THE AKHAL-TEKIN OASES. 
43 
them at Bakharden and elsewhere along the base of the Kopet Dagh inaj- be fairly 
taken to indicate tliat the\' do not exist there. The little deltas in the ravines on 
the nionntain flank near Jebel were recognized at the first glance, though a mile or 
more awa}- ; the strands at Krasnovodsk were visible as such from the steamer 
before reaching land. The treeless piedmont plain on which the Akhal-tekin oases 
are distributed is open, as .soon as one leaves the villages, without obstruction to 
the view for miles together, and yet shows nothing that coidd be interjjreted as a 
shoreline. It may l)e noted that familiarit}- with the Bonneville shorelines in Utah 
gave us all the more confidence in the correctness of our conclusion that no shore- 
lines occur along the base of the Kopet Dagh at Kizil-Arvat and farther eastward. 
Fig. 1}. — Sand-hills near Bakharden. looking south. 
The railroad journey through the belt of oases afforded excellent op]')ortunity for 
many general views of tlie piedmont slope. Gorges in the barren mountains ojDen 
upon fans, whose long forward descent was well seen in profile before or after passing 
them. The}' had no resemblance to the flat-topped deltas built in the high-level Bon- 
neville waters along the base of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. In a district where 
the limited water supply liardly suffices for the needs of even a scanty population, and 
where the unredeemed desert counts more area in miles than the fields rescued from 
it count in acres, it was curious to note the precautions taken to guard the railroad 
from destruction by floods. The faintly convex surface of the fans sheds the floods 
now on one radius, now on another; the point where a flood will reach the track 
