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88 THE RUSSIANS AT) THE GATES. OF: HERAT.”
Volga waterway has never been properly appreciated by English
politicians. Within a few short hours’ railway ride from St. Peters-
burg, the Volga can be touched at a navigable point, and from there
troops can go in steamers or barges down the Caspian Sea. From
the Caspian Sea runs the easy, level road from Michaelovsk (near
Krasnovodsk) ria Askabad and Sarakhs, to the gates of Herat and to
ndia. .
The resources of the Volga may be gathered from the fact that
the traffic on the river amounts to over ten million tons annually,
conducted by 650 cargo steamers and 3000 barges, having the united
capacity of nearly 3,000,000 tons. The value of these steamers and
barges is estimated at £8,000,000 sterling. In excess of the 3000
permancnt barges of 1000 tons capacity each, there are hundreds of
temporary ones constructed to convey cargoes to Nijni Novgorod,
or other destinations, and then broken up. On the Volga and
Kama 100 such barges are yearly constructed, with a cargo capacity
each of from 300 to 500 tons, and 200 with a capacity of from 5000
to 8000 tons. These huge vessels, the size of ocean-going steamers,
and the 300-foot permanent barges, are too large to pass through the
canal system to the River Neva, the locks of which do not admit the
passage of craft exceeding in length 147 feet ; hence 1000 smaller
barges, 100 feet long, and having a capacity of 200 or 300 tons apiece,
are yearly constructed simply for the transport of goods from the
Volga to the Neva. Besides the extensive shipbui ding above re-
ferred to, 4000 barges, wherries, and fishing-boats are annually built
on the Volga for the lower course of the river and the Caspian. The
central point of the traffic on the Volga is Nijni Novgorod, where
GENERAL SIR F. 8. ROBERTS, V.C., K.C.B.
there is an annual turn-over at the Great Fair of from twenty to
twenty-five millions sterling. Astrakhan, at the mouth, does a trade
of £5,000,000 a year. The traffic passing through the mouth of the
Volga amounted to a million tons in 1882.
These are some of the transport resources of the river Volga, down
which Russia is despatching troops to reinforce Komaroff’s army at
the gates of Herat. Besides the navigable waterway from Tver, the
railway system touches the river at four reat points—Nijni Nov-
gorod, Samara, Saratoff, and Tsaritzin. To each of these troops
could be despatched from Middle and Western Russia, and, on their
arrival at the river, find plenty of transport to carry them down to
the sea. :
That sea—the Caspian—associated in most Englishmen’s minds
with sands and scorpions, is now a great basin of busy commerce.
Over 200,000,000 herrings are caught in it every year. The petro-
leum trade of Baku, opposite Michaclovsk, employs fifty large
steamers and hundreds of sailing vessels. Seven thousand vessels
enter and leave the port every,year. The port of Baku contains pier
accommodations for 100 steamers at one and the same time, while
the petroleum refineries give the means of drawing largely upon en-
gineering resources. Without experiencin anything like the difi-
culty she encountered in 1877, Russia could assemble in the magnifi-
cent harbor of Baku an army quite as large as she invaded Turkey
with then, It would have better transport, the troops would arrive
at the base in better trim, and they would have the enormous’ food
supply of the Volga to sustain them in their campaign,
The army of the Caucasus, 100,000 strong on a peace footing, is
for the most part concentrated in Transcaucasia, ‘T’ hrough Trans-
caucasia runs a railway from Batoum, on the Black Sea, to this same
Baku on the Caspian. Baku, therefore, would serve as the concen-
trating point of the forces of the Caucasus as well as those from
Russia proper.
Baku, which in 1879 only contained 15,000 people, now has a pop-
ulation of 50,000, and is becoming a great city. There are 5000
houses in the place, and 1500 shops, and 200 oil refineries turning
out a quarter of a million tons of burning-oil every year,
Across the water to Michaelovsk is a day’s journey; then comes
the railway trip to Kizil Arvat terminus, 144 miles inland, where the
Transcaspian desert ends, and the fertile. country commences, run-
ning all the way to Herat. As Ihave said, the transport power of
the Caspian is now such that Russia could rapidly move, not simply
thousands of troops, but tens of thousands; for the fifty steamers
are new and large, and the hundreds of sailing vessels ships of great
capacity. :
We may therefore say that, so far as the collection of troops and
stores in the Caspian is concerned, Russia could surpass any efforts
we could make on the Quetta side of India. But there is another
great fact. This assembly could go on secretly, and almost without
our knowledge—at least, definite information could be suppressed—
while we could not move a soldier from England without the cir-
cumstance being known to Russia. Further, while not a soldier
could get to India without the liability of being attacked on the way,
for Russia might be able to secure allies in Europe, she herself could
assemble a vast army in the Caspian, behind the screen of the Cau-
casus, without having to detach a single man to protect it.
In 1877 Kishineff was the concentrating point from which Russia
invaded Turkey. For her troops to proceed to that point, the diffi-
culties of transport and food supply were infinitely greater than
they would be from the present terminal point of the Transcaspian
railway system at Kizil Arvat. I say present terminal point, because,
although her engineers have been engaged extending the line since
last autumn, nothing is known as to the amount of new railway now
open for traffic. Now, from Kishineff to Constantinople, the troops
of the Shipka column had to march 750 miles, and of the Sophia
column, 970 miles. If we treat Kizil Arvat as a Kishineff, the dis-
tance thence to Herat is only 523 miles, as compared with the dis-
tances traversed by the Russians in 1877, given above. But perhaps
an objection may be raised to treating Kizil Arvat as a Kishineff—
then start from the decks of the transports in the Caspian. The dis-
tance even then is only 667 miles, as compared with the 1000 miles
many Russians trudged on foot before they got to Constantinople.
And mark this difference. Russia, in invading Turkey, had Aus-
tria to threaten her flank. There would be no such enemy in the
Caspian. Russia, further, had to cross the Danube—one of the
largest rivers in Europe—in face of the Turks. She had to encoun.
ter large armies at Plevna, and traverse the almost impregnable Bal-
kan range, meeting, on the other side, armies again before she got
to Constantinople. In the case of Herat nothing of the kind exists.
There is not asingle river of any magnitude the whole distance from
the Caspian to Herat. There is no mountain range—only the Paro-
pamisus Downs, containing, according to Gospodin Lessar, at least
twenty good crossings. And instead of great armies, the Russians
would find no enemy at all the whole way to their present outposts,
and could now utilize the 50,000 Turcoman irregular horse to assist
them in their undertaking.
Thus the defence of Herat, in the face of such odds, is a very seri-
ous matter, It is no permanent advantage to us that the forces at
present in the Transcaspian region should be relatively small, com-
pared with the larger invading army I have referred to. Said a
Russian general to me, during a conversation at Moscow during the
Coronation festivities, ‘“‘ We have now such a good road to the heart
of Afghanistan, and the communications with the Caspian base, and
from the Caspian base to Askabad, are so perfect, and admit of such
a ready movement of troops, that we need only a handful of men to
garrison the Turcoman region. It is cheaper to maintain 50,000
men in the Tiflis district than at Geok Tepé and Askabad; and we
can throw them from the one point to the other at a moment’s no-
tice.”
Had Skobeleff been alive to-day, his plan for the invasion of India
would have undoubtedly been the massing, on a large scale, of troops
in the Caspian basin, and their despatch to Herat cia the Askabad-
Sarakhs road and the parallel one from Astrabad cia Meshed.. The
second is the old highway of invasion, and runs through the richest
districts of Khorassan.. “On reaching the Hari Rud at Kusan. the
Astrabad column would march to the south of Herat, leaving on its
feft flank the Paropamisus hills, and sever the Afghan fortress from
ndia.
It must not be forgotten that the Russians at Pul-i-Khatun and
Zulfikar have only to make three marches to the west, and the occu-
pation of Meshed would provide them at a stroke with resources in
transport, food, and supplies generally, equal to those at Herat.
Such an occupation might be made by arrangement with the Shah
who is notoriously anti-English, or ‘without it; for, if war arose,
Russia would not hesitate a moment to cut off Khorassan from Per
sia at Shahrood, and use the Golden Province as a line of advance
and base of operations,
Ifence the invasion of India, or the smaller operation of an attack
on Herat, is an enterprise which seems perfectly feasible to Russian
military men, and it is the conviction that the conflict would end in
a