A Ride To Khiva: Travels And Adventures In Central Asia

It is 1875, the time of the 'Great Game', when the British and Russian Empires are vying for power in Central Asia. Great Britain learns of Russia’s plans to annex India, the 'jewel in the crown' of the Empire. The author who was a British officer ride for Khiva, a Russian city closed to European travellers. He is on a dangerous mission, to learn if this remote and dangerous oasis is about to be used as a springboard for the Russian invasion of India. Khiva was a long way from India, and it really did not signify to England whether Russia annexed it or not. Again, it was urged by others, if Russia does eventually reach our Indian frontier, so much the better for England. We shall then have a civilized nation as a neighbor instead of the barbarous Afghans. A third argument brought forward to defend the action of that Government, which allowed our country’s honor to be trifled with at the caprice of a Russian statesman, was that India did not signify so much to us, after all—that she was a very expensive possession, and one which we should very likely have taken from us, but one certainly not worth fighting for; and this was the opinion of some men who were high in office, and who thus lightly valued one of the brightest jewels in the British crown. The book contains maps and an appendix which have other information, a series of march routes, compiled from a Russian work.