36 EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
improbable, for Baku lies on the line of the Caucasus range, where great disturb- 
ances have taken place in not remote geological periods, and where minor movements 
might exjDectably be continued into recent time. It should be noted, moreover, 
that the highest shorelines at Krasnovodsk, 210 feet, and at Jebel, 250 feet, differ 
by a greater amount than should be ascribed to error of barometer readings, and 
that both of these levels are decidedly below the undoubtable signs of modem wave 
work near Baku, at 400 feet In further confirmation of warping, we may quote 
Mushketofs statement (1886, I, 692) to the effect that in the southern Caspian the 
Quaternary Aralo-Caspian shoreline almost merges with the present shoreline. In 
\-iew of this it is desirable to measure the elevated shorelines of the Caspian at 
many points before attempting to restore its outline at the time of its maximum 
extension. It is very possible that the relative dates of the various shorelines may 
finally be better detennined by means of the amount of warping that the\- have 
suffered — the latest ones the least — than in any other way. 
Further consideration of the eastern extension of the Caspian will be found in 
subsequent pages. 
THE PLAINS OF SOUTHERN TURKESTAN. 
A great part of Turkestan, south and east of the Aral Sea, is a desert plain 
connecting southwestward with the lowland bordering the southern Caspian by the 
Balkhan gateway in the belt of highlands that, farther to the southeast, fonns the 
boundar\- of the Russian and Persian dominions. A large part of the desert plain 
is described by some of the Russian geologists as having been covered by the 
Pliocene Aralo-Caspian Sea, and a smaller southwestern part by the post-Pliocene 
sea, whose waters have since then gradually withdrawn to their present separate 
basins. It is evident that the varying area of this great inland sea must have, 
directly and indirectly, exerted a controlling influence on the distribution of the 
contemporan,- human hihabitants of the region, if any such there were ; hence the 
importance of gaining as full a knowledge as possible of Aralo-Caspian histon,' in 
the course of our explorations. 
The following summary' concerning the relation of the southern Turkestan 
plains to the Aralo-Caspian problem, as detennined by Russian observers, ma\- ser\-e 
as an introduction to the record of our own obser\ations. One has frequent occa- 
sion, in reviewing the reports of the Russian explorers, to admire the persistence 
with which the>- penetrated the desert region, and to percei\-e in their successful 
subjugation of this part of the Asiatic wilderness a close similarity to our " winning 
of the west," except that theirs is the greater task ; for the deserts of Asia are 
broader and more barren than those of North America, and the mountain ranges 
are higher there than here. The settlers of the United States had a continent of 
moderate width to cross and found within it only a scattered native population, and 
on its Pacific side only a slightly resistant offshoot of Spanish power, while the 
Russians are expanding into the broadest of the land masses, where the people of 
the interior are well established, where the British occupation of the populous 
peninsula of India is more aggressive than the Spanish occupation of Mexico, and 
where the enonnous populations of the Pacific border find no American analogy. 
