rave resistance, but the Russian cannon and rifles
carried everything before them; and on the 4th of July the ruler
presented himself at the Russian outposts. When taken before General
Kolpakovsky, he said, "I trusted to the righteousness of my cause, and
to the help of God. Conquered, I submit to the will of the Almighty. If
any crime has been committed, punish the sovereign, but spare his
innocent subjects." The next day the Russian general entered the capital
after a campaign that had only lasted eight or nine days. Protection was
promised to all who would lay down their arms, and the army of Abul
Oghlan was disbanded. Abul Oghlan was pensioned, and Orel was appointed
as his place of residence. Kuldja or "Dzungaria," as it is called in the
proclamation, was annexed "in perpetuity," and became the Russian
sub-governorship of Priilinsk. There can be no doubt but that the
Russian occupation of Kuldja was an unqualified benefit to the
inhabitants of that region. The declaration of the abolition of slavery
alone released seventy-five thousand human beings from a life of
hardship and hopelessness. The return of trade, which had become
stagnant, ensured the prosperity and advancement of the active portion
of the community, and during the seven years Russia has ruled in Kuldja,
the people have steadily progressed in moral and material welfare. The
population has during the same period remarkably increased, and the
valleys of the Ili teem with a population at once contented and
prosperous. The rule of Russia in Kuldja is the brightest spot in her
Central Asian administration. The Chinese in demanding the retrocession
of Kuldja labour under the one disadvantage that they come to oust a
beneficent rule. This disadvantage is made the greater by the bad name
the Chinese have earned in Kashgar and the Tungan country, by the
atrocities they are said to have committed. Those who will take the
trouble to scan the matter carefully, and to consult the _Pekin
Gazette_, as much as they do the _Tashkent_, will find that these
atrocities are for the most part the creation of panic, and of malicious
observers, and in the few cases where Chinese vindictiveness overcame
military discipline, as at Manas and Aksu, we have clear evidence that
women and children were spared. The _Tashkent Gazette_ has laboured
strenuously, and not in vain, to disseminate the report of Chinese
atrocities; and one London paper has so far assisted the object of the
R