the hot damp climate which is deadly to the native of the Temperate Zone. That any great number of European immigrants could be acclimatised in them seems more than doubtful; that even if they came they could compete with the Chinese labour, which follows the English rule everywhere in Malaysia, is not to be believed. The work of the European in this archipelago is to organise government, maintain peace, make roads, and form plantations.
There is a vast tract of country in Central Asia that offers great possibilities for settlement. Eastern Afghan, and Western Turkestan, with an area of 1,500,000 square miles, have a population which certainly does not exceed 15,000,000, or ten to the square mile. Were they peopled as the Baltic provinces of Russia are—no very extreme supposition—they would support 90,000,000.[1] It is conceivable that something like this may be realised at no very distant date, when railroads are carried across China, and when water—the great want of Turkestan—is provided for it by a system of canalisation and artesian wells. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that whatever benefit is derived
- ↑ Marvin in the second chapter of his book on Merv brings evidence to show that the districts between the Atrek and Goorgan, and the Atrek and Sunbar rivers, the country between Astrabad and Meshed, and between Meshed and Herat, are for the most part eminently fertile. He adds on good Russian authority that great parts of the steppes that are called desert could be transformed into excellent pasture by irrigation! Schuyler says of the valley of Shahrisubs: "Kitab, Shaar, and even Yakrbak and Tchirakahi with their surrounding villages looked like forests rather than cities from the number of gardens and orchards" (Turkistan, ii. p. 62). Of the district between Bukhara and Varganzi, a distance of thirty miles, he says: "The whole road led through well-cultivated gardens and fields" (Turkistan, ii. p. 114). Bukhara, however, is one of the least promising parts of Turkestan; and Schuyler notes elsewhere, that the desert is gaining upon the cultivable land (Turkistan, ii. p. 312). Of Eastern Turkestan, a region containing at least 250,000 square miles, and only 1,000,000 inhabitants, Boulger says, that it has been called "the garden of Asia" (Life of Yakoob Key, p. 2).
