"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

shifted its channel. The rulers of Khiva, it was said, had built an earthen
dam which caused the river to flow into the Sea of Aral.
What sort of river was this Amu, river of the Bull, known to the
ancient Romans as the Oxus and to the Arabs as the Jihun? Peter the Great
was aware that it rose somewhere in India. If it could be turned back into
the Caspian, and if he, Peter, could be master of its banks, or at least
live in peace and friendship with those who held them, India's rich
commodities could be delivered down that river to the Caspian Sea, across
the Caspian to the city of Astrakhan, and from there up the Volga into
Russia-by-passing the Persian merchants. These Indian commodities would be
cheaper, and, besides, Russia's treasury would profit. Furthermore, Peter
had heard there was gold in that area, near the town of Irket.
All these rumours must be verified. The area must be explored by trusty
men.
Peter could not tolerate delay. Early in May 1714 he ordered Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky, a lieutenant in the Preobrazhonsky Guards Regiment, to
set out for the Caspian Sea with the men he needed, "to search for the mouth
of the river Amu Darya". On May 19 he ordered the Prince, in addition, "to
proceed to Khiva and from there to Bukhara, to ascertain the possibilities
of trade, and under cover of that, to find out everything he could about the
town of Irket."
Before his conversion to Christianity Prince Alexander
Bekovich-Cherkassky's name had been Devlet Kizden Mirza. He came from a line
of Kabardian rulers. As a boy he had been stolen by Nogai tribesmen. He fell
into the hands of the Russians when Russian troops under Vassily Golitsin
besieged the town of Azov, and was taken into the home of Vassily's brother
Boris, one of Peter's tutors. In 1707 he was sent abroad to study. Soon
after, he married into the Golitsin family, taking Boris Golitsin's
daughter, the Princess Martha, for his wife. When Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky
joined the Preobrazhensky Regiment he attracted the tsar's attention. It was
to this strong, courageous, well-educated young man with a knowledge of the
East that Peter the Great assigned the difficult mission of finding a route
to India.
On his way to Astrakhan, which he reached in August 1714, Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky stopped at Kazan, on the Volga. Here he took more than
1,500 soldiers and 19 cannon under his command.
The expedition set sail from Astrakhan for Guryev, a town on the
Caspian, at the mouth of the Ural River, on November 7 and nearly perished
at the very beginning of the voyage. A vicious autumn storm scattered the
twenty-seven light Volga boats and two schooners. The battered flotilla
limped back to Astrakhan one month later, at the beginning of December,
without ever having reached Guryev.
After wintering at Astrakhan and obtaining about two dozen new boats,
the expedition set sail again on April 25, 1715.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky stood on the weather side of the
quarter-deck as his flagship emerged from the Volga delta into the expanses
of the sea. The green waters of the Caspian now gurgled beneath the
schooner's keel. The Prince stood there, lost in thought. He was only a
little Over thirty at the time, and the realization that he was responsible
for so many men and so many ships weighed heavily on him.