burg, suggesting that men of science should be sent to the spot 
to examine into the evidences of that ancient bed of the river, - 
ges also to test, by soundings along the shore of the Caspian, 
remains of the old site: of that stream could be a tected. 
31 
less than rahe years the foals have completed the survey of 
the whole of that vast interior sea; and it is indeed much to 
be regretted that a work of such ereat geographical interest 
should have thus been set aside. 
In conclusion, my belief is :—1. That the Caspian and Aral 
Oxus, as also of the sites of the Caspian and Aral seas, were 
determined in a prehistoric period. 3. That at one time the 
Oxus emptied itself both into the Caspian and the Aral, and 
that the Caspian branch-stream was sent back to the course of 
the other portion of the stream, either by the local rise of some 
lands between Khiva and the Caspian, or by desiccation and a 
want of sufficient power of water. And, lastly, that the Jax- 
artes never was deflected from its natural east to west course, to 
pass southward, and so reach the Caspian by the southern end 
of the great elevation of the Us t-Urt, after a very long course 
at right angles to its present direction, to say nothing of its 
having in that case necessarily united with the Oxus by the 
oe to the north of any line of i cisehcautie between Greece or 
Asia was wholly undetermined. May we not ration- 
ally infer that the ancient geographers believed that the Jaxar- 
tes, as well as the Oxus, flowed into the Caspian, simply, as 
suggested by Rennell, from having heard that the Jaxartes ter- 
minated in one great sea, and that they naturally believed that 
the Aral was then simply the northeastern portion of those 
large inland waters of which they had heard, but of which 
they knew nothing accurately. 
In truth, when we know that the geography of the Greeks, 
and even of the Rom ans, was worthless, in regard to any lands 
beyond the parallel of the mouth of the Oxus, we necessarily re- 
cur to the works of the earliest Arabian geographers, in whi 
