3-053-666 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Nations of Western Asia: Tartar priest, 1873. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. Levites. 'The task of Russia in Northern and North- Western Asia - of Central Asia we prefer just now to say nothing - is equally commendable and useful to the common interests of humanity. On the western shore, at least, of the Caspian, in the highlands of the Caucasus, and again to the eastward, in the wild region of the Kirghiz Tartars beyond the Ural river, the rude practices of incessant rapine and unsparing warfare, among half-savage tribes of men, who were averse to every kind of productive labour, have been superseded by their subjection to an orderly government; and if only the same results follow the toilsome march of the Russian armies in the deserts of Turkestan, so much the better for all the world'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.