e history of these states, and to promote,
by every means at their disposal, the interests of the great empire into
whose service they had been admitted. When such latitude was allowed in
their instructions, and so many private and public inducements were
offered to raise their zeal, it cannot be matter of surprise if we find
the government informed promptly of the shiftings of public opinion in
the independent and semi-independent Khanates of Central Asia. Yakoob
Beg was keenly alive to the dangers that would arise to him personally
from the introduction of such a system into Kashgar, where the
discordant elements out of which he had welded a military organization
were far from being completely healed. If the presence of a mirza in
Khokand and Bokhara had entailed a decade of troubles and of gradual
subjection, what was he to expect, a mere military adventurer and a
foreigner in the land, from their presence in Eastern Turkestan? But
Baron Kaulbars had demanded this concession, perhaps more than any
other, and Yakoob Beg had to yield something in form, if he did not
surrender much in substance, to the importunities of his visitor. As a
great favour he consented to the appointment of _caravanbashis_, or
superintendents of the personal comforts of the merchants when they
should arrive; but a _caravan-bashi_ was an uneducated, unimportant
personage, from whom nothing need be feared. This did not at all please
the Russian administrators, and all their subsequent efforts were mainly
devoted to the attempt to obtain an alteration of this unimportant
personage into the prying and inquisitive _mirza_. To defeat their
design Yakoob Beg was no less firmly resolved, and the history of the
embassies, from that of Baron Kaulbars to that of Captain Kuropatkine,
was one long course of fruitless efforts to force the hand of the
Athalik Ghazi on this point. Colonel Reinthal was sent in 1874, after
the successful journey of Mr. Morozof, to see if any better arrangement
could be attained, but, although the Ameer entertained him very
hospitably, he fared no better than any of his predecessors. In that
year, too, Yakoob Beg's position had become firmer in his own state. The
Tungani had been driven back north of the Tian Shan beyond Turfan, and
into the regions east of Lake Lob; the disaffection, too, in the cities
of Kucha and Korla was also, to all appearance, dying out; but, above
all, the vast aegis of English protection had appeared to b