310 
TURKISTAN AND PLATEAU OF UST-URT. 
Judging from the sketch of the country between Balkh and Khivah left to us by 
the adventurous and lamented Burnes, we can scarcely doubt, that on the east the 
Aralo-Caspian deposits range continuously to the edge of the elevated plateau of 
Pamir (Bolor chain of Humboldt), and on the south to the foot of the western pro- 
longations of the Hindoo Kush ; for he describes all the plain of Turkistan, which 
is watered by the Oxus, as consisting of soft yellowish limestone, with clay, gravel, 
sand and occasional springs and deposits of salt 1 . 
Respecting the Ust-Urt we had, indeed, come to the same conclusion from per- 
sonal communication with M.Eversman, who accompanied the expedition of General 
de Berg, which passed, in the winter of 1826, from the Caspian to the Aral, and 
determined the heights of the Ust-Urt, as well as from the travels of Muravief, when 
our opinion was strikingly confirmed by the perusal of the Appendix to a recent 
work by the enterprizing British envoy Captain James Abbott. After travelling 
from Khivah to the promontory of Tiik Karagan, by a route seldom if ever previously 
taken by a European, he distinctly says, “ the basin of the Caspian is a shell lime- 
stone precisely similar to that which forms the plateau between its shores and Khivah. 
It is remarkable that the whole of this immense mass, often elevated to more than 
one thousand feet 2 above the level of the Caspian, contains but the three shells, the 
cockle, muscle, and spirorbis, which are the production of the waters of the Caspian. 
Hence (he w r ell observes) had these vast strata of shell limestone been the deposit 
of the ocean, they must have contained other shells than those which they yield to 
research. They are therefore the deposits of the Caspian.” In alluding to these relics 
of a former Mediterranean, the same traveller goes on to speak of them as proofs of 
that sea having once stood at a vastly higher level, and thereon builds a theory for 
the wearing away by these higher waters of the gorges of the Hellespont. Here, 
however, he shows himself to be unacquainted with the true principles of geology, 
which would have taught him, that if ever the Caspian stood above the level of the 
highest points at which the steppe limestone is now found, it must have covered 
Russia in Europe and the plains of Germany ; but of such a phenomenon there 
are no traces. Geologists will, therefore, naturally conclude, that such positions 
1 Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 494. 
5 As Captain Abbott’s most remarkable journey was performed during a period of the greatest danger 
(the war between Khivah and Russia being then at its height), and as in traversing this very steppe, 
which he so graphically describes, he was robbed, captured and severely wounded by the Turkomans, 
we are not to expect from him an accurate estimate of heights. 
