Delorme took a house and studio at Versailles with a suite of rooms for the exclusive use of Lady Reynolds, for neither she nor Nelly could live quite happily apart. ance that she desired to preserve the | pale of general interest or of civilized charm of his friendship. empire - a No Man's Land, save in part from the overflow of Chinese power-is now becoming the meeting-place of the three greatest empires of the world greatest, at least, in population and territory. Within the last ten years Russia has been advancing rapidly into that secluded region; she now fills nearly the whole western half of it, coming in contact with Chinese power in the eastern half; and ere long her legions will have crossed the Oxus and come within sight of the snow-clad summits of the Hindoo Koosh possibly by that time sentinelled by the redcoats of England. Public attention is turning to this little-known part of the world in anxious expectancy; and we believe it will not be unseasonable if we here sketch broadly the features of the region, and the important events which are there in progress. Captain Huguenay found in the warm heart of Clotilde the consolation which Miss Reynolds had assigned to him; while Bellaria discovered in Mademoiselle le Père a disposition which suited his own, only it happened that on the death of her father a promised heritage was not forthcoming. It had been the chief object of the tender singer, and the loss of it occasioned considerable domestic infelicity. From Blackwood's Magazine. CENTRAL ASIA: THE MEETING-PLACE OF Central. Asia - Madame le Père, in a second marriage attended with disgraceful circumstances, squandered the dowry left to her and died penniless. All the happiness that Sophie had anticipated with Victor Huthe region extending guenay she found. After a year spent in eastwards from the Caspian sea to the Italy they established themselves in a wall-topped mountain-range which forms charming house overlooking the gardens the frontier of China proper has for of the Luxembourg, and in its balcony, ages been going from good to bad, alike loaded with roses and clematis, they physically and in the condition of its peopassed together the evening hours of ple. Looking at the present aspect of the bright summer days. Their life was region -a vast expanse of barren deserts blessed, and in its full enjoyment they interspersed by isolated oases, it seems neither of them ever guessed that before well nigh incredible that there was the her marriage Madame Henri Delorme early home of all the leading nations of had known another love. the world; of the Semitic and Aryan races of Celt, Teuton, and Slav, of Persians and Hindoos, of the Hebrews and Assyrians. The story of the primeval migrations from that home in upper Asia is only told by glimpses in the book of Genesis, in isolated allusions in ancient Hindoo literature, and also, it appears, in CENTRAL ASIA is almost as little known some of the recovered tablets of longto the external world as central Africa is, buried Nineveh. In Semitic tradition the while we want to know much more about region figures as the site of Paradise; it. The features, too, and commingled while the ancient Hindoos looked back to races of the former region, are in many it as the land of the sages, and where the respects much stranger and more difficult Brahmanical tongue was spoken in its to comprehend than those of the latter. greatest purity. In the second, but still It is easier to form a picture to the mind's very remote and dim stage of history, we eye of the heart of the " Dark Continent," see Balkh, the chief town of the region with its wide savannahs and marshes, its and the capital of an Aryan people, where dense forests and broad rivers, and its the flag of the new Zoroastrian religion unorganized population, than of the ex- first waved, before the Persians came traordinary commingling of lofty moun- down by Herat into the Zagros mountain ranges, vast sandy deserts, and scat-tains, and became the neighbors of the tered oases of fertility, with a separate State and population in each, which are to be found in the secluded region which lies in the heart of the continent of Asia and Europe. EMPIRES. This central quadrangle of the Old World, which has so long lain beyond the Semitic lords of the Mesopotamian valley. Again, a thousand years or more, and Alexander the Great led the Greeks back to the earliest home of their race, and at that time the region north of Persia and Affghanistan was full of walled towns, and was still peopled by the Ar yans. Even the Scyths to the north of the Jaxartes (ruled at times by a queen), who battled with the Persian monarchs, and who overran south-western Asia seven centuries before Christ, were neither Tartars nor Turcomans, but ancestors of some of the populations of modern Europe. water, that what are now uplands or mountain-tops, once lay at the bottom of the ocean, – and that volcanic action has effected mighty changes upon the earth's surface. We know that the Mediterranean was at one time a true inland sea, severed alike from the Euxine and the Atlantic, before the rupture of the Straits When upper Asia again became visi- of Gibraltar and the Bosphorus; while, ble to European eye, a great change had on the other hand, as the line of the occurred in the population. Sixteen cen- natron lakes indicates, the Mediterranean turies had elapsed since the conquests of may have been united with the Red Sea, Alexander (which temporarily established making Africa an island-continent. We European sway in that region to the now know, also, that the stony wastes of banks of the Jaxartes), when the marvel- the Sahara are the bottom of an ancient lous journey of Marco Polo once more sea, which made a peninsula of northern revealed upper Asia, and first brought Africa, the country of the Berbers, into light the grand Mongolian empire of which old sea, together with the other of China. In the long interval, the Arabian which we shall speak presently, well nigh conquests had extinguished the fire-tem- realized the "ocean-stream" of Homer ples of Zoroaster, and established Semitic and other early Greek poets. But we are influence; and then, first the Turks and too prone to believe that such physical next the Tartars had swept down upon changes were confined to long ago, and the scene from the north-east. The old have played no appreciable part within Aryan peoples had disappeared, some the verge of human history or veritable of them having migrated into Europe, tradition. We forget that, before our swelling the barbarian rush which finally own eyes, Greenland is rising, and within broke down the grand empire of Rome; no great time has become utterly barren and the rule of the great khan of the in consequence of this upheaval; that the Tartars extended from the frontiers of old "green land" of the early settlers Poland to the Sea of China. Despite the is now covered with perpetual snow, and desolating invasion of Chengis Khan and the icy glaciers come down to the cliffs the ruined condition of once-royal Balkh, on the sea. We forget that Norway, too, flourishing cities still abounded; and is undergoing an upheaval, noticeable for Samarkand, Bokhara, Balkh, and other several centuries, a fact which seems to towns, joined in overland trade with the show that that country was able to mainstill more wealthy cities of China, which tain a larger population in the days of the empire was then at the height of its ma-sea-kings than at present. Nay, more, terial prosperity. If we look at the same the change, gradual though it doubtless region now-if we follow the narrative was, probably contributed to the ceaseof travellers across the great plains less efflux of Scandinavian rovers, who through which the Oxus and Jaxartes flow, reaching from the Caspian to the mountains we see a land of desolation, where ruins are far more numerous than the living towns. -- for several centuries poured not only into Britain and France, but founded Norman settlements in Italy and Sicily, and sent fleets of the dragon-headed galleys into the sunny waters of the Mediterranean. It has been truly said that the great Physical changes on a great scale have destroyer of man's works is not time, but been at work in central Asia. An old the ruthless hand of man himself. The legend in the Brahmanical books tells wrathful passage of a Hoolagoo or a that the parents of the Hindoos were Chenghis, consigning to destruction every forced to migrate from upper Asia by a city that offered opposition, even the fiery serpent and snow (of which some ceaseless internal feuds of that region, writers may find a twin allegory in the where deserts and oases are intermingled, flaming sword of the archangel that drove so that wealth was ever in contiguity to our first parents out of Paradise) — indiwarlike and covetous barbarism, have cating that there was volcanic outburst undoubtedly done much to destroy this and diminished temperature, consequent ancient prosperity. But manifestly, phys- upon upheaval; that the now empty craical changes have been disastrously at ters of the region then burst into action work. Geology tells the startling truth, undreamt of a lifetime ago, that the greater part of what is now land was either for the first time, or, like Vesuvius in A.D. 79, after an immemorial slumber-with the natural effect of an upheaval of the region. Geology, too, and thereafter the stream has worn or shows that in ancient times the North burst a passage for its waters through the Sea projected southwards into the very obstructing heights. Many of our existheart of the Old World, extending along ing lakes are evidently doomed similarly the flanks of the Ural chain to the Cau- to disappear. Look at the upper end of casus and the Persian mountain-range. each of the Cumberland lakes, indeed The subsequent receding of its waters of almost all our lakes, and there will could only have been owing to a rising, be seen a green flat which has already slow or sudden, of the land, such as would been silted up, and then a marshy fringe be produced by the agencies mentioned steadily encroaching upon the waters of in the old legends. The Northern Ocean the lake. Or look at Glencoe, and see has ebbed back some two thousand miles, the process well nigh complete. In that leaving only its deepest pools in the Cas- lone valley among the Scottish mountains pian and Aral Lake. Deprived of this there is still a small lake, which maniinland ocean, the region would quickly festly used to be very much larger; but lose temperateness of climate, and also the stream which passes through it is the moisture requisite for fertility. The gradually silting it up with descending climate, like that of all inland countries, débris, and in little more than another would become given to extremes, — very generation the lakelet will have disapcold in winter and intensely hot in sum-peared, leaving only the streamlet cutting mer as it now is. The grassy or through a green flat of alluvial soil. wooded plains of old times would become the waterless steppes of to-day. The cold, too, would lead to the cutting down of the forests for fuel. now so eagerly sought after thereby still further desiccating the country by no longer attracting either the dews or the rain, still less preserving by umbrageous shade the moisture when it happened to fall. It is this drying-up process, and consequent desiccation of the climate, which has produced the adverse physical changes in central Asia. That region as here defined — viz., reaching from the Caspian to the mountain frontier of China proper is severed into an eastern and western part by the "Roof of the World," — the broad and lofty mountain-chain running northward from the Hindoo Koosh, and which forms the watershed of upper Asia; from whence the Oxus and Jaxartes flow westward into the Aral Lake, while the far vaster rivers of China go eastward on their long and unexplored courses, and after traversing the Flowery Land, fall by many and shifting mouths into the Pacific. Beyond, or eastward of this lofty dividing mountain-chain · called in its southern part the Bolor-tag or plateau of Pamir, and in its north-eastern range the Tien Shan, or the "Heaven-seeking Mountains " lie the fertile plains of Kashgar and Yarkand, while Kuldja is enfolded at the north-eastern part of the Tien Shan,- countries where Russia and China now meet as neighbors, and in hardly disguised feud. An eminent writer on physical science has remarked that the formation of the great deltas of the world—those of the Nile and Mississippi - may be seen perfectly illustrated in miniature if one watches the effects of a heavy shower upon the sides of our macadamized roads, where the sandy débris is carried down to the gutters in tiny deltas. In like manner, but upon a much larger scale, the vast changes which have occurred in the water-system of central Asia may be illustrated by what daily meets the eye of thousands of travellers at home, who look at leisure on the face of our country from a railway-train. As the traveller thus traverses the length or breadth of England, numerous small flats or plains may be seen, many of them level as a bowlinggreen, varying in length from a few hun- For the present let us confine our view dred yards to several miles; and in each to the western half of central Asiaand all of them a watercourse - it may commonly called "Turkestan or "Indebe a river, or merely a ditch will be pendent Tartary "-lying between the seen to traverse the flat; while at the Roof of the World and the frontier of lower end there is always an eminence Europe. Here we behold a vast expanse it may be hill or mountain, or merely a of deserts, interspersed with oases, and hardly noticeable rising of the ground- with two great rivers flowing in nearly through which the watercourse finds an parallel north-westerly courses through outlet. Each of those flats or plains has the region, until they both fall into the been the bed of a lake, where the soil Aral Lake. These two great rivers, the brought down by the stream has gradually Oxus and Jaxartes (calling them by their raised the bottom to its present level; | classical names, which we believe are In ancient times, a narrow zone of fertility extended westwards from Khiva to the Caspian, following the course of the Oxus, which then carried its waters to the Caspian Sea. But some centuries ago the Khivans built a great dam across the river at a part where the country is so flat that the waters may travel either way, so that the Oxus was made to take a bend due northwards for a hundred miles, to the Aral Lake; and its old course westwards into the Caspian, still traceable, is marked by ruins, the remains of an extinguished fertility and deserted population. more familiar to the public than their | has dried up, these rivers have their presmodern titles, - viz., the Amu Darya and ent course along the sandy, stony bottom the Sir Darya), have their sources in the of the old sea, wandering alone and central chain of mountains- the Oxus in without tributaries through the desert till the plateau of Pamir, and the Jaxartes in the two former reach the Aral Lake. The the Tien Shan range. In the first part of Zarafshan splits up into many branches as their course, as they leave the mountains, soon as it leaves the mountains, disapthe adjoining country is well watered, and pearing in the sands after turning a porhas many fertile valleys and little plains, tion of the old sea-bottom into the fertile wherein, on the Jaxartes, stand Chimkent, oasis of Samarkand and Bokhara; but the Tashkent, and Khodjent; while on the Oxus and Jaxartes each flows in a single plains of the Oxus-chiefly to the south, stream-the latter until it falls into the between the river and the Hindoo Koosh | Aral Lake, and the former till within some - stand Kunduz, Balkh, and other towns, two hundred miles of its mouth, at which once the site of flourishing settlements point it spreads into many streams, creatand ancient civilization. Beyond this up-ing the oasis of Khiva. per part of their course the two rivers flow in nearly parallel courses through arid deserts, the great Kizzil Kum desert, about two hundred and fifty miles broad, covering the whole land between the two rivers; another equally vast desert, the Kara Kum, extends southwards from the Oxus; while the whole region west of the delta of the Oxus, and between the Aral and Caspian, is likewise desert. But there is a third river of note in the region, namely, the Zarafshan, which descends from a glacier in the mountains only a little to the south of where the Jaxartes enters the plains. The Zarafshan flows due westward for some two hundred miles, meandering in many branches, and forming the oasis of Samarkand and Bokhara, until its waters are at length swallowed up, just as they make a turn southward at Bokhara, as if to fall into the Oxus. This central river-course is the most extensive fertile part of the whole region - surpassing the plains around Balkh, and equalling the fertility of the oasis of Khiva, where the Oxus scatters wide its waters before it falls by numerous courses into the Aral Lake. The oasis of the Zarafshan constitutes the chief portion of the state of Bokhara (which also extends to the north bank of the Oxus), and the famous old city of Samarkand stands in the upper or eastern part of this fertile river-course. The readiest way to understand the geography of this western half of central Asia, lying between the Roof of the World and the European frontier, is to bear in mind that originally the great inland sea (of which the Aral and the Caspian are the relics), extended over the whole region up to the base of the broad and lofty mass of mountains which bound it on the east. Thus the Oxus, Jaxartes, and Zarafshan fell into the sea as soon as they left the mountain region; and now that the sea The Aral lies parallel with the northern part of the Caspian, and to the south of the Aral lies the oasis of Khiva. The whole country west of the lake and the oasis, and between them and the Caspian, is an almost impassable desert; which also extends in unbroken course far eastward from the lower end of the Caspian, sweeping round by the south of Khiva and up the southern bank of the Oxus almost as far as Balkh- and forming the true geographical boundary between central Asia and Persia. In the eastern apex of this desert stands the tiny oasis of Merv, -a place now becoming familiar to English newspaper readers as the goal to which Russia is working her way eted outpost on the Afghan frontier. a cov Such, then, in its broad physical aspects, is central Asia. Before treating of the new powers that are breaking into and operating in that vast region, let us pause for a moment to consider what have been the strange vicissitudes and fortunes of the peoples who in succession have occupied this heart of the Old World. First, as to the eventful effects of one part of the physical changes above referred to, on the colonizing of Europe with its present race of nations -a matter hitherto unnoticed either by historians or geographers. Consider the western boundaries Asia. Lastly came the Mongols, crossing to the Altai mountain-chain from their original home in eastern Siberia, on the plains of the Amoor River, -conquering Russia in the west and China in the east, and establishing a gigantic dominion, extending from the frontiers of Poland to the Pacific, and also southwards to the Levant and the Persian Gulf. So complete was the sovereignty of the "great khan," and so orderly the condition of central Asia, that the golden tablet given by Kublai at Peking "franked" Marco Polo throughout his whole journey from China to the Levant. Even in the time of the Polos, the old Aryan population of central Asia existed to a larger extent than at present, the Tajiks, a remnant of the old Persian race, sparsely scattered throughout the country in the upper Oxus and in some of the trading towns, being now the only remnant of the orig of the region, while it was still the mother- | fame of any man at the present day. But land both of the Semitic race and of the the Turkish race gradually increased in now diverse sections of the far-spread the region, and in the eleventh century Aryans. Europe, which geographically the Seljooks overran even south-western is merely a peninsula of Asia, was not only the dark continent, but was almost, if not entirely, insulated from Asia. The peoples in the old home were girdled in on the west by a great gulf of the Northern Ocean stretching southwards to the Persian mountains, with, in the north, the lofty Ural chain rising beyond the sea in the dim land of the setting sun. When the physical cataclysm occurred by a sudden convulsion, according to the ancient legends, and we may still say comparatively suddenly when the North Sea ebbed back, and the Urals rose out of dry land, even then Europe was accessible only at a few points. Nevertheless, for the first time the dark continent of the west was opened; and rounding the shores of the Sea of Azof, or crossing in coracles the Bosphorus, Greek and Roman, Celt, Teuton, and Slav began their migrations from the old home into Europe, not as races, but rather as fam-inal population. ilies or small migrating bodies, which Not only in Asia Minor, which of old grew into nations with the lapse of centuries. So slow, scattered, and interrupted was this westward migration, that a portion of the great Gothic family still lingered in the Crimea in the days of Marco Polo. In the time of Alexander the Great, central Asia, westward of the Roof of the World (perhaps even as far as the Desert of Gobi), was occupied by an Aryan population. The Macedonian conqueror came in contact with no strange races south of the Jaxartes, and the Scythians who lived to the north of that river were, as expressly recorded, of the same race as the European Scyths in the valley of the Danube. Thereafter the population of central Asia underwent great changes. The Turkish race from the Altai Mountains, in the north-east, began to appear on the scene, with the White Huns as their vanguard. The Mongolian power of China then became a martial and conquering empire, and in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ extended its arms and sovereignty across Asia almost to the shores of the Caspian. The tide of conquest has now wholly and we have books of travel written by turned. The Aryan races of Europe are Chinamen who about that time journeyed making their way back into the old contiover the whole breadth of central Asia, nent of Asia; and while England has traversing its numerous deserts and sur- occupied India, and fringed southern Asia mounting the Roof of the World and the with her settlements, Russia is rapidly Hindoo Koosh, and finally visiting India, extending her dominion over the northand returning in safety to their own coun-ern and central parts of that continent. try. Such a journey would make the For many generations past the czars have 66 an was peopled by the "Yavans," or Hellenic |