230 Geographical Notices. 
50 wersts in breadth. Its waters are brackish and unpalatable. — 
It is fed by over 40 short mountain streams, which fertilize the 
otherwise sterile soil of the plateau, and which are fringed by 
long lines of trees. But little sedge is to be met with, and that — 
only around the indentations of the lake. On the contrary, the 
ippophae rhamnoides forms a thick bushy growth in the neigh 
borhood of the shore. Between the mountains and the lake 
there is a belt of from 7 to 20 wersts in breadth. At one point 
only do we find the case otherwise, viz.: the Kesse Tsengyr on 
the northern shore, where a spur from the Ala-tau ig 
so near the water that there is merely room enough Jelt 0 
awaggon road. The immediate border of the lake is m ae 
no islands in the Issyk-kul. From the fact that so many streams 
flow into it, he conjectured that it must at some point effect an 
outlet. Geographers had hitherto represented the river Tscht 
as such an outlet, but Semenow followed the Tschu up toward 
its source and ascertained that it approached the lake no nea 
than 5 wersts. Here it breaks through a frightful gorge in 
Byam mountain, a continuation of the Transilian Ala-au, 
flows N.E. to unite with the Kebin. If the waters of thei 
kul had at some previous period been’ about two hundred t” 
higher than they now are, (and there are water-marks near the 
of the mountain which may warrant such @ SUppS 
then the lake may itself have opened the Byam gorg® — 
discharged its surplus flood into the T'schu. Such a former! 
state of its waters will account for the frequent congl ak 
strata on its banks, which were doubtless formed in the lake 
and brought to view on the recession of the waters. ‘. 
, found moreover an additional argument for this h city a a | 
certain seasons visible at the mouth of the Tub, an under 
ed him to com 
clude that if it were not for the ‘existence of the pa oom 
“sigs em Russian. se 
ar Viernoie, the sec eer | 
ie 
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