AT THAT TIME the river Irtysh marked the southern administrative boundary of Siberia. To the south lay Central Asia: the great Kirgiz Steppe (as it was called then, today the Kazakh Steppe), within it one of the old Silk Roads – and south beyond the steppe Turkestan’s three khanates of Bokhara or Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand and their oasis cities, particularly Samarkand. Today, what the Atkinsons called the ‘Kirgiz Steppe’ and the Russians knew as the Steppe Region (Stepnoy Kray) forms roughly the republic of Kazakhstan, 2.7 million sq. km,1 the world’s largest land-locked country after Mongolia, more than twice the size of Britain, France and Germany combined, stretching nearly 3,000 km west to east from the Volga delta on the Caspian to the Tien Shan mountains on the Chinese border.

The Kirgiz (or Kirghiz) people, as they were known at the Atkinsons’ time and always so called by them, were in fact Kazakhs, the misappellation being partly in order to distinguish them from the Cossacks (in Russian Kazaki). The real Kirgiz were called Kara-Kirgiz.2 But for the sake of simplicity and contemporary practices, the name Kirgiz has been replaced by ‘Kazakh’ throughout this text even in direct quotations. The Kirgiz themselves live primarily in Kyrgyzstan, south of Kazakhstan and one of Central Asia’s five republics (colloquially known as ‘stans’).

It is thought that the Turkic-speaking Kirgiz/Kazakhs were formed from certain tribes of the Golden Horde,3 the Mongol-Tatar army that invaded Europe under Genghis Khan’s grandson, Batu, in the thirteenth century. By the nineteenth century they were inhabiting the vast Kirgiz/Kazakh steppe as nomadic pastoralists with their herds of livestock and had split from west to east into the Lesser, Middle and Greater Hordes.4 Traditionally these were subdivided into clans governed nominally by khans and sultans, but in reality by the early nineteenth century internal disorder was not only common but increasing, with large areas of the steppe in revolt against khanate rule – quite apart from armed resistance to the Russian colonisers.5 It was in the east among the Greater Horde that the Atkinsons were to travel at an early stage of the Russian Empire’s relentless advance into Central Asia.

Twenty years later, in 1868, the expansion was to take Russia to the Afghan border and in 1895 to a mere ten miles from India – of particular alarm to Great Britain. For some fifty years the two powers were jockeying to control Central Asia, playing what was famously called the ‘Great Game’, which reached a major crisis in Russia’s annexation of the Merv oasis in 1884. This was to lead to such ‘mervousness’, as Punch called it, that two British Army corps were mobilised in India. Back in 1801 the unstable Tsar Paul I had indeed sent 22,000 Cossacks with 44,000 horses (a spare for every man) and artillery to drive the British out of India. They had reached the Kazakh steppe when Paul was assassinated and the force was sensibly recalled in view of all the odds against it, not just deserts, mountains and lack of maps, but a potential war with Britain.

For 250 years (1550 to 1800) Russia’s territorial expansion had been based on a whole series of defensive lines, not all contiguous, expanding east and south.6 The major river Irtysh, flowing from south-east to north-west, lent itself obviously to such a line, and it was Peter the Great who had established one from Omsk 900 km to the east beyond Semipalatinsk. Now in the mid-nineteenth century, in an age of imperial expansion, Russia’s immediate policy in Central Asia was to establish a line of forts south of the Irtysh from which Cossack troops could increasingly control and colonise the Kazakh steppe. Here the Cossacks would first establish defensive posts, surrounded by trenches, which could develop into forts and finally administrative centres.

Although Russia regarded the Kazakhs as her subjects, even though they lived beyond her formal borders, she had to fight constant battles to keep them in check. And:

Against a cunning, fleet and bold enemy such as the Kazakhs only the Cossacks could operate with success; regular troops were far less effective in this region since they were not able to pursue a fast-moving enemy. The Cossack on the other hand with his two horses, his rifle and his lance was a source of terror for the Kazakhs.7

But the Cossacks as a military force were not enough on their own to secure the new territory against the Kazakhs, who waged a constant hit-and-run guerrilla war against the invader. So St Petersburg encouraged or ordered settlers, peasants and Cossack families to build up the Russian population in the steppe, based on an ever more southern chain of forts and administrative centres. The Atkinsons’ destination was Kopal (today Kapal), the southernmost fort at that time, founded seven years before by West Siberia’s Governor-General, Gorchakov, who had rashly authorised the British couple’s visit, a decision he came to regret – he was indeed formally to acknowledge his error to Nesselrode, Russia’s Foreign Minister.

The area at that time was anything but peaceful. The continual Russian encroachment, forcible eviction of Kazakh families, seizure of their best pasture lands, requisition or slaughter of livestock and imprisonment of innocent Kazakhs, quite apart from the taxes now levied and charges for crossing rivers: all this and more resulted inevitably in Kazakh rebellions. The most serious was that of the Middle Horde under Kenisary Kasim, an outstanding leader who at the height of his revolt commanded 20,000 men. In 1838 he had sent five lieutenants to Gorchakov with a detailed letter of protest, but his comments were ignored and the efforts to defeat him were simply intensified. Today he is regarded by his people as a hero and the first Kazakh nationalist.8 His rebellion lasted a full ten years,9 ending only the year before the Atkinsons’ arrival.

This was the unsettled steppe that the two were to enter in early September 1848. They boarded a ferry to a mid-stream island in the Irtysh across which their carriage was hauled to a second ferry, and finally reached a Tatar village on the far bank, altogether a two-hour process. They were now in the Kazakh Steppe and Central Asia.10

They were not the first British to visit what is now Kazakhstan, although they must have been the first British couple. In 1558 Anthony Jenkinson (1529–1611), merchant and explorer for the Muscovy Company and the English crown, travelled in what is now the far west of Kazakhstan. In 1736 John Castle, ‘adventurer and artist’, of mixed English and Prussian descent, went on a diplomatic mission for the Russians to a Kazakh khan; his journal was published (1784) with thirteen of his drawings, one of which was used for a recent Kazakh banknote.11 And in the eighteenth century there was Jeremy Bentham’s brother, Samuel (later Sir Samuel) Bentham (1757–1831), able engineer, naval architect and official. Employed by Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s favourite, he helped inter alia to win a war against the Turks, commanded two battalions of 1,000 men in Siberia, and in 1789 travelled over 800 miles in Kazakh territory across the Irtysh, primarily to investigate mineral resources.12 But the Atkinsons (and Austin) seem to be the first British to have visited what is now eastern Kazakhstan.

Eastern Kazakhstan

It was getting dark when they left the Tatar village with Cossack horses, a Cossack driver and a mounted Cossack as escort on either side of their carriage.13 Once clear of the village they started at full gallop,14 leaving a fine storm of thunder and lightning behind them on the north side of the Irtysh. Soon it became so dark that they often lost the way and a Cossack had to ride ahead to prospect. At 10 p.m. they reached their first picket (a chain of isolated military outposts stretched south across the steppe), were ‘given tea’15 – Thomas’s usual term for ‘given a meal’ – and slept in their carriage, as the officer in charge said it was too dark for his men to find the way ahead.

‘Before daylight the Officers had the “Tea Machine” [Thomas’s appealing synonym for samovar] ready and called us.’16 They set off while it was still dark across an interminable steppe, where rain had made the so-called roads almost impassable, slowing their pace to five versts an hour. At times it required eight horses to drag them out of the bogs, and frequently they had to stop and rest the tired animals. After a second stationary night in the carriage they started with the dawn and as the sun rose saw mountains at a great distance – the Arkat. At midday they reached the Arkat picket or outpost, where new horses were secured and Thomas, with art in mind, rode into the mountains with an escort.17 He found their granite peaks18 ‘exceedingly picturesque’ and, despite a cold cutting wind that penetrated his thin clothing, the fine views resulted in two sketches (one reproduced in his first book). In the hills en route Thomas, former stonemason, noted, as so often in his journal, the local geology, here the ‘masses of granite protruding through the surface’ with ‘large veins of quartz’ traversing the hills.19

Continuing their journey, they became stuck fast in a sluggish river, but the officer in charge saw them and sent men and horses to get them out in the gathering dark. They arrived at 6 a.m. at the last picket, in a narrow valley, before the fort of Ayaguz (now Ayagoz).20

Only a few months earlier this picket, now increased to twenty-five Cossacks, had been attacked in the night by a large group of Kazakhs who had murdered the eight guards on duty with their battleaxes. Many of the Kazakhs themselves had been killed in what had been a desperate battle, and the survivors carried them all away, afraid they would lead to the identification of the tribe involved. The picket’s walls were still bloodstained, but the reason for the murders was unknown; perhaps, thought Thomas, ‘an act of vengeance for some injury or insult to their chief’.

Nine hours later they reached the small Ayaguz river which had given its name to the fort, set among low and rocky hills. It was the first running water since the Irtysh, now 270 versts behind them: a clear stream running through the steppe over large stones, its banks covered in long grass, reeds and bushes21 and with abundant game. Here the Cossack fort no longer had guns – Russia had advanced beyond it to the Atkinsons’ destination, Kopal, the next and last fort south at that time, doubtless with the guns from Ayaguz – but 800 Cossacks, mostly with families, were still stationed in ‘small and miserable houses’ in contrast to the ‘good and large’ government buildings and offices. The one wide street consisted of small adobe houses so low that everyone had to stoop in order to speak to the inhabitants through their windows.

Besides the officers there was a chief magistrate with his secretary and assistants to run the civil department: the governing power over the Kazakhs in this region. Atkinson does not mince his words about Russian colonialism.

The men sent to fill these departments look upon their positions as a species of banishment; and it has always been a principle among the employés to abstract the greatest amount of profit from the nomads, who are ground by every man, from the chief to the common soldier. This makes the Kazakhs give Ayagus a wide birth; nevertheless, means are devised to bring many of the tribes within the grasp of the greedy officials.…

The sessedatal [zasedatel – magistrate] was a tall, burly, and hard-drinking man from the south of Russia, and in no way scrupulous how profit was obtained from the inhabitants of the steppe. His duties are wholly with the Kazakhs; and he has officers residing among the different tribes wherever Russia has obtained any influence, who lose no opportunity of extending her power. The chief is courted, paid, and some mark of distinction given him; perhaps a medal, a sabre, or a gold-laced coat and cocked hat – with the privilege of attending a council at Ayagus once a year when laws are made to govern the tribes, that rivet still faster the fetters with which he and his people are being bound. From this meeting he returns to his aoul, ‘dressed in a little brief authority’. A young Russian who understands his language is appointed to reside with him, to translate all official papers sent to him, and write the answers; to which he attaches his seal, without understanding a word they contain. The youth is also a spy upon him and those who visit his aoul, reporting regularly to the chief at Ayagus. Thus the power of the empire is quietly and gradually creeping on into the plains of Central Asia; and when it is sufficiently secured, the nomads will have to pay both in men and money.22

Having made no bones about Russia’s administration in the Kazakh steppe, Atkinson turned his attention to the problems of alcohol. Wine merchants would always find their journeys to Ayaguz profitable and the traders would ‘pay a premium to the officers on the amount consumed’. This ‘and the love they had for it’ set a bad example to the men, and the commander on the Atkinsons’ visit

Orders had already been received to do everything necessary for the visitors. The officer in charge, in the commander’s absence, gave them a room in the house of the magistrate and promised all would be ready the next day. They dined with him and he did all he could for them while his wife made provisions for their onward journey, as they were warned they would find nothing at Kopal, their destination nearly 350 versts south.

They ‘slept like “Bricks” all through the night’ according to Thomas’s journal, and he and Lucy were up early next morning to prepare further for crossing the steppe. ‘It was a busy scene we beheld from our windows’, wrote Lucy:

The Cossacks were moving about in every direction, and the Kazakhs who were to accompany us were waiting outside, with the horses and camels, to carry us and our packages across the desolate steppes. What wild-looking fellows they appeared, but with a great deal of good nature in the countenance; their Asiatic costume is exceedingly picturesque and beautiful, the shawls tied round their waists are by no means to be despised.

She noted, too, the Kazakh men’s ‘ungainly, rolling walk’ due both to the number of khalats, the dressing-gown-type traditional robe, each wore – sometimes even four or five at a time – and to their boots, far too short for the foot, so their heel protruded part of the way up the boot. Kazakh men regarded it as below their dignity simply to walk even short distances because the saddle was their natural place.

‘All was bustle and confusion,’ continued Lucy, for the Cossacks who were to accompany them to Kopal joined in the packing – with all that that implies. Some of the Cossack wives tried hard to dissuade Lucy from the journey, relating to her ‘the great horrors and miseries’ endured by some of their number who had recently crossed the steppe with their families to Kopal.

They were convinced I should die ere I reached the place. I laughed at their fears, and assured them that it would cause me much anxiety to be left behind, and, even though they told me that death would be my lot if I went, still I was firm to my purpose. You know I am not easily intimidated when once I have made up my mind. I started on this journey, with the intention of accompanying my husband wherever he went, and no idle fears shall turn me; if he is able to accomplish it, so shall I be. I give in to no one for endurance.

Since the Atkinsons had to take to the saddle from this point on, their carriage was now left in the care of the magistrate until their return. While their pack-camels were being loaded, etiquette compelled Lucy to go round saying goodbye to everyone who had shown her ‘the slightest civility’ at Ayaguz even though the two travellers had spent only one night there; otherwise it would have been considered ‘an act of the greatest impoliteness’. Everyone had prepared something for her journey ‘across these inhospitable steppes’ in case she was really determined to proceed.

‘One had a bag of succarees [rusks] cut in slices, with salt sprinkled on the top, and dried in an oven; another had sundry little meat pies; and the sessedatel in whose house we were staying, presented me with an enormous water melon’, a rare gift since none were obtainable nearer than Semipalatinsk, nearly 300 km to the north.23 Lucy thought this last would be a great boon to her husband, an ‘indifferent water-drinker’, whereas she invariably needed to quench her thirst in any stream or river, so always carried a small drinking cup in her pocket.

Unable to dissuade Lucy from her journey, the ladies of Ayaguz ended up by helping her into her saddle. All the men, Cossacks and civilians alike, came to see off the two foreign visitors and their three-man Cossack escort, Pyotr (Peter), their interpreter and ‘the devoted follower of Mr Atkinson’, Alexei, Lucy’s tall and similarly ‘devoted helper’, and the twenty-year-old Pavel, whose duty it was to attend to the Kazakhs and ride with the camels. ‘They were all three wishful of serving us to the utmost of their power’, wrote Lucy. When this small party had ridden off a short distance she pulled up her horse ‘to take a last look at the good folks of Aiagooz, [and] there was a great waving of caps and handkerchiefs’.

Their route now lay across low sandy hills, often bereft of vegetation.24 For four hours they rode south along a small valley until they came upon their first aul, with its yurts, the circular and collapsible domed felt tents of Central Asia called in Kazakh the Kiyiz üy or felt house.25 Two well-dressed Tatar women, mother and daughter, came out of one yurt to look at them, the daughter a very pretty girl with large black eyes, in black velvet trousers and boots beneath a khalat of striped, multi-coloured silk, a magnificent shawl round her waist. Her hair was braided into a multitude of plaits, each one ornamented with coins of copper, silver and even gold; ‘thus’, wrote Lucy, ‘the young lady carried her fortune about with her’. However, having to reach a distant aul for the night, the Atkinsons declined an invitation to drink tea and rode on.

Another hour brought them to their night’s destination, a prosperous aul on the banks of a small stream with occasional broad and deep pools. Thomas noted cursorily in his journal the obvious wealth of their Kazakh host, apparent by the great number of camels, horses, oxen and sheep, and the whole scene reminded him of the ancient Israelites.

Lucy was rather more effusive in her reaction:

She was strangely unaware, it seemed, of Kazakh–Cossack relations.

‘Starting to cross the desert’

While the Atkinsons were being served tea, accompanied by dried fruits served on ‘magnificent china plates’, a black lamb destined for the forthcoming feast was dragged towards them for their approval – without which it would have been freed and another chosen. A large cauldron was already in place over a brightly burning fire. Once slaughtered, the lamb would immediately be dressed for the pot, so they went for a walk, ‘not desiring to be present during the … culinary operations, which, from experience I [Lucy] knew were not of the most dainty description’. The Cossacks cooked a portion separately in a pot for the couple, who sat down on the Bokhara carpets, using their medicine chest as a table, and partook of the ‘exquisitely tender viand’, thought Lucy (‘delicious Kirgis Mutton’ agreed Thomas), but somehow Lucy’s thoughts ‘would wander back to that dear little black lamb’.

A number of visitors came to scrutinise their eating habits: ‘Our slightest movements’, observed Lucy, ‘seemed to interest them…. The tin plates, the spoons, knives, forks, indeed nothing escaped them; but what struck them most with astonishment was the attention paid me by Mr Atkinson, as our sex is looked upon by the Kazakh as so much inferior to the “lords of the creation”’.

Then it was the Atkinsons’ turn to watch the Kazakh feasting. They sat in circles, the chief and his followers in the inner one. ‘Alas!’ observed Lucy,

no wife sat near him; she, poor woman, was amongst the outcasts. There were neither plates nor knives employed here, the meat was placed on a board, and each helped himself according to his rank, the remaining portion being passed to the outcasts, whilst the inner circle commenced drinking from small bowls the liquor in which the meat had been boiled. This being ended, koumiss [fermented mare’s milk, the staple drink of Central Asian nomads] was brought, accompanied by the pipes.

As night was falling and the Atkinsons had to rise early, they retired to their yurt which Lucy found preferable to a tent, being both warmer and snugger, ‘and, a greater luxury still, I was able to dress and undress without being obliged to kneel, as I had to do in the balagan.… I slept soundly, having already been two months travelling continually.’

Before sunrise next morning they were woken by the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cows and oxen and the bleating of sheep: sounds so new to Lucy’s ear that she quickly jumped up and peeped out – but was glad to return to her furs as she encountered their first sharp frost. Once the Cossacks had reloaded the camels, they set off accompanied by their three Cossacks and now five Kazakhs. Their guide was their host of the night, accompanied by his attendants. He had presented Lucy with a long Bokhara rug (she reciprocated with a knife) and thanked the Atkinsons for honouring his aul by spending the night there.

Their track lay over barren low hills covered with small stones, which from a distance had appeared to Thomas’s artistic eye a dark purple, but on closer examination proved to be burnt sienna and a deep green. After three hours they reached some high ground affording an extensive view all around. ‘A more desolate scene cannot be found’, wrote Thomas in his journal. ‘There was neither Tree or bush or any sign of vegetable life. All was a dark and arrid waste’ relieved only to the west by a lake ‘shining like silver surrounded by shores of rusty Iron … a most singular effect which will remain long impressed on my memory’.26

They now turned east. Their Kazakh host was at a loss which way to proceed in order to find an aul: their view extended over the steppes as far as the eye could see but none was apparent. The problem was, Lucy noted, that the auls changed their camp-sites according to the seasons. After two hours they came on a small isolated hill on which were many ancient, conical stone tombs, each containing a large chamber with up to six graves.

That night they encamped far from any aul, and continued east, now along a valley where the Kazakhs found good pasture for their cattle, then turned south-east over more stony hills and descended into another valley with tufts of rough grass and crystallised salt on the ground, but no water.27

Here their Kazakh hosts bade them adieu, directing them across a dry salt marsh with a thin crust of salt. After about a verst their horses sank up to the saddle in a stretch of stagnant water amid a mass of long grass. Ascending another range of hills to the south-east, they found that, in Lucy’s words, a ‘marvellously wonderful’ scene lay before them.

The Steppe [says Thomas’s journal] lay before us to the South like a boundless Sea; our view extended so far that all was lost in misty distance [Lucy’s subsequent book used precisely the same phrase]…. I found here some very good specimens of copper ore. We had now been on Horseback 7 hours. In a hot burning sun. Lucy was almost dying with Thirst and not one drop of water to be had.28

They looked in all directions for water but to no avail. At last Lucy spotted a beautiful lake shining in the distance:

to describe … the joy I felt is impossible, no words of mine can give an adequate idea of my feelings. I urged my horse on. One of the Cossacks rode up to me to say the beast would give in, if I went at such a speed. I pointed to the water and told him I only wanted to reach that, and then I should be satisfied. He shook his head and smiled, saying it was not water, merely a deception.

It was indeed a mirage, at times appearing quite near, then at a great distance, ‘tantalising us poor thirsty mortals; our lips were black and salt’.

And still there were no signs of an aul or any living creature. Nothing could exist on this sterile steppe and neither Kazakhs nor Cossacks knew when or where they would find either aul or water. They rode on, completely parched. At last one of the Kazakhs descried a string of camels at a great distance, as yet invisible to the Atkinsons. This gave them hope and on they rode at a good speed. In an hour and a half they met the caravan, but, alas, Lucy said, ‘they had not a drop of water; they too were longing for the crystal fluid’.

At least, however, the caravan directed the party to an aul to the south-east and in another hour they saw a real lake shining in the sun and rode on at a sharp trot. Kazakhs came to welcome them. They rode towards it very fast as Lucy’s thirst was now almost unbearable. ‘Oh! The joy I felt at that sight. I became so excited that when near the yourts I appeared to lose all command over myself and horse’, and her mount indeed swerved and threw her.

I caught his mane and held fast to the reins. The men were off their horses in a trice; all laughed when they found I had sustained no injury at the way I clung to my horse; being assisted to remount, we hastened on, I foremost, and taking my drinking-cup from my pocket, passed it to one of the men who had come to meet us, exclaiming sou, sou (water, water), when oh! horrible, I was given to understand that this beautiful shining lake was salt!

Poor Lucy! The Kazakh women brought her some milk instead, ‘a poor means of quenching my fearful thirst’, and she sent for some water from the lake to make absolutely sure. ‘Alas! It was all too true, it was perfect brine.’ A samovar was prepared with it but of the resulting bluish-white tea Thomas noted ‘dire necessity alone made me drink it’.

At least they dined – ‘on broiled mutton’ – but declined a large bowl of fat which a Kazakh then swallowed ‘with much gusto’ (preferring it to meat, like all his race). And Lucy found that whenever a Cossack put down a plate which she or Thomas had used, a Kazakh seized it and, in her delicate phrase, ‘by a method peculiar to him, made it as bright and clean as if it had been polished with a leather. After this I never failed to see my plate washed ere I used it.’ After only an hour, they pressed on – it was now mid-afternoon – as they were told they would find good water 20 versts ahead. Peter went off to a nearby yurt to obtain a fresh horse for Lucy, and the Atkinsons were alarmed to hear the report of his pistol. He had got into a quarrel and had fired at a Kazakh but missed him as he ran away.

Their course was now dead flat and for the moment directly south (in the direction of Lake Alakol, nearly 2,500 sq. km in size); to their right rose up high hills. The steppe was so smooth that they galloped along at great speed – the hoped-for aul was still far off, a passing Kazakh told them – and after three hours, as night was falling fast, they came to a stream but everywhere too deep to cross. At last they found a ford and, after two hours in the dark, reached the aul they sought, and a yurt was soon erected for them, ‘tea made and some good mutton chops’, wrote an appreciative Thomas, ‘which we eat with a great appetite after being so long without food’.29

Next morning they left the aul and made their way through marshy ground with tall reeds, bulrushes and rough grass high above their heads. Only after several versts could they find a place to cross the swamp. Spreading themselves out in order not to follow in the track of one another, they nonetheless sank up to their saddle-flaps once again. In the middle of the mire one of their pack-camels (wrote Lucy)

coolly lay himself down, nor could he be induced to move till the whole of his pack was deposited in the mud. Mr Atkinson was in a great state of excitement, believing it to contain his paper, sketches, &c which would result in entire ruin to his projects.

But, fortunately, they proved to be on another camel.

At one point Lucy noticed the absence of their Cossack interpreter, Peter (or ‘Petrusha’, his diminutive), whom she had surnamed ‘the Great, for he was one of the most consummate liars I ever met with; my husband said not so! He was only a poet.’ When he appeared later he seemed even more loquacious than usual. Soon afterwards one of the Kazakhs came up to Lucy (to whom they invariably came if they had complaints, perhaps because she was more sympathetic and certainly because her Russian was much better than her husband’s) and indicated in sign language and visible evidence that Petrusha had been thrashing him; his nose was grazed and his clothes showed he had been on the ground. Lucy asked Petrusha to translate what the man had said. After a moment’s hesitation Petrusha explained, ‘You see, lady … we do not proceed so fast today as we ought to, owing to these atrocious Kazakh horses! and that if we had Russian ones, we should be scampering over the plains like wild people!’

Petrusha’s fellow Cossack, Alexei, was as astonished as Lucy was at this declaration and, no longer able to control himself, started off at full gallop, his peals of laughter ringing far across the steppe.

‘Petrusha, it is not true’, said Lucy. ‘Looking at me with a stoical face he replied, “By God, madame, it is true”.’ Lucy could find no redress for the incident, but that evening at their next aul Thomas found that Peter had broken a gun stock ‘while thrashing a Kazakh. This was indeed a misfortune; we however managed to glue it together’, he noted with surprising lack of feeling.30

Next morning they awoke to a sharp frost and a clear sky to the south, and Thomas saw for the first time the snowy peaks of the Alatau ‘shining like Silver against a deep blue sky. I called Lucy and showed them to her.’ It was to be a day Lucy would never forget, she wrote. But the reason was nothing to do with the view.

They set off at 7 a.m., the aul providing guides and ‘splendid horses’. As usual Lucy enquired the day’s distance; when they heard it was 80 versts they thought nothing of it as they had often ridden more. But their Kazakh guide warned them that they must ride fast as there would not be a drop of water anywhere. At one o’clock they halted for a few minutes, to find the pack-camels were now far behind – small black specks on the sandy steppe they had crossed.

A Kazakh was sent back to urge the camel party on and the main group proceeded more slowly, hoping they would catch up. The travellers were now both hungry and thirsty but, on declaring that they would have some tea when the camels arrived, were told again there was no water to be found anywhere. ‘This was bad news’, wrote a concerned Thomas.31 At three o’clock they stopped to wait for the camel train, which caught up an hour later. Thomas now persuaded the thirsty Lucy to try the water-melon which had been given them by the magistrate in Ayaguz. To Lucy, who had never tasted one before, but was so parched, ‘it appeared to me the most delicious thing I had ever tasted in my life’. But ‘Eat we could not’, wrote Thomas, ‘our throats were parched. Our people had got cumis [koumiss], which they drank but we could not.’ Extraordinary that they rejected it, despite their thirst.

Thomas was certain that by now they must have travelled the requisite 80 versts and got Lucy to ask the Cossacks how far it still was to the aul (proving indeed that Lucy’s Russian was much better than her husband’s). Hour after hour Lucy had been continually assured that they were only ten versts away. ‘Tired of this nonsense’, she now insisted on knowing the truth. The Cossacks confessed they did not know and the Kazakh pointed to a blue mountain in the distance, saying ‘a little further than that’. Thomas, an excellent judge of distance, reckoned to Lucy’s ‘extreme horror’ that it was between 40 and 50 versts away. ‘It would have been useless to have complained, so we cheered up and on we went’, wrote Lucy in true British style. Orders were now given that the camels should keep close to the main party, and a Cossack and two Kazakhs were sent ahead to prepare a yurt at the first aul they could find as well as to make a large fire so that it could be located at night from afar.

‘The sun was now descending fast, tingeing everything a golden hue, while the distant mountains32 were almost lost in misty blue.’ (Both Thomas’s journal and Lucy’s book are identical here.) There was little twilight; as soon as the sun was down it was dark. All began looking out for the expected beacon light, but hour after hour passed and none appeared. It was now 10 o’clock at night. With no track, Thomas wanted to know how their Kazakh guide knew which direction to follow. The Cossacks pointed to the stars ‘and I soon found the man knew well what he was about’.33

‘It was now past midnight’, Thomas’s journal continues, ‘and all were tired, but on we must go.’34 About two o’clock in the morning Lucy said she could go no further. It was intensely cold; a cutting wind was blowing from the snow mountains and she had on only a dress, her warm jacket lost that day when it had become unstrapped from her saddle. Trembling with cold, she could now hardly hold her reins.

Thomas got her off her horse, spread a bearskin on the sand, and wrapped her up in his shuba. He insisted on her drinking some rum – they had brought about a pint as medicine – and half a wine-glass began to revive her. After half an hour she started to get warm and dozed off for a few minutes. Then their guide announced they must go on or all would be lost since the horses would not be able to continue without water after sunrise.

Fastening his shuba round Lucy with his belt, Thomas put her on her horse and tied a bearskin round himself. Away they went, Lucy now a little warmer and refreshed. But after another hour, at 3 a.m., her strength again began to fail her. Once more Thomas helped her down and now got her to walk about a hundred paces. She then remounted, but after another hour (her husband’s journal recalls) she said:

And it greatly cheered Lucy up.

At 5 a.m. they at last reached an aul belonging to a poor mullah who did all he could for them. The women lifted Lucy off her horse, carried her into a yurt, began to rub her hands and feet and placed a carpet and cushions for her to rest on. She asked for water but their Cossack Peter told her it was unfit to drink. A fire was soon made of camel or horses’ dung in the absence of any wood, and tea was produced which Thomas drank ‘with infinite delight’, but Lucy was now too exhausted to drink anything.

Soon the Cossack arrived who had been sent forward the previous day. His party had missed this aul in the dark and had gone to another twelve versts away where he had prepared a yurt for the travellers. Once Lucy had recovered a little, they set off for yet another two hours’ ride to this yurt in a small ravine, where a stream at last provided good water and its banks good pasture for cattle and sheep: ‘our Home for the day as we determined to have a rest’.36 Lucy, now recovering, made tea, ate a little broiled mutton with it, and both lay down to a sound and very well-earned sleep, placing a reliable Kazakh guard outside their yurt.

For they now had a prisoner. The Cossack sent on to prepare a yurt for them had also wandered through the night to find the aul only just before daylight. When he had entered one yurt and ordered another to be specially prepared for the Atkinsons, a Kazakh had seized an axe and thrown it at his head. Luckily, he had ducked and the axe stuck fast in the yurt’s door-frame. When Thomas heard this he ‘instantly ordered this man should be taken to Kopal and be there given over to the officer in command’.37 The culprit was immediately placed under guard.

When I awoke [wrote Lucy] the sun was high in the heavens, and it was too late to think of starting that day, for we had ridden a distance of a hundred and fifty versts, without having tasted anything either solid or liquid, with the exception of the rum and water-melon, neither had the poor horses received any nourishment the whole of that time.

They were shocked that the Cossacks had not learnt if water could be found on their route the previous day: ‘the want of this when riding over the hot sand was severely felt by both of us’. And it is surprising that they did not blame themselves, as they had certainly been warned. Only the previous month of August, a party of Cossacks on their way to Kopal had lost five of their number here. ‘We saw their graves’, Thomas records. ‘These caused sad reflections as it might have been our cases. We should then have been put into the sand without anyone knowing who or what we were.’38

I cannot [his journal continues] speak too highly of Lucy’s courage and endurance during twenty two hours horseback frequently riding very fast in the day and then riding through the Night across such a desert. Here we might have been plundered and overpowered had some of the Bands of Barantor know[n] of our March [he meant barymta: punitive raids launched against the auls of clan rivals to seize livestock].39 Our Arms were all Kept in readyness and several would have bit the dust ere we had been taken.40

Late that evening – by which time they were ‘quite rested … and could have gone on’41 a Tatar merchant approached, told Thomas that the group’s prisoner (who was now on horseback, frequently begging to be freed) was his workman and asked for his return, but Thomas refused and told him the man would go to Kopal.

They started again early next morning with good fresh horses and a strong party of Kazakhs. But they were still two good days’ journey from the Lepsy river, their first proper river since the Irtysh, much of their route lying over a deep sandy steppe, one long continued ascent and descent in deep sand in which the horses sank up to their knees. They rode on, leaving the camels far behind, ‘toiling and moaning most piteously’.42 After six hours they arrived at a steep descent on to the steppe which, says Thomas’s journal,

lay before us like a Map with nothing to bound the horizon.43 From this Elevation we had a view of the Snowy peaks of the Alatou with the Tops of some deep purple Mountains under them while on the Steppe we saw many Tombs some of them of great size … we sat on our Horses some time contemplating the Scene before us. There is something grand even in this Steppe streching as it does for Three Thousand Versts and peopled by a wild race who deem plunder no crime. Our little Band was like a speck on this interminable waste and our safety depended on our courage and care; I often practiced with the Rifle and Lucy also so that our Kirgis knew it would be death to any man who attacked us.44

The prisoner, also on horseback, continued to beg for his liberty, and the Tatar merchant appeared a second time to ask for his release, but once more Thomas refused. Down on the now grassy steppe they halted at an aul in a deep glen near some lakes of (drinkable) water to eat and to secure fresh horses, their own being tired after crossing the sandy waste. They stopped early at another aul for the night, as they were told it was very far to any other. ‘We found a keen cutting wind blowing from the Mountains with nothing on this mighty plain to shelter us … [but] we had a fire made of dry camels Dung … [which] soon warmed the Yourt’, wrote Thomas.45

They rose at daybreak, making up their fire against a frosty morning. ‘We had a fine view of the Alatou Mountains’, Thomas recorded. ‘As the Sun tipped their Snowy peaks they shone like Rubies against the cold blue Heavens. How anxious I was to be among them.’ Before them lay a long ride to the Lepsy river over, once again, a sandy steppe, but they had good horses and for the first two hours proceeded well. One part had evidently once been thickly inhabited as it contained many ancient barrows and tombs of sun-dried brick – so many indeed that from a distance it looked like a large town – and a wide area had obviously once been irrigated. The canals survived and in one ran a stream of beautiful pure water, a line of luxuriant large plants and long grass marking its route and proving to Thomas that ‘labour is alone wanting to make this waste [into] rich pastures abounding with plenty. The present race will never improve. Labour to them is most irksome.’46

They now rode on south, parallel to the Alatau Mountains a hundred versts away: a splendid chain, Thomas thought, but the lower range still not visible. A visitor a few years later, the outstandingly able young geographer Pyotr Petrovich Semenov (bound for later fame), was even more impressed when nearer to the mountains: ‘before us there extended in all its grandeur the gigantic snowy ridge of the … Alatau … which rises from the low-lying … steppe to far beyond the snow-line even more strikingly than the Alps from the Lombardy plain’.47

Several times Thomas noticed columns of sand carried up by the wind, ‘each turning round [on] its own axis and moving Slowly over the Steppe. They sometimes rose to a great Elevation, when seen with the Sun shining upon them they appeared by pillars of smoke but when seen looking towards the Sun then they were dark wirling masses.’48

After getting lunch and new horses at an aul, they rode on towards some huge barrows, one at least 60 feet high and 150 feet in diameter. Thomas rode up a winding sheep path in the hope of a view of the Lepsy but could only see sandy steppe. For a few versts a grassy steppe now allowed them to gallop on fast, anxious to reach the Lepsy and find an aul before dark. But they found themselves again in ‘a complete Labrinth of sandy Mounds’ and once more their horses sank frequently up to their knees, greatly slowing their progress.49 Three hours later one of the Cossacks pointed out a belt of reeds marking the river winding among the distant sandy hills. ‘I no sooner heard this’, wrote Lucy, ‘than I gave my horse the rein and galloped off as hard as I could go … I drank freely of it, and I thought it the sweetest water I ever tasted in my life.’ The water indeed had its source in the glaciers and snows of the Alatau range, and the river was one of the many which gave their name to the region – Semirechye or Seven Rivers (a figurative total).

Having reached an aul on its banks for the night, Thomas went off to the high reeds to shoot ducks and on his return asked about the large amount of shot he had brought. It was nowhere to be found, and next morning the search was renewed, again without success to his great annoyance as he feared he would be unable to replace it.

Lucy continues the story:

I was sitting mending some of our garments, whilst Mr Atkinson had again gone off in search of game, when [their Cossack] Peter, ever-ready with imaginative excuses, squatted down in front of me, as he usually did when he wished to commence a conversation. ‘Ah!’ he began, ‘it is great pity that shot is lost.’ ‘It is,’ I replied, ‘Peter, and very careless of you, as you ought to have known its value.’ ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I own I am in fault, and more especially as it had been confided to my special care. When the master gave it me he said, “There, Petroosha, there, there is shot for thee, take it, and treasure it up as gold, or as thou wouldest thy own life, for it is far more precious than either,” and to think, after all, that I have lost it!’ I said, ‘Indeed, Peter, did your master say all that, could he speak so much Russian?’ Not the least abashed, he answered, ‘Ah! Madame, it is only when you are present that he does not speak; but when you are not there he speaks beautifully; far better than you do.’ With feigned surprise I said, ‘Is it possible?’ ‘By God it is true!’ was his exclamation.

When Mr Atkinson returned, we had a hearty laugh at Peter’s poetical genius; and I believe it went a long way to console him for the loss he had sustained.

At long last, on 20 September 1848, after a journey of eleven days from Ayaguz,50 they reached their longed-for destination, the Cossack fort of Kopal, at the foot of the Alatau mountains and at that time Russia’s southernmost fort in the Kazakh steppe. Neither Thomas nor Lucy describes the fort, but it is likely to have been along the lines of Ayaguz, surrounded by a defensive adobe wall (or at very least a trench and perhaps palisade) and would certainly have had several cannons as well as a barracks and sizeable stables for the Cossacks’ horses.

They found the young civil governor, Baron Wrangel,51 in a particularly large yurt used as a common sitting-room. Later they were to discover that he had won glory in the Caucasus where he had been almost fatally wounded by a Circassian sabre. Thomas came to regard Wrangel, appointed political agent to deal with the Kazakhs, as a good soldier, with few scruples, and ‘a most amusing fellow, believing himself equal to [Russia’s foreign minister] Nesselrode in diplomacy’ and he would, he wrote, back Wrangel against Nesselrode ‘were fiction and invention essential in the acquirements of a minister’.

Wrangel was wearing ‘a dressing gown à la Kazakh’, i.e. a khalat, with a small Tatar cap on his head, sitting cross-legged on a stool with a long Turkish pipe in his mouth. The engineering officer, Loginov, and the topographer were in similar costume. While the Atkinsons may have been surprised to see them thus, Wrangel himself was much surprised, wrote Lucy,

at seeing a lady enter, and perhaps also at my appearance, for, to say truth, I was not very presentable. On our journey I had mounted camels [Lucy hated riding them, finding the movement the same as the pendulum of a clock and extremely unpleasant] and bulls [oxen] as well as horses, but the last day, having a stream to cross … I found it too deep to ford pleasantly, as the water would reach to my waist.… [But] a Kazakh … without ceremony walked into the water, and, placing himself before me in a stooping posture, patted his back and signed for me to mount, which I at last did, and crossed on the man’s back.

The Atkinsons were allotted a small yurt such as Wrangel and his two colleagues each occupied, while a fourth yurt was used as a kitchen. ‘Thus we formed quite a little colony’, wrote Lucy. But, she observed,

such a thing as a vegetable is not to be seen, either fresh or preserved, of any kind whatever; no butter, no eggs, nothing but meat and rice, not even milk, and as for bread, it is the coarsest and blackest I ever saw…. Even Mr Atkinson has some difficulty in swallowing it, and he can do more than I can in this way, especially when it is an act of courtesy; for instance, we once entered a Tartar dwelling; tea was given, but it was brick tea. I sipped, and sipped, at the atrocious compound till a fortunate moment arrived when the Tartar’s back was turned, and then I poured my tea on the ground, but Mr Atkinson kept drinking glass after glass, just as if he enjoyed it. On asking him why he did not decline taking the horrid beverage, he replied, ‘Surely you would not have me hurt the feelings of the poor man!’ I own my disposition is not so amiable.

Lucy found that in fine weather their yurt was

‘Swimming a deep stream’

Fortunately, after a month they were moved in late October into a half-finished government office, still far from windproof, however.

We have one chair [wrote Lucy], the only one in Kopal, one stool; but we are rich in tables, as we have two; our bedstead is composed of a few planks placed on two blocks of wood, with voilok, and then furs instead of a mattress. Think not we are worse off than others. No! our house is as well, if not better, furnished than the governor’s, as he has nothing but the voilok to sleep on.

On 14 November she wrote, apparently to a friend, mentioning that writing at night was impossible as they had to be economical with their candles since nothing could be got at Kopal except tea:

Those words are the very first indication in Lucy’s book, published many years later, that she had been expecting a child: not so much as a hint before. How Lucy could have made that arduous eleven days’ ride from Ayaguz nearly six months pregnant is astonishing. She was certainly risking losing her only child. And before the long desert ride there had been the many demanding weeks in the Altai mountains, almost all on horseback. As she wrote,

The birth of my little fellow was a grand event in Kopal; several children had been born within the last month, but not one survived; several had been born on the journey across the steppe, but all died; mine was the only one which lived.… I now often think what would have become of me had we [still] been in a yourt when I was confined. I believe both I and the child would have died.

In a yurt indeed there would have been little hope of survival, particularly that night. With the baby, premature by two months, only a few hours old, a strong buran drove so much snow into the room that it lay in wreaths on the floor. The noise was ‘so terrific that not a sound scarcely could be heard within doors. I never closed my eyes that night; my heart was lifted up in thankfulness to the Creator for all His mercies to me.’ As it was, the new-born infant was wrapped in furs and placed on a leather trunk against the stove to keep him warm – any water in the room had turned to ice – and Lucy lay on her bed weak, hearing her baby moan whenever there was a moment’s lull in the storm.

Luckily help – of a sort – was at hand: a Madame Techinskaya, sound asleep most of the night on the floor, wrapped in a sheepskin. This woman had been condemned to receive a hundred lashes for aborting her own child. But a Cossack, now second in command at Kopal, had offered to marry her and so, according to the law of the time, received the lashes instead – reduced to only fifteen. Husband and wife were living very happily together, Lucy observed, and she found Madame Techinskaya a very kind woman, willing to oblige, although she remained dead asleep on the floor that stormy night.

Lucy screamed to her to give her new-born baby to her but

not a sound did she hear; at last after about two hours I managed to wake her, and make her understand; she took up the poor babe, and poking it at me like a bundle of straw, down she was again immediately; the instant the child touched me, it ceased its moaning. They had placed in its mouth a piece of muslin, containing black bread and sugar dipped in water, and indeed, this was all he had till the third day, when he received his natural food.

Lucy does not mention her husband during the whole event, other than to say it was fortunate he was at home, having returned the previous evening from a two-day shooting expedition. And Thomas’s journal gives no clue whatever, either to Lucy’s pregnancy or, frustratingly, to his feelings – or even behaviour – before or after the birth. Strangely, it is totally blank for that period. The praise in his journal for Lucy’s behaviour that traumatic night in the steppe oddly makes no mention of her condition, which rendered her far more estimable still. Was he pleased now to have another son, having already lost his only son, John William, as an adult? Or could he have half-hoped even unconsciously that Lucy might miscarry, since a baby would surely be a major encumbrance hugely circumscribing all future travel? We will never know. But if the latter, he was very much mistaken, and the young Alatau seems to have curtailed nothing – rather the contrary, indeed. He may have added a major and inescapable complication to his parents’ travels, but he was to win many hearts, and his young presence was to smooth the way for many future encounters.