M. LESSAR. The Man Who Stakes Russian Claims in Asia.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 107, 20 June 1885, Page 5

M. LESSAR. The Man Who Stakes Russian Claims in Asia.

Tiie London correspondent of the New York "Tribune" writes as follows: "M. Lessar has been here for some weeks, if thero had been no dispute about the Afghan frontier, his presence might have passed unnoticed. But as soon as it was known that M. Lessar wa3 tho accredited exponent of Russian pretensions, his company was coveted, not-, I think, because society was eager to know all about the contested boundary line, but because M. Lessar was a celebrity and a novelty. The more serious houses do not compete for him as the more sensational do, but neither do they close their portals to him. So various are the sections of society whore M. Lessar has been on view, that a man must be very much a recluse not to have met him somewhere. "He is very well worth meeting. Like most Russians, he has a flexibility of character which insures his getting on comfortably with the most dissimilar people. He will talk to you with the utmost fluency, not to say volubility, on tho Central Asian question. He has absolutely nothing of that affectation of reserve which the professional diplomatist so often displays. One reason for this may be that he is not a professional diplomatist. M. Lossar is by profession an engineer— a military engineer, I understood him, or rather inferred from his account of himself. The first impression he makes is one of surprise. He is so -young. When you hear of an envoy from Russia on a grave question like that now at issue, you expect' to meet a man of middle age, or past middle age. M. Lesgar lopks, and I believe is, under thirty. Slight in build, medium in stature, he has the well-bred manner which Russians put of Russia all have ; as if the paternal Czar allowed only the best of his' subjects, to travel abroad. " The features are good ; the eyes keen, | restless, chan geable— very soft in expression while lie is talking frivolities, pjerofagwhen he looks suddenly at bis interlocutor to diacovorj the effect of ' some more than usually .courageous" remarks which their owner has juat hazarded. If he has the Slav mouth, it is hidden, by. the f full moustache > and olosecutjbeard, dark-brown and black. Unlike any Russian I ever heard of, in the west ot 1Surope,,.M., Lessar speaks not the language of 1 , the country to which he is on $ mission. t Ho t^nfle > rstapd8,' I fancy, more English than 1 hfe|is Buppose<jTto understand \ butjthe t only language, 6 heayd him use in the English is French^ whioh'beiSpeaks with ex.i&nW rapidity an^an, accent dimGultjjo de-

* J MemnnWt fcGeorgei anjiJCtvBa*Bq6he' shi&ye Ibeen appointed Visiting Justices' of j AijiQklwci (?aol,