commander-in-chief of Transcaspia he showed that he possessed a rare combination of the qualities which adorn civil life as well as win battles. His methods were based on an intimate knowledge of native character, and a keen appreciation of its noble qualities; and on his translation, in the beginning of 1898, to the great office of Minister of War, he left behind him the reputation of a firm but sympathetic ruler.[659] The charge for which he had laboured so strenuously then became a province of Turkestān, and was placed under the control of the governor-general residing at Tashkent. Transcaspia is divided for administrative purposes into five districts--Mangishlāk and Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian littoral; Askabad, which includes the Akkal oasis; Tajand, watered by the river of that name; and Merv. At the head of each is a military officer, termed the district chief, who is responsible for the executive and fiscal administration. The districts are parcelled out into _pristatvos_, or subdivisions,[660] created in order to facilitate police work, and again into groups of twenty-five villages for judicial purposes. The village, which, as we have remarked, is the administrative unit, is called, if permanent, _volost_; and if inhabited by nomads, _aül_. It is governed by a mayor, on the old Russian model, termed _volostnoi_, or _aülnoi_, as the case might be, but more commonly _starshina_.[661] The village chiefs who replaced the Khāns of old time are elected by the inhabitants, subject to the governor’s veto. General Kurapatkine’s attention was, at an early stage, directed to the defects of the judicial mechanism, which was wholly independent of the executive power, and directed by a professional lawyer sent out from St. Petersburg. The Supreme Court sat at Baku, and appellants had then to face a journey of 200 miles across the stormy Caspian.