And now the incentive to a higher development flows once more from a race of Aryan stock. The Russians, strong in the power imparted by a superior culture, are enabled to grapple with the difficulties of climate and vast distances in consolidating their new Aralo-Caspian conquests. After having surveyed the land as naturalists, traders, or envoys, they have settled down as its political masters. They establish themselves in the already existing towns, found others on more favourable commercial and strategical sites, and have even begun a more systematic colonisation in the upland valleys east of the Tatar plains, thus assigning definite limits to the nomad regions. Lines of steamers on the two main streams, roads, and, later on, railways, will cause the hitherto insurmountable distances to vanish, thus enabling the Slav element all the more easily to establish its political and social predominance. In the midst of Tajiks, Sartes, and Uzbegs, Tashkend and Samarkand are becoming Russian cities, just as Kazan has been Russified in the midst of the Tatars, Chuvashes, and Cheremissians of the Volga basin.
| Fig. 84.—Russian Encroachments in Turkestan. | ||
| Scale 1 : 22,000,000. | ||
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 Possessions in 1865. |
 In 1875. |
 In 1881. |
 300 Miles.
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Since the middle of the present century the Russian power has rapidly advanced in this region, notwithstanding the final limits from time to time laid down by the St. Petersburg authorities. Since the capture of Ak-Mejid, on the Sir, in 1853, a territory of about 460,000 square miles has been acquired, partly through the caprice of some ambitious captain, partly under pretext of chastising some unruly tribe. Gorchakov's circular of 1864 limited the farther advance of the imperial arms to a few settled tracts beyond the nomad districts, "where both interest and reason required them to stop." But since then vast strides have been made towards the subjection of the whole Aralo-Caspian basin, and by the fall of Geok-tepe in January, 1881, the independence of Merv and of the few remaining Turkoman tribes is directly menaced. An official treaty concluded in 1873 between Russia and England includes a large portion of their territory in the Afghan states. But such
