is sparsely inhabited, while in Merv the population is comparatively thick. Broadly speaking, the numbers rise with the distance from the barren seashore. The total population of the province was 235,600 in 1890, and 300,769 in 1895, showing an increase of 65,169, or nearly 26 per cent. The growth of the Kirghiz community during the same period was no less than 60 per cent. The Tekke Turkomans are still the most numerous class of the population;[664] then, at a long interval, the Sariks and the Yomuds, a large proportion of whom roam over Persian as well as Russian territory. Persistent attempts have been made of late years to encourage Russian immigration, but with indifferent success. Each family of new-comers is allowed a subsidy of 100 roubles, besides seed-corn and land rent free. But the climatic conditions are unfavourable, and the water-supply is unsuited to the European constitution. In 1892 one-fifth of the immigrants succumbed to cholera, and they suffer terribly from malarial fever.[665] As traders the Russians cannot compete successfully with the astute Armenian and Persian exploiters of Transcaspia. The Russian immigrants, who are mostly railway servants, are 3452 in number, not reckoning labourers who arrive at the beginning of winter and return home before the fearful tropical heats set in. The rest are scattered in the mountains south of Askabad on the Afghan frontier and the Caspian shore. There are ten colonies of agriculturists, and three of fishermen, with a total strength of 2174 souls. The besetting curse of these little settlements is drunkenness. General Kurapatkine, who strove during his whole term of office to foster Russian colonisation, endeavoured to check this vice by prohibiting the sale of spirits; but it is to be feared that enforced abstinence has only made the exiles’ lot more forlorn, and their periodical outbursts more bestial. A semi-tropical climate and a soil either barren or saturated with malarial poison is not, and can never be, adapted to the children of the icy north.