rid of a troublesome

part