32 | Address of Sir R. I. Murchison 
the Sea of Khwarezm was first exhibited as a separate sea. 
. such it also appears in the maps of Rennell, of Williams, 
f Yule, and, in short, of all the best authorities, representing 
that which I believe to have been the true physical condition 
of the region during all historical time, and which I maintain 
the Oxus and Jaxartes as lines of reir traffic with Chins 
and India, I have no reitadia in saying that the aati river 
holds the first place. By reference to the memoir of Lieut. 
Wood, in the tenth volume of our “Journal,” describing the 
sources of the Oxus, and still better by inspecting the map of 
the Bolor Mountains and Upper Sources of the Oxus, which 
has just appeared in our present volume (vol. 36), I agree with 
the able Russian geographer Veniukof, who, after alluding to 
the wild barbarian races which occupy the high tableland of 
Pamir and the adjacent mountains, adds this significant pas- 
sage : ‘* When we, moreover, remember that this basin of the 
sources of the Oxus is closed in on the north, east, and south 
by mountains from 15,000 to 18; 000 feet high, and across which 
the roads for pack-animals are few and difficult to traverse, we 
must arrive at the conclusion, that all idea of converting this 
region into a rich aeypot for a trade with India and China 
must be abandon 
Before I quit the eben of the investigation of Central 
Asia, let me ask those of my coun en who read German 
with facility, to peruse the great work of Ritter, the ““Erdkunde 
von Asien;” and they will at once learn how to value the vast 
amount of modern discovery which is due to our Russian co- 
tem ies. 
On former occasions I have naturally adverted to several of 
these remarkable researches; but I regret that, in my last two 
Addresses, I have omitted to notice, as I now do with special 
bation, the memoir of M. Semenof, published in our 
a gas on “Djungaria and the Celestial Moun- 
oe As the only man of modern times who has eae 
masses of those regions, In so doin , he iat set é nitlede one et 
the few errors which the Fae yeas fumboldt fell into in his 
* “ Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,” vol. xxxvi, p. 263. 
