The first line that was taken by a Russian expedition was that from Tuk Kharakhan to Khiva. Prince Alexander Bekovitch was sent by Peter the Great to explore certain regions of the Khanat of Khiva, which were supposed to contain rich gold mines, and landed on the Caspian shore with about 3,000 men. The result was disastrous; but the details are too well known to need repetition here. No new demonstration has since been made in that direction, and it appears to have been with good reason abandoned entirely. The eastern shores of the Caspian have been sufficiently explored to make it clear that they cannot be made the starting point of military operations against Turkistan. From the mouth of the Emba to the vicinity of Astrabad, the shore is without a river; and the whole seaboard, as well as the regions between the Caspian and Khiva, with the exception of a very small tract occupied by the Balkhan mountains, presents only barren desert plains, without water, occupied by nomade Turcomans, and affording no resources to an invading army. "This country," says Mouravief, "exhibits the image of death, or rather of the desolation left behind by a mighty convulsion of nature. Neither birds nor quadrupeds are found in it; no verdure or vegetation cheers the sight, except here and there at long intervals some spots on which there grow a few sickly stunted shrubs." It is reckoned that on an average a caravan employs from twenty-eight to thirty-five days of camel-marching to complete the distance of about two hundred leagues that divides Tuk Karakhan from Khiva. The journey is not quite so long from the Bay of Balkhan. This was the route taken by Captain Mouravief when he was sent by Yermolof to the Khan of Khiva, to propose to him an alliance with Russia. It would certainly be hard to conceive any conditions more unfavourable for an expedition towards the interior than are presented by this part of the coast. On the one side is the Caspian Sea, the navigation of which is at all times difficult, and in winter impossible; on the other side more than a month's march through the desert; and then on the coast itself there is a total impossibility of cantoning a reserved force. Under these circumstances, all schemes of conquest in this direction must be chimerical. The Russians no doubt might, by a clever coup-de-main, push forwards some thousands of men on Khiva, and take the town; but what would they gain thereby? How could they victual their troops; or how could they establish any safe line of transport across deserts traversed by flying hordes of warlike plunderers? Russia could not possibly dispense with a series of fortified posts to keep up a regular communication with her army of occupation, and how could she erect and maintain such posts in a naked and wholly unproductive country? The government has already tried to establish some small forts on the north-eastern shore of the Caspian, for the protection of its fisheries, against the Khirghis; but to this day it has effected nothing thereby, but the useless destruction of many thousands of its soldiers, who have perished under the most cruel hardships. Furthermore, the Khanat of Khiva, the state nearest the imperial frontiers, is but a very small part of Turkistan; nor would its occupation help in more than a very limited degree towards the conquest of Bokhara, and a fortiori towards that of Affghanistan.
After the line from the eastern coast of the Caspian, that from Orenburg to Khiva and Bokhara appears to have attracted the particular attention of the tzars. But General Perofsky's fruitless expedition against Khiva, in 1840, has demonstrated that this line is quite as perilous and difficult as the other. The steppes that lie between Russia and the two khanats are exactly similar to those situated north and east of the Caspian, presenting the same nakedness and sterility, an almost total want of fresh water, and nomade tribes perpetually engaged in rapine. When State Councillor Negri was sent on an embassy to the Khan of Bokhara, in 1820, he set out accompanied by 200 Cossacks, 200 infantry, twenty-five Bashkir horsemen, two pieces of artillery, 400 horses, and 358 camels. The government afforded him every possible facility and means of transport, and he took with him more than two months' rations for his men and cattle. Yet though he met with no obstruction on the part of the hordes whose steppes he traversed, he was not less than seventy-one days in completing the journey of 1600 kilometres (1000 miles) from Orenburg to Bokhara.