they would be unable to read it. I afterwards had
a similar opinion given me by some of the Kirghese
themselves, who said it contained several Tatar
words.*
I could hear of no books whatever in pure Kirghese,
and was told that a translation of Scriptures
and the simplest of tracts for the Kara-Kirghese,
.estimated at upwards of 250,000, and the Kazaks
would be highly appreciated ; as also for the Taranchis
and Kashgarians, estimated at from perhaps 2,000,000
to 3,000,000, and of whom 4,000 or 5,000 come yearly
as summer workmen into Semirechia. On my return
I brought the matter before the Committees of the
Religious Tract and the British and Foreign Bible
Societies ; with what result has yet to appear.
Thus we had a refreshing rest at Vierny, and made
some pleasant acquaintances, and when we left next
morning I felt we should have cause to look back
thereon as one of the green spots of our journey.
* I have subsequently learned its history to be this :— A version of
the Scriptures, in plain Turkish, was published in Oxford in 1666,
having been translated by Mr. Seaman, chaplain at Constantinople.
This, however, was found to be too Constantinopolitan to be readily
understood by the Tatars, who speak a purer Turkish without the
circumlocution and foreign words adopted by the Turks of the capital.
Seaman’ s version served, nevertheless, for a basis on which Mr.
Bruntin, a Scottish missionary, prepared another version, in Turkish,
restored to its pristine simplicity, for the Tatar tribes about the Caspian,
and that was called, from the place where it was printed, the Karass
version. So well acquainted was Mr. Bruntin with the language, and
so pure and idiomatic was his style, that the Tatars regarded him as
a renegade Turk. He died whilst the work was going through the
press, but the edition was finished by his fellow-missionary, Mr.
Frazer, in 1813. Five years later Mr. Frazer accommodated this
Karass version to the idioms and spelling of the Kirghese at Orenburg,
the Gospel of Matthew being printed in 1818, and the whole of the New
Testament in 1820, at Astrakhan, at the expense of the Russian Bible
Society. It was this version, I believe, that I took with me as
“ K irghe se.”
C H A P T E R XX.
TH E R U S S IA N O C CU P A T IO N OF SEM IR E CH IA .
Russians on the Irtish not troubled at first by Kirghese.— Kirghese
. occupation of Sungaria and submission to Russians— Conciliation
and trade at Semipolatinsk.— Suppression of Kirghese robbers and
annexation of the steppe.— Pioneers into Central A sia .—-Foundation
of Sergiopol followed by scientific discovery.—-Submission of
Great Horde and foundation of Kopal.— Opening up to trade of
the Ili valley.— Atkinson’s travels.— Russian advance to Trans-Ili
region.— Progress of trade and Russian administration.— Colonization
of Semirechia.— Exploration of the Thian Shan, aided by feuds
of the Kirghese.— Consolidation of Russian administration.— W a r
with the Khokandians.
TS T'HEN the Russians invaded Siberia at the end
V V of the sixteenth century they were not at first
troubled by the Kirghese Kazaks, who at that time
were united under one khan reigning in the town of
Turkistan. In the following century they were ruled
by Tiavka, the khan to whom, Mr. Ho worth thinks,
may most reasonably be traced the threefold division
of the Kazaks into the Little, the Middle, and the
Great hordes. These divisions were at first, perhaps,
merely administrative, but during the later years of
Tiavka the hordes became more or less independent
tribes, governed by their own princes, and this disintegration
became the more complete when the Sungarian
khan of the Kalmuks, after inflicting upon the Kazaks