competitors of almost equal merit with himself, while they each
possessed personal power and family connections that placed them far
beyond the reach of the hardy soldier and court chamberlain. Some of his
detractors had availed themselves of his impecuniosity to circulate
stories of his having had dealings with the Russians; but these,
although invested with circumstances originating in non-Russian
quarters, are probably without any truth. The chief charge, to be taken
for what it is worth, is, that the weakness of his defence of the Ak
Musjid district, after the fall of the fort, was owing to his having
received a large bribe from the Russians. Another is, that in 1863,
after his return from Bokhara, he neglected to retard the Russian
movements for a pecuniary consideration. In both cases the sum mentioned
is very large; and besides the apparent falseness of these rumours, we
have only to consider that he was not worth a bribe, and that his
opposition to the Russians was marked by all the want of foresight of
religious zeal. All these considerations make such rumours appear in
their true light; and although we are aware that a follower of Yakoob
Beg confirmed, if he did not originate, these charges, it seems to us
that the Russians, if there had been truth in the report, would long ago
have placed the fact before the peoples of Asia, and required Yakoob Beg
when Ameer of Kashgar to have acted in a more friendly way towards his
former employers. But the simple reason that Yakoob Beg could not have
rendered any service to the Russians worth the thousands of pounds he is
said to have received, ought to demolish the whole fabrication. If
Yakoob Beg's life proves one thing more than another, it was that he was
a most fanatical Mussulman, and as such hating the Russians, as the most
formidable enemy of Islam, with the most intense hate his fiery nature
was capable of. This man's whole life must have been the greatest
hypocrisy if he was not genuine in his religious intolerance, and that
intolerance rendered any connivance with Russian measures an
impossibility. Owing to his early connection with the church, and his
maternal grandfather's high position therein, Yakoob Beg was always
distinguished for the strict orthodoxy of his views. Through all his
life he seems to have made it his chief object to keep the church on his
side. When he was reduced to the most desperate straits in his after
life in Kashgar, when some of the mos