Volcanoes of Central Asia. 155 



of Asia, with a volcanic territory, the surface of which is upwards 

 of 2500 square leagues, and which is distant 300 or 400 leagues 

 from the sea : it occupies a moiety of the longitudinal valley situ- 

 ated between the first and second systems of mountains. The chief 

 seat of volcanic action seems to be in the Teen-shan. Perhaps 

 the colossal Bokhda-ula is a trachytic mountain like Chimbora- 

 zo. On the side north of the Tarbagatai and of Lake Darlai, 

 the action becomes weaker ; yet Mr Rose and I found white 

 trachyte along the south-western declivity of the Altai, upon a 

 bell-shaped hill at Ridderski, near the village of Butach- 

 chikha. 



On both sides of the Teen-shan, north and south, violent 

 earthquakes are felt. The town of Aksou was entirely destroyed 

 by a convulsion of this kind at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century. Professor Evcrsman, of Casan, whose repeated tra- 

 vels have made us acquainted with Bokhara, was told by a Tar- 

 tar, who was a servant of his, well acquainted with the country 

 between Lakes Balkashi and Ala-kul, that earthquakes were 

 very common there. In eastern Siberia, to the north of the fif- 

 tieth parallel, the centre of the circle of shocks appears to be at 

 Irktusk, and in the deep basin of Lake Baikal, where, on the 

 Kiachta road, especially on the banks of the Jeda, and the 



Ele, makes the Ala-kul (properly Ala-ghul, or " party-coloured lake") com- 

 municate with the Alaktugul by five channels. Possibly the isthmus which 

 separates these lakes, may be marshy, which causes them to be considered as 

 one. Casim Bek, a professor at Casan, and who is a Persian by birth, insists 

 that higul is a Tartaro-Turkish negation, and that therefore, Altatugui signi- 

 fies " the lake not variegated," as Ala-tau-ghul implies " the lake of the va- 

 riegated mountain." Perhaps the names of Ala-kul and Ala-tugul mean 

 merely " lake near the Ala-tau mountain," which stretches from Turkestan 

 to Zungaria. The small map published by the English missionaries of the 

 Caucasus, does not contain the Ala-kul ; there appears only a group of three 

 lakes, the Balkashi, the Alak-tugul, and the Koorgeh. The hypothesis, 

 however, according to which the vicinity of large lakes produces, in the in- 

 terior of Asia, the same effect upon volcanoes remote from the sea, as the 

 ocean, is without foundation. The volcano of Toorfan is surrounded only by 

 insignificant lakes ; and, as it has been already remarked, Lake Temoortu or 

 Ysal-kul, which is less than double the extent of the Lake of Geneva, is 

 thirty-three leagues from the volcano of Pih-shan — Humboldt. 



The Chinese maps represent the two lakes as one, having a mountain in 

 the midst. This lake is called Ala-kul, its eastern portion bears the name of 

 Alak-tugul nor, and its western gulf that of She-bartu-kholay.— -Klapboth. 



