THE EUSSIAN GOVERNMENT IN TURKESTAN. 67 necessary. That citj, strategically speaking, might be considered to be untenable so long as Samarcand was in hostile hands and Khokand occupied a flank position of great vantage. To render it as secure as a capital should be, and to dissipate the last vestige of resistance on the part of the Usbegs and the Kipchaks, those wars were undertaken which secured Samar- cand as a possession for the Czar, and which ultimately laid Khokand at his feet. With Tashkent as the centre of a new power thrust into the heart of Turkestan, there was nothing strange or unexpected in those events; but had the report of the Steppe Commission been disregarded, and Tashkent remained only an advanced post of the Russian Empire, and not a new capital, it is very probable that the progress of Russian arms in a southerly direction would have been less precipitate, and less full of menace to India. The Steppe Commission also was not content with the formation of a new government in Turkestan whose destiny would lie in the hands of a magnate only im- perfectly under the control of the Imperial authorities. It was necessary to add to its dimensions before these had been rendered formidable by successful conquest ; and with that object an immense tract of country was severed from the governorship of Semipalatinsk, and included in the new administration of Turkestan. This region was known as Semiretchinsk,* and may be roughly defined as all that country lying between Semipalatinsk and the Irtish on the one hand, and the
- Semiretchinsk means " the coimtry of the seven rivers."
5 *
