However if further railway construction in this region is to take place, it will be in connection with the development of plans which concern the requirements of potential strategy rather than the humours of experimental fantasies. For some time past there have been abundant signs that Russia is proposing to find compensation in the Middle East for the downfall of her prestige in Further Asia. Certainly there is a field for her energies lying fallow in Central Asia. The precise quarter where the furrows are waiting to be ploughed is between the Central Asian railway and the frontiers of Northern Persia and Northern Afghanistan. It is to-day evident that sooner or later Russia will improve her communications in this direction by adding to the Orenburg-Tashkent system its natural complement--an extension to Termes on the Oxus, where there is a Russian fortress--or by imparting to her position on the Perso-Afghan border that little requisite attention which it merits--a railway to Meshed in Khorassan. Long since is it that these schemes entered the domain of practical politics, the Russian military position on the Middle Oxus requiring an alternative line of communications to that offered by the Amu Daria, which, when frozen in winter with the post-roads across the mountains blocked by snow, wraps in dangerous isolation the Russian garrisons at Termes, Kelif and elsewhere along this section of the frontier. Preliminary surveys for a railway were conducted in 1902, when the routes selected followed from Samarkand the Shar-i-Sabz, Huzar, Shirabad caravan highway to Termes; and, from Farab to Termes, the trade route along the Oxus through Burdalik and Kelif. Further extensions in this direction would provide railway communication between Huzar and Karki by a bridge across the river, by which Huzar would become as important a railway junction as it is a caravan and trading centre. Still more in the future is the strong probability that Karki will be joined with the Afghan frontier at Imam Nasar, by following the caravan route from the river, or with Pendjeh across the fringe of the Kara Kum. [Illustration: THE MURGHAB VALLEY RAILWAY]