The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1873-07-25
TURKESTAN AND RUSSIA.
Cruelties or the TurkOrnan slave Trade
One OF the Darkest Chapters In the LIE
gend OF Humanity.


There is something almost sublime in
the unhasting yet unrestinC efforts
which Russia has made for centuries to
realize the grand dream of Ivan Vasile-
vitch-a Tartar empire which should
unite Siberia with the fertile valleys
of the Oxus and Jaxartes. Already she
has Incorporated the kirghez Steppe
and conquered Khokand, while her
manifest destiny" is to seat Russian
Governor General either in Khiva or
Bokhara.
Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand, the
three principalities into which the last
wave of Turkish aggression in Asia
crystallized itself, have been for long
generations Theoretically sealed to Eu-
rope for though they are themselves
fair and fertile as any garden of earth,
they are surrounded by deserts which
the fierce hordes of Turkomans have
continually striven to make more mac
cessible and terrible.
Indeed, it is only by the south that
entrance is practicable to the European.
Russia holds possession of the bleak
frozen steppe on the north Chinese
Tartary guards the eastern gate, which
is by pass $4,000 feet high, and little
short of physical impossibility the
road through Persia on the west can
only be travelled at the risk of slavery
or death from the robber tribes who are
always lowering on the Persian frontier,
and from whom escape would be almost
a miracle. Even the southern entrance
is practicable only for the traveller who
can disguise himself so thoroughly as
to elude the vigilance of these born
thieves, and brave the terrors of the
khivan desert. But even this accom-
plished, detection would at any hour
consign him to torture and death-for
the Turkoman knows enough of the
Frank to say proverbially, after the
Frank traveller comes the Frank con-
queror.
But about ten years ago Vambery, an
Hungarian, in the disguise of a Turkish
dervish, travelled all through the three
khanates of Khiva, Bokhara, and Kho-
kand, and revealed their secrets. To
qualify himself for this task he lived
among Turks in Constantinople for six
years, and became a proficient in all
their religious traditions and ceremonies;
indeed he so absolutely transformed
himself that he deceived even the pious,
prayerful thieves of Bokhara. But if
the journey was wonderful the cause for
which it was undertaken seems still
more wonderful. Vambery was a pill
grim to the shrine of his ancestral Ian
guage willing to run the risk of be-
coming pathological martyr in order to
determine whether the Hungarian lam
guage belongs to the Finnish or the
Tartaric branch of the Altaic stock
His sutferings and adventures, and the
delightful cleverness with which he
checkmated all dangerous investigations
are veritable romance which shames
the widest fiction.
All deserts are physically much the
same, but Vambery found the horrors
of the Khivan desert vastly intensified
by the constant sight of such misery as
defies language to depict-the misery of
slaves whose chains constantly ratified
in his ears, and whose fate was the dark
torture tents at Etrek or the slave mar
kets of Khiva or Bokhara. The slave
system of Turkestan has never had
parallel for cruelty in the records of
mans inhumanity for the sale of hui
man beings to the Turk is not mere
business transaction, it is an exciting
and absorbing passion. To hover
around defenseless Persian villages, and
carry off men, women and children,
waylay the caravans i'll the desert, or to
60 to war with some hostile tribe, is the
only employment the rowing Turkoman
recognizes.
Labor of all kinds is performed by
the slaves, the majority of whom, both
physically and mentally, are superior to
their masters. True, the Koran says
that every believer is Free" but the
Turkomans are Mahommedans of the
strictest orthodoxy, and the Persian is
Just so much different in tradition as
makes him eligible for slavery. Mingled
with Mussulman Persians are a great
number of Russian Christians, and
their wrongs and sufferings are ground
sufficient for Russian occupation and
reprisals. Indeed, the terrible cruelties
of the Turkoman slave trade, its hope
lessness and extent, is the darkest chap
ter in the legend of humanity. The
cruelty of the true Asiatic is the cruelty
of the cat, the cruelty of the Scythian
Turk is the VOLTS fierce brutality.
Even prisoners of war have the ghast-
lest of fates, and the Turkoman chief
tumbles his sackful of human heads
at his kahn's feet, certain of receiving
for them robe of honor.
The city of Khiva is surrounded by
groves of fruit and poplar trees, the
homes of innumerable nightingales.
All the fruits that we possess are indi-
genous and there are no less than ten
varieties of grapes cereals, cotton, silk
and incompatible melons are the staples
Khiva is watered abundantly by the
Oxus, noble river destined to be the
great waterway between Europe aud
Central Asia.
The basins of the Oxus and Jaxartes
contain every variety of climate. Corn,
cotton, silk, madden and tobacco may
be grown in unlimited quantities, and
in some localities sugar and opium are
possible. Silver, lead, copper and iron
are known to exist in abundance in the
hills on both sides of the Jaxartes, and
coal i'll such large quantities that it must
finally supersede in southeastern Russia
the use of the anthracite of the Don.
If only these fair countries were touched
nv Tho breath of ,,roprnse thav xvould