A glance at the present stage of the difficulty pending between Russia and China from a more extensive point of view than the narrow frontier lino of Kuldja, about which the dispute originally arose, may not be out of place hero, especially if it should appear that Great Britain, as mistress of India, has special reasons to keep a close eye on Russi encroachments in western Chinese Turke: tan. It will hardly be believed that Russia has, within the last few years, brought down her Central Asian frontier line to a point not much more than one hundred miles north of the Indo-British northern frontier line of the Maharaj of Cashmere. In 1878, the Czar by an Imperial whase declared the territory of the Kara Kirghizes of the Pamir steppe formally annexed to the Russian Empire, as a dependency of the noyly-constituted Province of Fergana, established two years before under General Skoboleff, and formed out of the territories wrested from China in the Ili region, whereof New and Old Kuldja are principal towns, about twenty miles apart, on the north bank of that river. This new Russian province comprises the so-called " Kuldja Triangle," whose apex is placed at the point of cession of two mountain ranges enclosing the Ili Valley; and leaving th forts of Vierny and Narin on the line of its base, supported by Hodjent, and behind it by Tashkend, the seat of Government of all Russian Turkestan, Fort Narin is connected by an excellent military road Fort Vierny, from which another very good military road runs to Kuldja, northeastward; and its main branch goes back by Hodjent to Tashkend, being in every place practicable for cavalry and artillery. South of Fort Narin, there are two or three quite serviceable passes leading on to the Pamir plateau; which, as stated, is now become Russian territory as far as a few minates north of 33° The Kara Kirghizes occupy these steppes, being nomadic tribes of Tartar stuck; by some ethnographers confounded with the Kirghiz Kapaks of the Aral Lake steppes, about
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.