engagement made with the Dunganites and Taranchites in 1871 could be forgotten. After prolonged discussions, it was decided to return Kuldja to China, and to ask for £500,000 as compensation. The member who was most opposed to obtaining a large sum of money from China was, of all people, the Finance Minister; he apparently overlooked the possibility that would be conferred by this sum of carrying out the construction of the Siberian Railway ten years sooner. For this oversight we paid later. Meanwhile the Chinese assumed a stiff attitude, and threatened to seize Kuldja, moving troops towards it to Urumchi, Manas, Kunia-Turfan, and other points. We, in reply, hastily strengthened our position by sending up troops from Tashkent towards Kuldja. In 1880 we fortified the Barokhorinski ridge, separating it from parts of Chinese Turkestan in the occupation of the Chinese. I was in command of our advanced guard, and saw how gladly our troops would have obeyed the order to advance. They were disgusted at the thought of having to abandon the splendid country of which we had been in occupation for nearly ten years, and at the idea of breaking faith with the people to whom we had promised protection, who were even then crowding round our camps in alarm at the rumour that we were going to hand them over to the Chinese. Of course, at the time this question was decided we entertained a very exaggerated idea of the value of the Chinese troops themselves, and also of China’s military resources. Events afterwards moved rapidly. We commenced the construction of the railway through Manchuria, and occupied the Kuan-tung Peninsula, thus alarming not only China, but Japan. Thus, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century matters became more involved on all sides. Not only did we have to meet the preparations of Austria and Germany on the west, and threatened trouble in our frontier districts near Roumania, Turkey, and Afghanistan, but from 1896 to 1900 we had, in addition, to face the problem of safeguarding the position we had suddenly—and, for the War Department, unexpectedly—taken up in the Far East in our advance to the Pacific Ocean. The magnitude of the task of protecting 11,000 miles of frontier, and of keeping up forces so as to be in a position to fight different combinations of no less than nine adjacent States, conveys some idea of the colossal expense involved. FOOTNOTES: [34] [This evidently refers to the Orenburg-Tashkent Railway, completed in 1904.—ED.] [35] Our troops on that occasion numbered 2,000. It was an insignificant affair, in which we only had forty-three casualties. [36] Seventy-three miles from Kushk fortified post. [37] [_Sic._ ? Pan-Islamic.—ED.] [38] [Galicia.—ED.] [39] [So-called Chinese Turkestan.—ED.] [40] Not far from Lake Lob Nor (discovered by Prejevalski), into which the River Tarin flows. CHAPTER IV