CHARACTERISTICS AND DISTRIBUTION OF LAKES 529 
The Aralo-Caspian basin is bounded by the Caspian on the west, Aralo-Caspian 
the plateaus of Persia and Afghanistan on the south, and the Pamirs 
on the east, stretching to the Thian-Shan and tlie Tarbagati on the 
north-east, to Siberia on the north, and merging on the north-west 
into the steppes which lie between the Ural and the Caspian. On 
one side the mountains rise to heights of from 20,000 to 23,000 feet, 
while on the other side the surface sinks to the Caspian, about 
86 feet below the level of the sea. • 
The fluctuations of level in the Caspian Sea during historic times, 
and its relation to the Sea of Aral and the Amu Daria (Oxus of the 
ancients, and Jihun of the Arabs), have caused much discussion 
among modern writers.^ Strabo, the Greek geographer, quotes 
Aristobulus, the geographer of Alexander the Great, as saying that 
in the fourth century before Christ the traffic from India came down 
the Oxus River to the Caspian, into which sea the river flowed. A 
little later, about 300 e.g., Patrocles, the admiral of Seleucus, made 
a survey of the southern coast of the Caspian, and reported that the 
Oxus and Jaxartes (Syr Daria) Rivers both entered that sea, the 
mouth of the one being 240 miles from that of the other. Under 
present conditions the Oxus and Jaxartes could not possibly enter 
the Caspian Sea by separate mouths, but were the level of the 
Caspian very much higher than it is now, that sea would almost 
coalesce with the Sea of Aral, and conditions would then agree 
with the description of Patrocles. Physiographic evidence which 
seems to show that this was at one time the case is given by the 
abandoned shore-lines that border the Caspian at various heights 
up to 600 feet above the present water-level. These indicate by 
their weak development that the sea did not stand at any one 
level for a long time. Istakhri, who visited the region about 
920 A.D., said that the Aral received the Oxus, the Jaxartes, 
and several other rivers. Edrisi (a.d. 1154) speaks of the Aral as 
a " well-known lake," and confirms most of what Istakhri says. He 
also shows in his map the Jihun flowing into the Aral Sea.^ Professor 
Woeikoff'^ shows that a rise of the River Amu Daria of only 4 metres 
(13 feet) above the level of 1901 would cause an overflow of part of 
its waters by the Usboi to the Caspian, one effect of which would be 
that the Sea of Aral would become a fresh-water lake. Historical 
evidence goes to show that from the thirteenth to the end of the 
^ Humboldt, Asie centrale, Paris, 1843 ; Eawlinson, " Note on the Oxus River," 
Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc, vol. xi. p. 114, 1866-67 ; Briickner, Klimaschvjcmkungen seit 
1700, Wien, 1890. 
^ Aitoff's reduction of the maps of Edrisi's Geography in Schrader's Historical 
Atlas, Carte 24, Paris, 1896. 
Op. cit., p. 84. 
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