al Society, May 27,1867. 27 
reader will see that no foundation for such an assertion is to 
be traced in the narratives of these old travellers. For even 
when the starting point of their journey eastward lay upon the 
ee their line of march is traced either s onves “< re south 
of the Aral through the lands of modern Khi r more to 
— north of that sea, and probably beyond sighs even of its 
ores. 
before the 
catena of hical vig as Sir Henry Rawlinson tells us, se gn orig ~ two 
great rivers as falling into the Sea of Khwarezm, ¢. e. the A t the 
s : 
Fetghana (the J: asa mage 
np 2 the i figes English traveller’ reaches those wll 4 008 
he finds the Aral in pee: though his account of it is but hazy; and when 
Russian geography springs up at the end of the 16th century, we find eal it al- 
ready knows the Aral well as the Blue Sea.” 
=: ene then, as we do, how many indications ps to the existence in t 
regions in recent rig retes oem times — @ great inland sea, and finding a mlorthie 
chain of ¢ evidence as to the Aral itself—either santive tir implicit—down to the 
days of modern "geography, I feel it ‘ditt cult to believe ae me the authority of the 
Persian MS., that this great sea, nearly 600 miles in uit, with precipitous 
sides and attaining a depth of 37 fathoms, pce for a number of Pe or entirely 
cease to exist, and then became as we —— 
icca’ 
“ There is one argument on this aha urged by Sir Henry Rawlinson which 
I think a review of the facts in detail will scarcely bear out. eae ts to that 
we many usuall wed 
Henry says, lay exactly across +g site of the Sea of aes yet not one of them 
‘mentions it. If this were so indeed, it would be vain to maintain the a 
bli 
though he writes in the main like a man of sense and reading ; Rigen? s 
rapher. iis woes the Dueiper, cn ay the Wolga, and q y Jaic al fall into 
Le 3 z 
Kazaks,’ in his Sesertatol on the ia tassttes, 462, a quotation hie Russian Soe 
geogra: 
5 Page! there is a lapsus, w: gas Sir gr a Rawlinson speaks of these mer- 
ts as returning with the tea and silk of China; or, if he has  pigee for in- 
Haji Makes, as the first known to me in any European book. 
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