Perofsky, who marched at the head of 6000 infantry, with 10,000 baggage camels, could not even reach the territory of Khiva. The disasters suffered by his troops obliged him to retrace his steps without having advanced further than Ac Boulak, the last outpost erected by the Russians in 1839, at 180 kilometres from the Emba. The obstacles encountered by his small army were beyond all description. The cold was fearful, being 40 degrees below zero of the centigrade thermometer; the camels could scarcely advance through the snow; and the movements of the troops were constantly impeded by hurricanes of extraordinary violence. Such an expedition, undertaken in the depth of winter, solely for the purpose of having fresh water, may enable one to guess at the difficulties of a march over the same ground in summer. Spring is a season unknown in all those immense plains of southern Russia; intense frost is there succeeded abruptly by tropical heat, and a fortnight is generally sufficient to dry up the small streams and the stagnant waters produced by the melting of the snows, and to scorch up the thin coating of pasturage that for a brief while had covered the steppes. What chance then has Russia of successfully invading Turkistan from the north, and reigning supreme over Bokhara, which is separated from Orenburg by 400 leagues of desert? All that has been done, and all that has been observed up to this day, proves that the notion is preposterous. As for any compact and amity between Russia and the numerous Kirghis hordes, such as might favour the march of the imperial armies in Bokhara, no such thing is to be expected. A great deal has been said of the Emperor Alexander's journey to Orenburg in 1824, and the efforts then made by the government to conciliate the Kirghis; but these proceedings have been greatly exaggerated, and represented as much more important than they really were. They have not produced any substantial result, and I know from my own experience how hostile to Russia are all the roving tribes of the Caspian, and how much they detest whatever menaces their freedom and independence.
We have now to consider in the last place the two great Persian routes, which coincide, or run parallel, with each other, as far as Meshed, where they branch off to Bokhara on the one hand, and on the other to Cabul by Herat and Candahar. The former of these routes, travelled over by Alexander Burnes, seems to us totally impracticable. The distance to Bokhara from Teheran (which we will assume for the starting point, though it is still the capital of Persia) is not less than 500 leagues; and it cannot reasonably be supposed possible to effect, and above all to preserve, a conquest so remote, when in order to reach the heart of the coveted country, it is necessary to traverse the vast deserts north of Meshed, occupied by nomade hordes, which are the more formidable, inasmuch as no kind of military tactics can be brought to bear on them. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the occupation of Bokhara by no means infers that of Affghanistan. The distance from the former to Cabul is more than 250 leagues. The regions between the two towns are indeed less sterile and easier to traverse; but, on the other hand, an army marching towards India would have to penetrate the dangerous passes of the high mountain chain between Turkistan and Affghanistan, which are defended by the most indomitable tribes of Central Asia. Here would be repeated those struggles in which Russia has been vainly exhausting her strength for so many years in the Caucasus.[66] In truth, in presence of such obstacles, of ground, climate, population, and distance, all discussion becomes superfluous, and the question must appear decided in the negative by every impartial man who possesses any precise notions as to the regions of Western Asia.
There remains the route by Meshed, Herat, and Candahar. This is incontestably the one which presents fewest difficulties; yet we doubt that it can ever serve the ambitious views attributed to Russia. Along the line from Teheran to Herat lie important centres of agricultural populations; villages are found on it surrounded by a fertile and productive soil. But these advantages, besides being very limited, are largely counterbalanced by uncultivated plains destitute of water which must be traversed in passing from one inhabited spot to another, and by the obstacles of all kinds which would be subsequently encountered in a march through the deserts of Affghanistan, the warlike tribes of which are much more formidable even than the Turcomans who infest the route from Teheran to Herat. Besides, as it is nearly 600 leagues from the capital of Persia to the centre of Affghanistan, it is exceedingly unlikely that Russia will ever succeed in subjugating a country in which its armies could only arrive by a military road maintained and defended through so huge a space.