312 
EASTERN OR ELEVATED COAST OF THE CASPIAN. 
The relative changes between land and water within the historic sera will be 
considered towards the conclusion of the work, on which occasion we shall endea- 
vour to indicate, how those recent modifications of contour to which Baron Hum- 
boldt referred, are distinct from the phsenomena so clearly ante-historical which 
occupy us ; for though we now offer proof, that the Aral and the Caspian were to 
a great extent separated in the tertiary period, by the elevation of the Ust-Urt and 
the great isthmus of Khivah, we may take the opportunity of discussing with our 
illustrious contemporary, whether in the early periods of history the Aral and the 
Caspian may have been connected in their southern parts, and whether the Oxus 
may not have flowed into both seas K 
Another author, Lieutenant Felkener, of the Imperial Russian Mining Corps, 
may, indeed, be cited in support of the view, that the masses of land to which we 
have been alluding were formerly the bottoms of an inland sea. 
In exploring the eastern edges of the Caspian from Asterabad to the Cape Tiik Karagau 1 2 , he describes the southern 
portion of the coast, extending from the river Karasii to Postchanoi Ugol, as a low alluvial saDdy plain, which rises 
insensibly to the east, and is flanked on the north and north-east by the great plateau of the Ust-Urt, and on the 
south and south-east by the chain of Khorassan. This lower desert of Khivah (Khwarezm), inhabited by lawless 
Turkomans, and with which geographers are only slightly acquainted through the adventurous travels of Muravief 
and Conolly, would seem, therefore, to offer the same relation to the Ust-Urt which the low steppes of Astrakhan 
and the Caucasus bear to the adjacent raised tertiary strata which surround them, a subject to which we shall 
presently advert. Though little versed in the specific distinctions of fossil shells. Lieutenant Felkener is suffi- 
ciently clear in his nar rative to permit us to doubt, that an elevatory process has been going on from remote anti- 
quity to a very recent period, if not to the present day, by which the mountains, hills and banks on the coasts of 
the Caspian have been successively heaved up. Connecting effects with their causes, his description of the raised 
beds of the Caspian, often inclined and dislocated in the neighbourhood of the eruptive rocks of the Balkhan, and 
their horizontal position at great altitudes where placed at some distauce from such lines of disturbance only, tend 
to confirm our belief, that with a little more attention of competent observers, these tracts, particularly in the 
meridian of the eastern prolongation of the Caucasus, will afford still more distinct proofs of different epochs of 
elevation. 
In making this remark, however, we are fully alive to the very great difficulties 
which must encompass any traveller who seeks minutely to examine the interior of 
a tract, inhabited by wild and lawless Turkomans, and in which for a distance of 800 
versts, from south to north, one well only of fresh water is known. Even from the 
pages of Lieutenant Felkener we learn that, upon the same parallel along which por- 
phyries and other plutonic rocks were formerly ejected, and which threw up the more 
1 Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 421 at seq. t and vol. ii. p. 221 at seq. Muravief, Voyage en Turcomanie, 
and Journey to the North of India overland from England, through Russia, Persia and Affghanistan, by 
Lieutenant Conolly. London, 1834. 
2 Annuaire du Journal des Mines de Russie de 1838, p. 130. 
