Ixvi NOTES. 



W.N.W., is a continuation of the volcanic fissure of the Asferah (Aktagh) and 

 Thian-schan, see the same, p. 54 61. Both these chains run, with little de- 

 viation, between the parallels of 40 and 43. The great depression of the Aral 

 and Caspian seas, the area of which depression is estimated by Struve, from exact 

 measurements, as exceeding that of the whole of France by almost 1680 square 

 (German) miles (Asie Centrale, t. ii. p. 309312), is, I think, older than the 

 upheaval of the Altai and the Thian-schan. The fissure of elevation of the 

 last-named chain has not extended through the great depression. It only re- 

 appears west of the Caspian, as the chain of the Caucasus, with some variation 

 of direction, but with all trachytic and volcanic phenomena. This geological 

 connection is also recognised by Abieh, and is confirmed by him by important 

 observations. In a memoir on the connection of the Thian-schan with the 

 Caucasus, he says, expressly : " The frequency and decided predominance, over 

 the whole district (between the Euxine and the Caspian), of a system of parallel 

 lines of dislocation and upheaval (nearly from east to west), carries the mean 

 direction of the axis of the great latitudinal Central Asiatic upheavals most 

 decidedly to the westward of the Kosyourt and Bolor systems, and to the 

 Caucasian isthmus. The mean direction of the Caucasus, S.E. N.W., is, in 

 the central portion, E.S.E. W.N.W., and sometimes even completely E. W., 

 like the Thian-schan. The lines of elevation, or upheaval, which connect 

 Ararat with the trachytic mountains Dzerlydagh and Kargabassar near Erze- 

 roum, and in the southern parallels of which Argasus, Sepandagh, and Sabalan 

 are arranged in line, are most decided indications of a mean volcanic axial 

 direction, L e. of a western prolongation of the Thian-shan through the Cau- 

 casus. Many other mountain directions of Central Asia are also met with again 

 in this remarkable space, and these, as everywhere else, are so linked together 

 as to form great mountain nodes, and maxima of elevation." Pliny (vi. 17) 

 says: "Persas appellavere Caucasum montem Graucasim (var. Graucasum, 

 Groucasim, Grocasum), hoc est nive candidum;" wherein Bohlen thought he 

 recognised the Sanscrit words " kas " (to shine) and " gravan " (rock). (Com- 

 pare my Asie Centrale, t. i. p. 109.) If the name Graucasus has been cor- 

 rupted into Caucasus, it may, indeed, have happened, as Klausen remarks 

 in his Investigations on the Wanderings of lo (Rheinisches Museum fur Philo- 

 logie, Jahrg. iii. 1845, S. 298), that a name, in which each of the first syllables 

 recalled to the Greeks the idea of burning, may have denoted a burning moun- 

 tain, with which the story of the fire-kindler, TrupKaevs, easily connected itself 

 poetically." It is not to be denied that myths are sometimes occasioned by 

 names; but the origin of so great and important a myth as the Typhonian- 

 Caucasian can scarcely be derived from the accidental similarity of sound in a 

 misunderstood name of a mountain. There are better arguments, one of which 



