Russian Turkestan 9
trast him with his brother who lives by the grace of uncertain rains ; forced to a prevision which makes the lean year borrow from the fat ; able to live wide away from his neighbour, developing thereby an independent individualism which may ripen into civil order and liberty ; each farmer whose land has its own water-supply capable of making some military resistance.
There is not space in these pages to develop an unfamiliar principle which has its demonstrations and applications in the foundation and growth of almost all human history. We must ask a large exercise of inferential reasoning, based upon the scant suggestions which have been outlined, or a large faith on the part of those whose tastes refuse to drudge the details out of which generalisations are made. To leave this subject, without leaving the country through which our journey now takes us, is hard indeed ; yet it is a duty which one owes to the general reader, who, according to all sound morality, should not be dragooned into being a specialist. Let it go at this—the dense, settled populations of cultivators and small tradesmen in all the great artificial oases of Turkestan (Russian and Chinese) are like so many fat sheep when viewed by predatory wolves such as you and I, or such as the fierce mountain tribes or hardy nomads. Down any bazaar in Bokhara, Samarcand, Andijan, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, you and I, each armed with but a shillalah, might victoriously drive the herded, happy people, provided always that there chanced not to be within the herd some Kirghiz, mountain Afghan, or nomad Turcoman. What you and I can do others
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