RUSSIA AND ENGLAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 122, 28 April 1885, Page 3

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND.

The point m dispute between the Russian and the English Governments (says the Pall Gazette) is a* follows : The Russians say : • "We take the .Turkomans and you the Afghans. Let us instruct our Commissioners to draw a Innindary line that will* as far possible, be south of the last Turkoman and north of the first Afghan. In drawing this frontier, however, Some regard must be had to economical conditions. The Sal or Turkomans ■who belong to us have from all times grazed on the fertile pasture, lying to the south of Sarakha aud to the north .of the mountain n»nge ■which forms the only defensible frontier of Herat. From this- region also they draw the salt, without *hich they cannot live. If there is to be ■'any peace on the Afghan frontier, our Turkoman subjects must keoD their ' grazing lands and salt bods. "We leave Afghanistan all the strategical advances, including both ends of all the passes. Ws only ask for the Tur■kpinans the land without they cannot live." Such, we .. believe, is the substance of M. LissarVi proposal, and on tlie surface it appears reasonable enough. A frontier drawn on • these lines would fall eighty miles north of Herat, and fifty miles north of the first position where an army defending Herat would take its stand.

The following from the\ Melbourne Argus of tlie loth May possibly account for one or other of the" supposed Russian men-of-war reported as having been sighted of late :— ", The French transport steamer Allier, bound from Madagascar to Noumea, New Caledonia, is expected to call at Port Phillip, m order to coal, m the course of the next few days. She is a vessel of large tonnage, and m the present exciting times may be mistaken at one of the western lighthouses for a Eussian vessel, if she should pass early m the morning or alter sunset. With regard to the mysterious vossel sighted off Cape Howe by Captain Jacobsen, of the Quickstep, on the 6th inst., it may possibly be the Austrian corvette Saida, which left Hobson's Bay on the Ist April, and arrived m Sydney on the Bth. The vessel seen by the Quickstep was heading N.S.W., but this fact is not inconsistent with the course of the Saida, which had to. beat against head winds all the way to Sydney. At the same time, a watch should be kept for a possible Bussian vessel, because it will be remembered that when the last Russian squadron was m Australian waters it rendezvoused off an island to the eastward of Tasmania, on the voyage from Hobart to Melbourne, and escaped the observation of coasting vessels."

In view of Jihe present position of affairs> it may not be uninteresting to note the time occupied m the negotiations -which immediately preceded the Crimea war. The dispute began to assume a-serious aspect m February, 1853, and went through various phases until the 27th February, 1854, when the English and Grench ultimatum was sent to the Czar Nicholas. Of this he took no notice until the 19th of March, when he declared " he did not judge it suitable to give an answer." The actual declara* tion of war by England and France did not follow until the 28th March.