Perry McDonough Collins’s proposed overland telegraph via the Bering Strait and Siberia. J. H. Colton, 1864 / Boston Public Library

Kazakh horsemen. 1885 / George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress

George Kennan. Tomsk, August 1885 / Photo by Matsaevich & Co. (Tomsk), George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress

Januarius MacGahan. Wood engraving by Thomas Dewell Scott, after a photograph. The Illustrated London News, 22 June 1878 / Wikimedia Commons

Interior of a Kazakh yurt. Illustration from Januarius MacGahan’s Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva. 1874 / Internet Archive

Eugene Schuyler. Constantinople, c. 1870s / Library of Congress

Kazakh encampment. Illustration from Eugene Schuyler’s Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja. 1876 / Internet Archive