this powerful agent of nature, the depth of the Aral, if General Abbott's estimate may be credited, would be annually increased twenty-six inches by the influx of the Amou and the Syr, and to at least an equal extent through the snow and rain that fall on its surface or drain into it from the steppes. Although of considerable depth in the centre, the Aral is not above two or three feet deep near the southern and eastern shores, so that its waters become speedily heated under the fierce rays of the sun of Khiva. There is, besides, good reason to believe that the volume of the Amou has sensibly diminished within quite recent times, through the desiccation of many of its affluents. These again have gradually dried up through the decrease of the glaciers in the high mountains, observed by M. Semenof, and through the neglect of their channels due to the diminution of the agricultural population by incessant strife and bloodshed. It is in this manner that eminent geographer accounts for the drying up of the branch of the Amou which formerly turned off to the south-west and fell into the Caspian, for he holds to the opinion that even at that time the main channel of the river proceeded in a northerly direction to the Aral.* The late Colonel Romanof who was on the personal staff of the Grand-Duke Nicholas Constantinovitch during the recent campaign, made some very pertinent remarks on this subject in one of his interesting letters headed 'On the way to Khiva!' 'The station of Katty Kul,' he says, ' was founded near a sweet-water lake, which is now completely dried up, and the supply of water is obtained from a well eight versts from the station. The transformation of sweet water into salt, and the desiccation of the latter, are very remarkable and constantly recurring phenomena in all the steppes of Central Asia. Within the memory of many the water in the rivers Irghiz, Turgai, Sarysu, and others was fresh, but now it has a bitter salt taste. The site for the recently-constructed fort of Lower Emba was chosen on Lake Masshe, chiefly because its water was fresh. When the fortress was built the lake became salt, so that now the garrison have to procure their supply of water from wells in which the water is brackish. The gradual, but very perceptible, diminution of the lakes and other waterbasins of Central Asia, arising from the excessive dryness of the climate, is croft and Mr George Trebeck, from 1819 to 1825. Edited by H. II. Wilson, M.A. 1841. Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara in the years 1843-45. By the Rev. Jos. Wolff, D.D. 1852. Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Toorkistan, and Belouch. By J. P. Ferrier, Adjutant-General of the Persian Army. Translated by Capt. Wm Jesse. 1856. Voyage en Turcomanie et à Khiva, fait en 1819 et 1820; par M. N. Mouraviev. Traduit par M. G. Lecomte de Laveau. 1823. Narrative of a Journey from Herat to Khiva, Moscow, and St Petersburgh. By Major James Abbott. 1856. History of Bokhara. By Arminius Vambéry. 1873. A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. By Capt. John Wood, Indian Navy. With an Essay by Col. Hy. Yule, C.B. 1872. Chronological Retrospect, or Memoirs of the Principal Events of Mohammedan History. By Major D. Price. 1811. The History of Persia, from the most Early Period to the Present Time. By MajorGeneral Sir J. Malcolm, G.C.B. 1829. The Life of Baber, Emperor of Hindostan. Translated by Dr Leyden and W. Erskine. 1844. Bernier's Voyage to the East Indies. Pinkerton, vol. viii. Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois en l'an 648, Bokhara: its Amir and its People. Translated from the Russian of M. N. de Khan- The Delta and Mouths of the Amu Daria or Oxus. By Admiral A. Boutakof of the W. H. Johnson's Report on his Journey to Ilchi, capital of Khotan in Chinese Tartary. Roy. Geog. Soc. Journ. xxxvii. The Jaxartes or Syr Daria; from Russian Sources. By Robt. Michell, F.R.G.S. Roy. Geog. Soc. Journ. xxxviii. A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels. Printed for Thos. Astley. 1747. Journey from Leh to Yarkand and Kashgar, and Exploration of the Sources of the Yarkand River. By G. W. Hayward. Roy. Geog. Soc. Journ. xl. Timour's Memoirs. Translated by Capt. C. Stewart. An Expedition to the Trans-Naryn Country in 1867. By Baron P. R. Osten Sacken. Translated by E. Delmar Morgan, F. R.G.S. Roy. Geog. Soc. Journ. xl. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Layard's Nineveh. Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. Ocean Highways, &c. &c. &c. The historians of Alexander the Great make no mention of the Aral, nor does any allusion to it occur in the pages of any classical writer until early in the second part of the fourth century of the Christian era, when Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of two rivers that rushed down headlong from the mountains, and, descending into the plains, commingled their waters and formed the Oxia Palus. In Dr Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, however, it is suggested that the Oxia Palus is identical with the Karakul Lake, which is now the termination of the Kohik, or river of Samarkand. Both Herodotus and Strabo appear to have had some knowledge of a series of lagoons watered by the overflowing of the Jaxartes, which was supposed by most early writers to empty itself into the Caspian some 80 parasangs from the mouth of the Oxus. The Aral, when first recognized as something more than a region of pools and swamps, was regarded as the extreme eastern portion of the Caspian, which was thought to communicate, by a long narrow strait, with the Northern Ocean. Sir Henry Rawlinson rejects Humboldt's theory-adopted by Sir R. Murchison-of the Aralo-Caspian Sea that once filled the entire concavity of Turan, extending to the Black Sea, the Northern Ocean, and the Balkash Lake. Briefly, Sir Henry maintains that from B. c. 600 to A. D. 500, that is, for a period of 1100 years, both the Oxus and the Jaxartes emptied themselves into the Caspian, and that the Aral did not then exist as an inland sea. Even so late as A. D. 570, when Zemarchus, the Byzantine envoy, was returning to the west from the encampment of the Khakhan at the foot of the Ak-tagh, or White an undoubted fact, and can be proved by the division of the large Lake of Alakul into three smaller basins, the separation of Lake Chelkar-Tenghiz, which receives the water of the Irghiz, f. on the bay of the Aral Sea, SaryCheganak, with which it was at one time united, and many other instances of a similar kind which have occurred in the steppe.' Mountains, to the north of Samarkand, the Aral was only entitled to the appellation of a reedy marsh, though some thirty years afterwards the Oxus may have ceased to fill its western branch, and have kept to its direct northern channel. About that time the Sea of Kardar, or south-western portion of the Aibugir Lake, which had hitherto been fed by the Urghunj branch, became dried up, and exposed to view the ruins of a treasure city submerged in a remote age. According to Persian traditions these ruins were successfully excavated and rifled for a period of twelve years, and are placed by General Abbott, under the name of Berrasin Gelmaz, in a small island, though Admiral Boutakof fixes the locality of 'Barsa Kilmesh' in a salt marsh a little to the west of the Aibugir Lake. For the next 600 years the Aral is described by the Arab geographers in terms that might be applied to it at the present day, though between the ninth and twelfth centuries three successive capital cities, situated at the apex of the Delta, were destroyed by sudden floods. The course of the river, too, was constantly shifting, according to the greater or smaller quantity of water diverted from the main channel for purposes of irrigation. In A. D. 1221,-Sir Henry continues,-Octai or Okkadai Khan, the son of Chinghiz Khan, when besieging Urghunj, broke down the dam that regulated the flow of the waters, and directed the full force of the stream against the walls of the town, which, being built of clay, were speedily undermined and swept away; about three years later the Oxus again forced its way to the Caspian, and the desiccation of the Aral commenced at the same time. The elder Poli travelled from the Volga to Bokhara about 1260 A. D., by a route which must have taken them across the Aral, but that sea is not once mentioned by Marco Polo. Again, in 1330, Hamdullah Mustowfi describes the Amou as flowing from Hazarasp, a town about 40 miles south-east of the |