42 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
narrow valley floor of the present stream. Evidence of similar terracing in the 
range southwest of Askhabad will be given in a later section. We saw no indica- 
tions of deltas or other shoreline features here — nothing but the results of forward- 
washing stream action. It may be that the chief evidence for drawing the Quater- 
nar>- Caspian shoreline near Kizil-.\r\at is to be found in the agreement of the 
altitude of the plain, a few miles from the mountain base, with the level of the sea 
as detennined b>- recognizable shorelines elsewhere. In that case its location can, 
of course, be onh- approximate. 
At Bakharden, between Kizil-Ar\-at and Askhabad, we rode out to the dunes 
along the course of a small stream, \\hose occasional floods keej) a graded jiassage 
open among the sands for several miles from the mountains. The surface of the 
led Terraces at (he base of the Kopet Dagh, south of the Kizil-Arvat, looking southwest. The 
horizontal Hmestones o( the Mountain on the lef 
Fig. 11. Dlssec 
I 
the Terraces in the middle distance 
left are suddenly bent down so as to pass under the clays of 
sands was irregular at first (fig. 23); then the dunes began in moderate relief, 
seldom exceeding 15 feet in height. The scarps of the crescentic dunes or barkhans 
(fig. 24) were to the west, as if the sands had been drifted by easterh- winds. The 
sand bore a scanty growth of grass, except on the freshest dunes. Between the 
dunes and the mountains there was no sign of shore-terrace or delta observed. The 
piedmont slope extends forward without interruption as far as we saw it. It should, 
of course, be remembered that the abandoned Caspian shorelines, wherever they 
stand on the piedmont plain, may be faint and not easily recognizable ; nevertheless, 
they were recognized so easily at Baku, Krasnovodsk, and Jebel, that failure to see 
