has to be considered is, which of them offers the easier and more satisfactory means of carrying the water of the Amou Darya in a perennial stream across the Khivan desert to the shores of Balkhan bay? The beds of both of those channels are now dried up save where the excess waters of a time of flood are diverted into various portions of them as a matter of safety; and along their course may be traced numerous dams which have been erected at several periods to keep out the main stream of the Oxus. It is important to note that these channels are a continuous low and level hollow in the Khivan plain; and at a glance there appears to be no other obstacle in the way of re-flooding them than the dams already referred to. These have certainly not been the only, or perhaps the chief, cause of the change in the course of the Oxus in the seventeenth century; but it is natural to suppose that they have contributed to that result, which has been of the most complete kind. With regard to the Uzboi itself, which extends in a southerly direction as far as the Igdy wells, and then in a westerly direction as far as Balkhan bay, it has been described as possessing the appearance of a "great ruined ravine," and in its bed are to be found lakes and wells, often of salt or brackish, but sometimes of fresh, water. The Uzboi forms the highway across the northern portion of the Kara Kum, and it has at times been suggested that it forms an admirable track for a railway from Krasnovodsk to Khiva. But the more hopeful plan, both in its prospects of success and utility, has been to make it a waterway to Central Asia. The Uzboi is also

broken across by great mounds of sand, which, Vambery tells us, are of considerable altitude and great breadth.

There is, among other arms of the Oxus, the Loudon canal, which has recently been refilled, and of which something must here be said for the elucidation of the question under treatment. The Loudon canal used to flow from the vicinity of the fortified place of Bend into the lake of Aibughir. By means of that canal, which carried off a considerable portion of the waters of the Oxus, Aibughir was a lake, forming the south-west corner of the Aral sea. In that quarter of the Khivan state a section of the Yomult Turcomans resided and still reside; but between them and the Khan feuds were of frequent occurrence. In this quarter of Asia it has been, since the days of the sons of Genghis Khan, a common practice in warfare to supplement military strength and skill by manual labour; and whenever an enemy appeared too strong to be resisted in the field, the rivers and canals of the country have been dammed up, either to cause a flood to retard his advance, or for the purpose of removing the fertilising means which nature had placed at the disposal of the antagonistic people or tribe. It was with this latter object in view that the Khan of Khiva, in 1857, erected a dam across the upper end of the Loudon canal, near the fort of Bend, for in that year the Yomult chief, Atta Mourad Khan, declared war upon the Kkan, and the Khan retaliated in the manner described. Now, whether because that dam was imperfectly constructed, or that the force of the

Oxus was too great at this point to be restrained by any ordinary barrier, we know not; but for several years-Von Helwald refers to it-there had been symptoms that the dam erected at the entrance to the Loudon canal was insufficient to the strain that was daily brought against it. Observers said it was only a question of time when it would give way.

In the meanwhile, the Aibughir gulf, partly through the damming of the Loudon canal, and partly through the sinking of the Aral sea, had become dried up; and where there had once been a gulf, and in prehistoric times a mighty sea, there are now to be found the kibitkas and aouls of the Yomult Turcomans. For twenty years this has been the state of things with regard to Aibughir and the Loudon canal, and during that period the Yomults have been more subservient than theretofore to the Khan. It will be remembered that it was against these people that the Russians took those operations after the fall of Khiva, about which Mr. Schuyler gave us such remarkable revelations in his work on Turkestan. The damming up of the Loudon canal appears to have been attended with the one beneficent result that these Turcomans became more peaceably disposed than ever they had been before. The evil, however, of the act was also very apparent, for the waters of the Oxus, unable to find their usual outlet on the west, were forced to seek in those eastern ones-the Chertambye and Taldyk more particularly-the vent of which they had been deprived; and those branches, numerous as they are, were really incapable of performing what was

required of them.

The delta of the Oxus became more and more the almost useless swamp which it is at present; and the invaluable waters of the great river have been wasted on the Aral sea, which it would be far better disappeared altogether than to remain in its present useless state. The damming of the Loudon canal effected a temporary good, but at a serious price, for it aggravated evils which were already bad enough. It remains to be seen what its re-flooding signifies.

About the middle of October last the Russian papers announced that the Amou Darya had returned to its original bed. No details were vouchsafed to us, but with an air of triumph-as with reason they might have been triumphant had what they said been literally true the Russian journalists proclaimed that it was only necessary to make this change definitive, and thus create a new route to India-the shortest and easiest as well as secure the connection of the Russian possessions in Central Asia with the rest of the empire. Had that, which the Russians in their first glow of hope imagined had, occurred, there can be no doubt that even the wild suggestions of the Moscow and St. Petersburg press during the first week after the receipt of the news would not have been too farfetched or exaggerated. To say that it would have been of great military and political importance is to treat with a light heart a circumstance that would have simply been a complete revolution in Central Asian affairs of the most momentous kind. But it is idle to speculate on what might have been, as the original news was entirely false and misleading.

The

Amou Darya had not returned to its original bed or shown any disposition to do so. The dam erected twenty years ago in the Loudon channel had been burst through, as had been clearly foreseen that it would; and the Oxus was once more seeking its old outlet into the gulf of Aibughir. But as there is no desire to minimise the importance of any event connected with Central Asia in these pages, before we pass on to other subjects it is necessary to inquire, is there any importance at all in this fact, and if so, what is it ?

It is highly improbable that the Loudon channel is still in a state of preservation as far as the Aibughir gulf. Probably it does not extend intact much to the west of Kunya Urgendj, which is upon its banks. In that case, the river, not having any proper vent, will flood the surrounding country, and continue to do so until the Khivans have taken some fresh step to regulate or check its encroachments. This step will most likely be the restoration of the dam at Bend, and a return to the status quo ante. There is just the possibility, however, that the Russians will have a voice in the matter, and it is conceivable that their attention having been turned to this subject, which has such historical claims upon them, they may devote more energy than they usually do to a matter that, if carried out, would make their advance on India a surer, if a slower, process than it can by any possibility be at present. And if such be the case, and the waters of the Oxus having presumably reached Kunya Urgendj, the country round which was flooded some time ago