1032 General Notes. [ October, 
becomes a regular water-course and persists as far as the Sarika- 
mish basin. Dry side canals, with traces of past cultivation, exist 
on the banks of the Daudan. The Kunia-Daria leaves the Amu 
Daria as a small water-course, winding in the broad hollows of 
the old channel, and extending as far as the dam of Kizil-Tokar. 
Beyond this stretches a dry water-course, but at the town of 
Kunia-Urgenj it again becomes a river, and is called the Urun- 
Daria. Dams for irrigation exist on this river. When the Amu- 
Daria is high it frequently overflows into the Karia and Urun- 
Darias. In 1878 the water thus poured into this channel raised 
the lakes of Sarikamish twenty-eight feet. South of the lakes 
-of Sarikamish a broad flat valley is formed out of the saline 
marshes, and farther on this assumes the character of a river-bed. 
This is the Uzboi—the old course of the Amu-Daria. Deposits 
of a former river, masses of earth washed down by it, decayed 
roots and weeds on its banks, ruins of an aqueduct and other 
buildings, combine with its regular banks to prove it the former 
water way. M. Sviridoff concluded by stating his belief in the 
possibility of deflecting the Amu-Daria into its old bed, via the 
Uzboi, to the Caspian. 
Mr. Carles's Journey in Corea.—Mr. Carles reports that Chi- 
mulpho, the port of Jenchuan, is rapidly building up. The Han 
river, distant twenty-four miles from Chimulpho, is navigable for 
junks of 100 tons to Mapu, the port of Soul. Mapu extends | 
some miles along the northern bank of the river, and is four miles 
from Soul. Soul, a city three miles long by half that width, is €n- 
closed by massive walls of stone, twenty-five feet high, with bed 
story towers. The houses are of one story, built of wooden pl 
lars which support a thatched roof. The spaces between the p 
are filled in with mud walls, which in the better class of ers 
are faced with stones, tied together with millet stalks and points” 
with cement. The houses contain but little furniture, but ae 
cleaner and warmer than those of Northern China. There ® 
marked absence of color in streets and houses. coded 
In the north-east and north of Corea the country is well-w oe 
and watered, and fine timber is brought down the Ya-lu ant | 
ported to China. The highest peaks of the backbone of CS 
seem to be to the south-east. The light porous soil of we ae a 
leys is highly cultivated, but the mountains north of gee 7 
strikingly barren. It seems to be impossible to purchase e 
thing in Corea except during a fair. Mr. Carles says cottol 
people everywhere have plenty of food, firewood, “a mud : 
clothes, of which they wear strikingly little, with substan 
dwellings; beggars are rare, and the working mere af 
e 
than in China; but great riches are uncommon. von ae 
kept in marvelous seclusion. i 
Arabia Petrea—Mr. Hull has completed his journey “ible fo 
Wady-el-Arabah, the entire length of which he was 7° 
