diplomatic triflings cannot prevent Russian influence from making itself more and more felt in these regions, which are cut off from Afghanistan proper by the Hindu-Kush, and which belong physically and ethnically to the Aralo-Caspian basin. All the lowlands stretching from the Caspian to the foot of the Pamir, and from the Iranian tableland to the sources of the Ob and Irtish, may already be considered as practically Russian territory, separated by a single range from British India or its immediate dependencies.
East of Turkestan the Russians have for neighbours the Chinese, whose empire is separated from them by the Pamir, the Tian-shan, and farther east by a conventional line running through the gates of Zungaria, and at many points offering no obstacle to invasion. But so far from having anything to fear from the possible irruption of some modern Jenghis Khan, here the advantage is entirely on the side of the Russians, both in arms, resources, strategical positions, and military science.
II.—THE PAMIR AND ALAÏ.
The Pamir and Tibet, which converge north of India and east of the Oxus, form jointly the culminating land of the continent. Disposed at right angles, and parallel, the one to the equator, the other to the meridian, they constitute the so-called "Roof," or "Crown of the World," though this expression is more usually restricted to the Pamir alone.
With its escarpments, rising above the Oxus and Tarim plains west and east, the Pamir occupies, in the heart of the continent, an estimated area of 30,000 square miles. With its counterforts projecting some 300 miles, it forms the western headland of all the plateaux and mountain systems skirting the Chinese Empire; it completely separates the two halves of Asia, and forms an almost impassable barrier to migration and warlike incursions. Yet notwithstanding its mean elevation of 13,000 feet above arable land, it has been frequently crossed by small caravans of traders or travellers, and by light columns of troops. The attempt could not fail to be frequently made to take the shortest route across the region separating the Oxus from Kashgaria, and Europe from China. Hence the Pamir has often been traversed by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Italians, Chinese, some as traders, some as explorers, some inspired by religious zeal. But of these travellers very few have left any record of their journey, and all took the lowest routes across the plateau. Here are neither towns nor cultivated land, so that it becomes difficult to identify any of the former routes. It was reserved for modern explorers to convey a general idea of the plateau, by their methodic surveys introducing order into the confused nomenclature of the ancients, reconstructing the geography of Central Asia, and getting rid of the fanciful mountain ranges traced at haphazard on the maps. The imaginary "Bolor," which, according to Humboldt, formed the axis of the continent, has already vanished, at least as a line of crested heights, and, like the Imaus of the ancients, it is now merged in the broad tableland of the Pamir. The name itself would seem to have been restricted to a district near the Hindu-Kush, probably identical with the present Dardistan.
