78 SIULKIA. 



liable reeds of llio shore of Lake Balkliasli. This lake, gradually dryiug up and retreating from 

 the submountainous region, has left between the latter and its south-eastern shore line a desert 

 and unfruitful space at least 1,000 square geographical miles in extent. Thus, that part of 

 the foothill zone wiijcji, rnmi its absolute height, irrigation and soil, may be regarded as an 

 area suitable to colonization, scarcely amounts to more than ],000 square geographical m'iUi<, 

 oven reckoning in the valleys adapted to cultivation. 



The submountainous zone of the Kirghiz steppe region, extending between the Thian- 

 Shan and Altai, is almost the best part of Siberia, and is remarkable also on account of th'- 

 fact that it played a great part in the history of the great migration of peoples, beginning 

 with the movement of the Huns to the west already in the second century before Christ and 

 ending with the great Mongolian in'uplion of the thirteentli ciTilury. All the national migra- 

 tions starting from the interior of Asia were caused by the fact that the nomad population 

 of Central Asia gradually increasing reached the limits of the capacity of the country, and 

 then was compelled to seek an exit either to the far oast into the rich and fertile plains of 

 the Chinese Empire, or to the far west, at first into the Aral-Caspian plain, and later, turn- 

 ing the Si-Khai, the «dislant west», that is, the Caspian Sea, on the north or south, into 

 Europe. But as the elevated region of Central Asia between the Thian-Shan and the Hima- 

 laya range on the side of the Aral-Caspian depression is shut in by such lofty mountains, 

 whose passage is entirely impossible for nomads moving with all their herds, the importance 

 in the history of national migrations of those three wide and convenient intervals, which are 

 situated between the Thian-Shan and the Altai in the region under consideration, is evident. 

 These gaps are, the wide valley of the Hi between the two Altai, the depression surround- 

 ing Lake Alacul, between the Semirechian Altai and Tarbagatai, and the Circumzaissan 

 plain between Tarbagatai and the Altai. These three intervals in the mountains served as 

 wide gates for the exodus of the nomads with the low-lying plain, now called the Kirghiz steppe. 



The steppe district of the Kirghiz steppe region differs entirely from not only the zone 

 just considered, but also from the neighbouring Western Siberian plain. The Kirghiz steppe is 

 unlike the latter in that it does not present an absolute level. On the contrary it is for a 

 considerable extent intersected by low, but very prominent mountain ridges and masses, con- 

 sisting for the most part of granite, diorite, diabase, porphyry and other crystalline rocks. 

 Granitic mountains rear themselves above the steppe in the form of crests, while the porphy- 

 ritic are arranged for the most part in groups of cupola-shaped summits, the resulting effect 

 being a very varied contour. The steppe character of the Kirghiz country appears in the 

 extreme scantiness of its watering and in the almost complete absence of forest vegetation, 

 which only occurs in the north-western corner of the steppe in the Kokchetavsk district of 

 the Akmoliusk Territory. Only the uoilh-eastern portion of the steppe is watered by the 

 Htysh, while through the north-western flows a large tributary of the same river, the Ishim. 

 All the other rivers of the steppe as for example the Nura, Sary-Su, and Chu bear the character 

 of sluggish prairie streams, disappearing in ovei-flows, which rapidly evaporate in the sandy 

 waste. The low mountain ridges, intersecting the steppe, contain various minerals, such as cop- 

 per and argentiferous lead ores. In the Kokbekta district of the Semipalatinsk territory occur . 

 deposits of gold. But the absence of fuel places mining industry here under unfavourable conditions. 



