26 Address of Sir R. I. Murchison 
volcanic mud-islands near the southern end of the Caspian. 
The elevating effect of these forces would deflect the Caspian 
branch of the Oxus and cause its waters to unite with the 
branches which flowed northward into the Aral Sea 
The great distinction between the views taken by Sir Henry 
Rawlinson and myself is, that whilst I believe the main out- 
lines of the Aralo-Caspian region were determined by move- 
ments of the earth in quaternary or later tertiary times, he re- 
fers the great changes which he believes to have been made in 
the courses of the Oxus and Jaxartes to no very distant histor- 
ical dates ; thus referring the emptying and refilling of the 
eee hs hollow in which the Aral Sea lies to comparatively mod- 
ern t 
78 oft, indeed, one argument, which, if sustained, would 
at once dispose of my view. In support ‘of the opinion that 
sea was non-existent in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, he states that in those days travellers from Europe 
to Asia passed over dry lands since occupied by that sea. If 
this were substantiated, the belief I have adopted that the sep- 
aration of the Aral from the Caspian, and the upheaval of 
the broad intervening plateau of the Ust-Urt, would be at once 
removed from a prehistoric period to the days of Henry III, 
and the two first Edwards of English histo 
Now, surely, if so great a terrestrial change of surface as 
this had happened in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, 
the rumor of it would have been bruited throughout Europe 
and Asia, Unwilling, however, to rest upon any notions of 
my own, I have consulted that admirable comparative geog- 
rapher, Colonel Yule, as to the routes taken by the medieval 
vellers of that date ; and he having favored me with much 
information respecting ‘the whole of th this subject, [ extract from 
his letter the appended long note.* By reference to it the 
__™* After alluding to the little weight to be attached to the statements of the 
Greeks, tracing the imperfect accounts erodotus and his followers, and re- 
jecting the Oxiana Ptolemy, which had been made “to do duty,” as he 
says, for the Aral on y respectable maps, Colonel Yule proceeds to say :— 
__ “We are on surer ground in the narrative of the Embassy of Zem to the 
Khan of the Turks about the —_ “pore of the historian Menander, 
which r ion, are unfortunate ut fragments, and do not say how 
Zemarchus got from Byzantium to Cen "hain. But on his retu te é h 
lay to the north of the Caspian we are told that before reachi g the rivers ch 
and Daich (apparently the rm _ ral)' he passed for twelve days 
the Aral; nor probz y will Sir Henry R cathe rate deny its : 
3 y its existence at that date. 
dus at of the Act kaon fiat even n the Greeks, once they get actually to 
Aral, did recognize its existence. 
“We now get to a period regarding which there is no controversy. A long 
na 
