ern, as
well as of Eastern, Turkestan to believe that she retrocedes Kuldja for
any other cause than fear of the Chinese. The Khokandians, the
Bokhariots, as well as the Kirghiz, the Calmucks, and the Kashgari, will
all argue that Russia restores Kuldja not through any desire to fulfil
her engagements, but simply because she cannot decline to fulfil them
without engaging in a war with China, and her compliance with the
demand would then be construed as an admission of her disinclination to
encounter China in the field. In fact, even if Russia had promptly
restored Kuldja, she would not have secured the credit she might have
claimed for her good faith, and she would have had no guarantee that the
Chinese would have rested content with the cession of Ili proper and not
gone on to claim, in a moment of military arrogance, the restoration of
the Naryn district, which China at a period of weakness had herself
ceded to Russia more than twenty years ago. Then, besides these
objections to the surrender of Kuldja on political grounds, there are
commercial and fiscal reasons why Russia should be loth to restore this
province. Not only has it become highly prosperous and thickly populated
under Russian rule, but it has also been raised into one of the most
fiscally remunerative portions of the Russian possessions in Central
Asia, and then there is its admirable frontier in the Tian Shan, which
places the future trade with the western parts of China more at its
disposal, than it is through the Semipalatinsk and Chuguchak route, and,
above all, it effectually dispels all sense of real danger from attack.
The Chinese would find that to force the Tian Shan range into Kuldja
would be a task almost impossible for them, and they would be compelled
to enter the province from the north by Karkaru. By so doing, they would
leave the whole of their flank and line of communication exposed to an
attack with telling effect both at Manas and in Kashgar, and with a
scientific foe such as Russia, no sane Chinaman could dream of attacking
Kuldja except in the most overwhelming force. It may be as well to
sketch here the history of Russia's rule in Kuldja from 1871 to the
present time, before proceeding with the consideration of the questions
aroused by the difficulty between Russia and China.

When an independent government had been founded in Kuldja in 1866, a
ruler of the name of Abul Oghlan was placed upon the throne. He appears
to have been a Tu