578 
CHANGES PRODUCED BY MAN. 
wards to the Jaxartes, thus sterilizing a wide and rich tract towards the southern 
end of the sea of Aral, and contiguous to the Khivan frontier 1 * . 
A similar operation therefore, and possibly of no greater magnitude, effected by 
the Khivans, may have deflected the principal ancient stream of the Oxus from its 
course through the low steppe of the Turkomans and by the south of the plateau 
of Ust-Urt to the Caspian Sea, and have caused the waters of that mighty stream 
to flow into its present Aralian estuary, thus verifying the words of old Jenkinson, 
“ The water that serveth all that countrey (Khivah) is drawn by ditches out of the 
river Oxus unto the great destruction of that river, for which cause it falleth not 
into the Caspian Sea, as it has done in times past ; and in short time all that land 
is like to be destroyed, and become a wilderness for want of water, when the river 
Oxus shall fade 8 .” 
The hands of man have also produced and are still effecting considerable changes 
in large tracts of Russia, by the destruction of her forests and the conversion of her 
northern marshes into arable lands. A few centuries only have elapsed since 
northern Russia was a dense virgin forest, with vast intervening marshes and lakes, 
but now her gigantic pine trees are felled, lakes and marshes are drained, and 
the culture of corn is extended to the latitude of the White Sea. The natural 
recipients of so much moisture having been destroyed, we may (exclusive of the 
great spring debacle which in an extreme climate may have been always nearly the 
same) in great measure account for the sensible diminution of late years in the 
waters of the Volga and other great streams, whose affluents rise in those very 
countries where large tracts are now drained. 
M. Baer and M. Koppen 3 * * * * , observers of great authority, have, indeed, supposed, 
that in truth much the same volume still passes through the Volga as in former 
1 See letter of M. N. Khanikoff to Mr. Murchison, Journal of the Royal Geogr. Soc., vol. xiv. p. 333, 
where it is shown, that even in the year 1810 ! the Tanghi-Daria was a copious stream. 
* See Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 367, ed. 1809. 
3 See a Report of a Commission by M. Koppen, with a preface by M. Baer, “ Ueber den Wald und 
Wasser vorrath im Gebiete der obern und mittlern Wolga. Beitriige zur Kentniss des Russischen 
Reiches, vol. iv. St. Petersburg, 1841.” In this memoir, a distinction is drawn between the moisture 
proceeding from the Atlantic with its westerly gales, and that of the White Sea with its north-easterly 
winds. The main fact however is, that the sources of the Volga (and this applies to many other Russian 
rivers) were spongy marshes, which are now so much drained, as to occasion a diminution in the volume 
of the stream at certain seasons. 
