modern town of Khiva, by the Muslim Pass and Kurlawa to Akricheh on the Caspian, near the mouth of the Attrek,-traces of which course were seen by General Abbott in 1840. The same geographer remarks that, owing to the divergence of the Amou in the previous century, the level of the Caspian was sensibly raised, and that the post of Aboskun at the mouth of the Attrek was consequently overwhelmed. During the whole of the 14th century the entire volume of the Amou was poured into the Caspian, while the Jaxartes, or Syr, lost itself in the sands of the desert, but early in the 15th century an anonymous writer, whom Sir Henry Rawlinson suspects to have been Shah Rokh's minister,—and whose manuscript he obtained at Herat, -speaks of the Aral as being dried up, through the drainage into the Caspian of the waters of the Jyhoon and Syhoon, the names given by Mohammedan geographers and historians to the Oxus and Jaxartes.

So far back as the middle of the 13th century the Franciscan Friar, William de Rubruquis, states that the Jaxartes, after creating numerous swamps, was lost in the desert, and about the year 1340 Pegoletti advises travellers bound for Tatary to leave Urghunj to their right, and to strike straight across from Saraichik on the Yaik, or Ural river, to Otrar on the Jaxartes, a route that would traverse the bed of the Aral: nor does that sea appear in the Catalan map of 1375. In short, the existence of the Aral Sea depends upon its two great tributaries, the Amou and the Syr. When the former is deflected, the bed of the sea contracts, and the Syr, being no longer able to force its way to the receding shores, becomes absorbed in reedy marshes.

There can be no doubt that in ancient times the main branch of the Oxus disembogued itself into the Caspian, for both Strabo and Pliny tell us how the merchandise of India was conveyed across the mountains to a stream that flowed into the Oxus, how it descended that river to the Hyrcanian or Caspian

strong ice that loaded carts were driven across from one bank to the other. At the commencement of the 15th century the Portuguese ambassador, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, alludes with reverence to the Viadme, as he calls it, and describes it as one of the rivers that descended from Paradise. It attains, he says, a league in width, and traverses a flat country with great and wonderful force, until, at last, it reaches its goal in the Sea of Baku-one of the many names of the Caspian. Its muddy waters, he continues, are lowest in the winter season, when its sources in the mountains are congealed, but in April the melting snows begin to fill its broad, deep bed, and for the next four months it is a noble river.

In 1558, Anthony Jenkinson, the shrewd and adventurous representative of the London 'Muscovy Company,' mentions, that on the 5th October he struck' a gulf of the Caspianthough it is far more likely to have been the Aibugir Gulf of the Sea of Aral-where the water was fresh and sweet. 'Note,' he continues, that in times past there did fal into this gulf the great river Oxus, which hath his springs in the mountains of Paroponisus in India, and now cometh not so far, but falleth into another river called Ardock, which runneth toward the North, and consumeth himself in the grounde, passing undergrounde above 500 miles, and then issueth out againe, and falleth into lake of Kithay.' A little further on he attributes the desiccation of the Oxus to the numerous canals of irrigation it had to supply, and complains that the water that serveth all the countrey is drawen by ditches out of the river Oxus, unto the great destruction of the said river, for which cause it falleth not into the Caspian Sea as it hath done in times past, and in short time all the land is like to be destroied, and to become a wilderness for want of water when the river of Oxus shall faile.' Six or seven weeks later, he says, he crossed the great and rapid river Ardock, a branch of the Oxus, running 1000 miles to the

northward,—for half of that distance passing under-ground, then issuing from beneath the earth's surface and terminating in 'the Lake of Kitay.'

It is not a little singular that Jenkinson should make no allusion to the Aral as the recipient of the river he calls the Ardock, which could be no other than the main channel of the Oxus, and which some later writers designate as the Khesel or Kizil, that is, the Red River. In Pinkerton's Collection the Khesel is said to take its rise in the mountains to the northeast of Sogdiana, and to fall into the Aral 50 or 60 miles after receiving the Amou. The writer has here evidently confounded the source of the Amou with that of the Syr, but he goes on to explain how the Khesel, which formerly fell into the Caspian at St Peter's Bay, was in 1719 diverted from that channel by the Tatars, in the hope of destroying by thirst the expedition commanded by the gallant but ill-fated Prince Beckovitch. The Dutch Orientalist Bentinck, in his notes to the 'Histoire Généalogique des Tatares'-published in 1720-describes the Oxus as bifurcating about 40 leagues from its embouchure: the left arm turning off to the Caspian, while the right arm, which 80 years previously flowed under the walls of Urghanj, then fell into the Kizil, to the ruin of that once flourishing eity, and so passed on to the Aral. Jenkinson's confusion is no doubt attributable to his own ignorance of Persian and Turke, zi consequent dependence on the intelligence and good fith of ha interpreter.

That the Oxas did at one time, perhaps at severil fins. empty itself into the Caspian is a fact that cannot be digned The unfortunate Conolly proceeded for some distance up the deserted bed, whose width he estimated at 2000 pass mi General, then Captain Mourave, net vil reine reia aut pools, along the deep broad channel exured by te ngay river, which seems to have frally divided fans two inautes

strong ice that loaded carts were driven across from one bank to the other. At the commencement of the 15th century the Portuguese ambassador, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, alludes with reverence to the Viadme, as he calls it, and describes it as one of the rivers that descended from Paradise. It attains, he says, a league in width, and traverses a flat country with great and wonderful force, until, at last, it reaches its goal in the Sea of Baku-one of the many names of the Caspian. Its muddy waters, he continues, are lowest in the winter season, when its sources in the mountains are congealed, but in April the melting snows begin to fill its broad, deep bed, and for the next four months it is a noble river.

In 1558, Anthony Jenkinson, the shrewd and adventurous representative of the London Muscovy Company,' mentions, that on the 5th October he struck' a gulf of the Caspianthough it is far more likely to have been the Aibugir Gulf of the Sea of Aral-where the water was fresh and sweet. 'Note,' he continues, that in times past there did fal into this gulf the great river Oxus, which hath his springs in the mountains of Paroponisus in India, and now cometh not so far, but falleth into another river called Ardock, which runneth toward the North, and consumeth himself in the grounde, passing undergrounde above 500 miles, and then issueth out againe, and falleth into lake of Kithay.' A little further on he attributes the desiccation of the Oxus to the numerous canals of irrigation it had to supply, and complains that 'the water that serveth all the countrey is drawen by ditches out of the river Oxus, unto the great destruction of the said river, for which cause it falleth not into the Caspian Sea as it hath done in times past, and in short time all the land is like to be destroied, and to become a wilderness for want of water when the river of Oxus shall faile.' Six or seven weeks later, he says, he crossed the great and rapid river Ardock, a branch of the Oxus, running 1000 miles to the