[535] Stumm, p. 5.
[536] Tradition has it that the Khān retaliated by tearing in pieces a letter, subsequently received from Peter, and giving it to his children to play with (Peter the Great, by Oscar Browning, p. 323).
[537] The Kirghiz affirm that they were divided into three Hordes by an ancient chieftain named Alash. The Great Horde wander over Chinese and Russian Turkestān, near Lake Balkash; the Middle occupy the northern and eastern shores of the Sea of Aral; the Little Horde, now more numerous than the others combined, feed their flocks between the Tobol and the Aral Sea. An interesting account is given by Stumm of their manners and character. See Russia in Central Asia, pp. 227–34.
[538] Stumm, pp. 20, 21.
[539] Meyendorf, Voyage d’Orenburg à Boukhara, p. 285.
[540] For a detailed account of the Khivan expedition, see Hugo Stumm’s Russia in Central Asia, chap. ii. p. 26.
[541] It is well known that the Tsar Nicholas, on learning the disasters suffered by the allied forces during the terrible Crimean winter of 1854–55, complacently remarked that there were two generals who fought for Russia—Generals January and February.
[542] Stumm, p. 50.
[543] See Appendix.
[544] The Cossacks numbered only 104, under Sub-Lieutenant Saroff. They made a zariba of their horses’ bodies, and, after repelling incessant attacks for two days, they cut a path through the dense masses of their foes, and joined a relief column from Turkestān. Only nine escaped unwounded, and the killed numbered fifty-seven. Such actions abound in modern Central Asian annals, and they are as glorious as any performed by our own brave troops in India (Ney, p. 213).