RUSSIAN EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 332, 6 July 1875, Page 3

RUSSIAN EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.) The report of the scientific commission appointed by the Russian Government to explore the Amoo-Darya shows that the hopes expressed by several Chambers of Commerce in the empire, as to the possibility of establishing a regular line of steamers on that river, are not likely to be fulfilled. The commission find that the Amoo is not suitable for navigation, and that it will not be possible to direct its channel into the old bed of the river, so as to make it flow into the Caspian. The steamer Perovski, which was used by the commission in prosecuting its researches, made but little way against the rapid current, and did not proceed beyond the Russian frontier. More powerful ships would doubtless not be hindered so much in their progress by the current, but the varying depth of the river, the rapids in its mid-channel, and the immense accumulations of rubbish in its upper course, make any regular navigation impossible, The plan of diverting the channel into the Caspian Sea presents even greater difficulties. It appears from the researches made by the commission that the Amoo-Darya did really once flow into the Caspian at a point near Krasnovodsk. but that its course was not diverted, as some suppose, by human agency, but by natural causes, such as landslips and upheavals of the soil. It was found, however, that the dry bed of the river was admirably adapted for use as a road between the Caspian and the Sea of Aral. The clay banks rise to a height of twenty metres, and there is a plentiful supply of drinking water along the whole distance, besides which the time occupied in the journey is less than one-half of that by the Orenburg route through the Kirghiz steppes. Last summer a regular communication was established between the two seas by the Russian authorities ; and since the expedition against the Turcomans at the beginning of the present year, the caravans have no longer been molested by robbers. Orders have now been given by the Russian Government for the construction of a military road along this line, and the Russian naval station at Adjurade, on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian, has at the same time been transferred to Krasnovodsk, which will be the starting-point of the new road. Steps are also being taken for facilitating the communications between Turkestan and the Caucasus. In the steppe between Tchinas and Djisak, where the Russian troops suffer'd greatly from want of drinking water in 1873, a canal, five kilometres long and twenty-five metres broad, has been dug from the river Syr-Darya, so as to fertilise about 150,000 acres of stenpe land. Measurements have also been made on the right bank of the Amoo-Darya, in order to distribute the waters of that stream by means of canals over a larger extent of territory ; and there is a project for refilling the dry bed of the Yani-Darya and the canals which proceed from it. “ The time has arrived,” concludes the report of the Commission, “to decide what system Russia is to adopt with regard to Central Asia : whether to direct her chief efforts to the establishment of steam communication on the rivers and lakes, which would probably be a work of doubtful utility, or to make her main object the utilisation of those waters in order to irrigate the steppes, so as to convert the latter by degrees into fertile oases, and thereby to increase the productive power of the country and the prosperity of its inhabitants. . . In order to appease the Turcomans it is not sufficient to conquer them ; they must be enabled to attain a certain amount of prosperity as settlers instead of wasting their lives in plunder and the slave trade. Then only will Russian trade and industry enjoy the fruits of the victories which our army gained in Khiva.”