58 EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
The dune-co\-ered area was abrupt!)- cut off as we eutered the irrigated fields 
of Charjui ou the plain bordering the Amu on the south. The fields of the gently 
sloping plain are delicately graded to level surfaces, each fed by a little canal and 
bordered by a little dike next to its lower neighbor. The canals are divided and 
subdivided, like nerve endings, the smallest ones being hardly noticeable. Many 
of them are bordered with trees. The houses and the walls of inclosed gardens are 
of gray, sun-dried mud. There are no fences between the fields ; hence horses and 
cattle are tended or tethered while pasturing. Grain, lucern, and cotton were the 
principal crops noted. The change from the desolate sands to this thriving oasis 
was a beautiful example of the beneficent work of irrigation in the desert. 
LOESS DEPOSITS. 
It was suggested by Professor Penck, during our conference with him at 
Vienna on the outward journey, that special attention should be given to deposits 
of loess, in order to detennine in how far they are now in process of accumula- 
tion, or in how far they should be referred to .some period of past time. This 
problem was made the more interesting by seeing at Krems, on the Danube, above 
Vienna, a well-defined deposit of loess from which some 15,000 artifacts have been 
gathered by the patient work of Dr. Strobl. Some specimens of rudely chipped 
flints were kindly given to us to serve as samples of things to be searched for in 
the loess of Turkestan. Our hurried movements made it impossible to undertake 
any such search, or indeed to make any close examination of loess-covered areas ; 
but we passed certain loess deposits regarding which our observations, even though 
made only from train windows or from post-wagon, seem worth placing on record. 
LOESS NEAR SAMARKAND. 
On approaching Samarkand, June 15, the railroad crosses an extensive deposit 
of loess, at once seen to be unlike the gravelly piedmont slopes near Bokhara, 
and equally xinlike the sea of sand-dunes on the plain south of the Amu, but not 
easily distinguishable in a passing view from the fine silts of the Murg-ab and 
the Tcjen plains, e.Kcept that the surface of the deposit here was not level, but 
broadly undulating and sub-maturely dissected. A 30-foot cut, where the railroad 
made its way between opposite valley heads, was unfortunately passed in the twi- 
light. At Samarkand a deep valley is cut in loess, well seen a short distance 
east of the railroad station. A few miles farther on, near the ridge across the 
Zerafshan, the hill slopes are cloaked with loess, on which a thin cover of angular 
waste has crept down. All these deposits, therefore, seem to be and to have 
long been in process of dissection rather than of accumulation. It occurred to 
me that even if other conditions were now favorable for the accumulation of loess 
in this district, the irrigation and cultivation of the Zerafshan flood plain is 
distinctly unfavorable to its accumulation ; for the cultivation of crops and, perhaps 
even to a greater extent, the growth of trees, lifts the wind from the ground, 
and thus greatly diminishes the amount of fine silt that can be carried from the 
flood plain and deposited elsewhere. In the absence of cultivation the flood plain 
