Russian Central Asia, including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva, and Merv

DR. LANSDELL, already favourably known to the public by his interesting volumes “Through Siberia,” gives in the present work a mass of information on a subject to which the attention of Englishmen has of late been perforce directed—the Russian dominions in Central Asia. In the two goodly volumes recently published he gives the narrative of a journey undertaken in the year 1882, in the course of which he traversed Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva, and Merv. Turkistan has been rarely visited by Englishmen, and, as Dr. Lansdell believes, in certain parts he may claim to be the first. The principal object of his journey was a philanthropic one—the distribution of religious literature, especially in the prisons of the Russian empire; but in writing this book he has kept in view the requirements of students as well as of general readers, providing for the former by touching upon the “geography, geology, fauna and flora, the characteristics of the people, their government, language, and religion”—to which not only numerous notes but also whole chapters are devoted, as well as “appendices, derived from works only published in the Russian language, which treat on the fauna and flora of Turkistan.”Russian Central Asia, including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva, and Merv.By Henry Lansdell (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1885.)