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PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



hundred miles in circumference, and is land-locked amid the picturesque mountains and 

 valleys of Azerbijan. Though constantly fed by numerous currents, it has no outlet ; yet 

 there is no increase of its waters, but a gradual diminution, the waste through evapora 

 tion being greater than the supply. The lake is intensely salt, as appears from the depo 

 sitions left upon the beach. For some distance from the brink, a perfect pavement of the 

 solid mineral may be seen under the shallows. A village is pointed out as having once 

 overhung its waters, which is now separated from them by a strand covered with salt, a 

 quarter of a mile broad. Beyond a chain of hills to the north-west lies another example, 

 the Lake Van of Armenia, so celebrated for its beauty by the eastern writers, both in 

 prose and verse. It occupies the bottom of a volcanic amphitheatre, is upwards of 240 

 miles in circumference, and receives the waters of eight rivers without sending off any 

 stream. 



By far the most remarkable instances of this 

 class of lakes are the Caspian, the Sea. of Aral, 

 and the Dead Sea. The majestic volume of 

 the Volga pours into the former, with the Ural, 

 the Kur, and the Aras; yet, notwithstanding 

 these great constant accessions, the Caspian 

 dispenses no surplus waters through any outlet 

 into the adjacent districts. It was once deemed a per 

 plexing problem, how the contributions of its rivers were 

 disposed of ; but the evaporation from so vast an expanse during the heat of summer 

 must be enormous, fully adequate not only to prevent any permanent rise of its level, but 

 gradually to diminish it. The sea of Aral likewise, to the eastward, exhibits the same 

 peculiarity. It received the Jaxartes and Oxus of the ancient geographers, now the 

 Sihoun and Amou, but no stream issues from its banks. Both these bodies of water are 

 salt, and abound with marine productions. All the varieties of sea animals are common to 

 them that are found in the Black Sea, except those transient visitors which arrive in the 

 latter for the purpose of spawning ; and hence it has been conceived probable that both 

 were once connected, forming a branch of the main ocean an extension of the Euxine. 

 The separation of the three, if ever they were united, may have arisen from the depo 

 sition of the alluvial conveyed in the course of ages by the Volga and the Don, together 

 with the subterranean action of elastic fluids which belong to this volcanic territory. 

 The Dead Sea, in the south of Palestine, called also by the Latin geographers Lacus 

 Asphaltites, and by the Arabs Bahr Lout, or Lot's Sea, though very insignificant in size, 



