near Andijān before his sympathisers were ready for concerted action. The rising was quelled with much bloodshed on either side; 18 of the leaders were executed, and 350 were deported to North-Eastern Siberia. The recent opening of railway lines connecting the cities of Farghāna with Tashkent and Samarkand will render a recrudescence of the spirit of revolt well-nigh impossible. CHAPTER IV TURKOMANIA AND THE TURKOMANS The reduction of Khiva marks a new era in the history of the Russian advance. The last semblance of organised opposition to the movement had disappeared, and the Tsar saw himself the unquestioned suzerain of the great Khānates. Westwards, his base was planted securely on the Caspian, where the port of Krasnovodsk, founded in 1869 by General Stolietoff,[560] was connected with the Russian colonies in the Mangishlāk peninsula by a chain of strong places. The Amū Daryā, that ancient boundary of nations, marked the limits of the new empire in the west. But the vast tract between sea and river was still unsubdued, and Russia’s boundary marched with that of no organised state. Here lay the habitat of the Turkomans, a race with whom no peace or truce was possible, and the story of their subjection forms the final chapter in the history of the heart of Asia. The haunt of these untamed tribes may be described as a triangle, with Khiva as its apex; its sides the Caspian and the Amū Daryā; and its base formed by a line drawn from the city of Balkh in Afghanistān to the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea. The area thus enclosed is not far short of 240,000 square miles, more than twice as great as that of the United Kingdom. The north portion is a trackless waste; but it is by no means a desert of the Sahara type, made familiar to us by so many records of African travel. Variety is its most salient characteristic. In some parts so firm is the surface that a horse’s hoof rings on it as on a macadamised road. In others, again, the loose sand forms ridges like petrified waves.[561] After the spring rains the expanse of dull white is carpeted, as if by miracle, with gorgeous lilies, tulips, and other bulbous plants, long grass and tufts of reed. Water is, indeed, required to clothe the arid sand with perennial verdure, and render it a breeding-ground for countless flocks and herds. It is found at depths rarely exceeding thirty feet below the surface, and wells are of frequent recurrence.[562] The only rivers of importance are the Murghāb and the Tajand, which rise in the mountains of Afghanistān and lose themselves in the sand; but streams innumerable descend their flanks. In times beyond the range of history the western portion of the Turkoman Desert was watered by the Amū Daryā, which discharged itself into the Caspian at the head of the Bay of Michaelovsk. Owing to some convulsion of nature, or to interference with its course by an attempt to employ it for irrigation, the bed of the mighty stream shifted and