[635] Moser, p. 345.
[636] This very distinguished officer had been educated at the Petersburg Military Academy. He had seen much service in the Caucasus, when he had been governor of Southern Dāghistan, and afterwards of Darbend. He had gained eminence in the fields of archaeology and ethnology. As an administrator he was equally successful; and Askabad, the present capital of Transcaspia, owes much to his genius.
[637] It was composed of four companies of Transcaspian Chasseurs, three squadrons of Cossacks from the Kuban, one of Turkoman militia, and four guns (Ney, p. 252, note).
[638] Four of them now adorn a monument on the Askabad parade-ground commemorating Geok Teppe.
[639] The Englishmen were particularly struck by the eagerness shown by their rivals to support the national sports of the nomads, the liberal prizes awarded and the careful observance of ceremony in their official intercourse with Asiatics,—a policy which inspired the latter with a sense of their liberality and power. This is an attitude which would do much to consolidate our own power in India (Report of the Pamirs Boundary Commission).
[640] The late Major-General L. M. Annenkoff was then in the prime of life. He had won his spurs as a railway engineer by the rapid construction of a strategic line in Lithuania, and was afterwards appointed chief of the mobilisation department in the Ministry of War. At the outbreak of the Tekke campaign he volunteered for service under General Skobeleff, and was wounded at Geok Teppe. On returning to Russia he was appointed superintendent of transport throughout the empire (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 283).
[641] The rails were steel, flat-footed, weighing 68 pounds to the yard, and cost £16 a ton. The sleepers came from the Baltic and Caucasus. The rolling stock consisted of 80 locomotives on the Siegl system, and 1400 cars and waggons. Everything was produced in Russian workshops.
[642] They earned rather less than £2 per mensem. They were allowed to work in their own fashion, just as if they were repairing their arīks, or irrigation canals. It is said that in India, when the contractors insisted on the use of wheelbarrows, the native labourers carried the vehicles and their contents on their heads.
[643] Ney, p. 321.
[644] It cost 6½ d. per cubic yard.