34 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
Beaches and cobble beds in the same neighborhood were noted at 8, 20, 35, 45, 60, 
1 15, 135, and 210 feet. The precipitous southern escarpment of the barren Kuba 
Dai,'-h, which stretches east and west, a mile north of Krasnovodsk, has a steeper 
slope and a lighter color near its base than above, because of the subrecent under- 
cutting h\ the high-le\-el Caspian waves and the resulting exposure of un.weathered 
rock ; this suggests a verj- recent high-water stand of the sea. The elexated 
beaches that extend from the eastern tombolo along the mountain Ijase are skirted 
by the railroad for some miles. Many sections of their rolled gravels are exposed. 
All these reef and beach deposits are so laid as to sho\\- that previous to their forma- 
tion the surface on which the)- rest had been subject to subaerial erosion. Hence 
here, as at Baku, the Caspian rose to its fonner levels, yet whether from a lower 
level than to-day I can not affirm ; but Walther quotes the record of a boring on the 
shore of the Caspian southeast of Krasnovodsk in which "dune .sands" were found 
Fig. 20. — Rough Sketch Map and Secrions of the District about Krasnovodsk. 
to a depth of 35 meters (1898 ,2 1 1). The volume of material in these reefs and beaches, 
on the lee shore of the Caspian, was much greater than in those about Baku, and 
the beaches were comparable in size to the beaches on the ele\ated shorelines of the 
Bonneville and Laurentian lakes. The size of the spit that incloses the bay of 
Krasnovodsk at present sea level is also much larger than an}- wave-built sliore 
fonns that we had seen near Baku. 
Shorelines of similar altitude were seen on the flanks of the Balkhan Moun- 
tains, near Jebel station of the Central Asiatic railroad, about 100 miles east of 
Krasnovodsk. The station was 56 feet over the Caspian, and from this we 
detennined the neighboring delta beaches, a mile or two distant, to be 150 and 250 
feet over the same base. One of the higher deltas is shown in fig. 21. There was 
nothing indicative of shore-wave work seen at still higher levels on the mountain 
side. It was to deposits of the Pliocene Caspian that Konshin (1886, 383) refers in 
a neighboring locality as giving unmistakable traces of seashore action at a height 
of almost "50 sazhen" (roughly 300 feet) over the present Caspian. Walther 
makes brief reference to the deltas near Jebel (p. 103). It is to be noted that the 
delta beaches of the two le\-els here recorded occur in the lower part of ra\-ines 
eroded in the northwest face of the mountain, and show that here as elsewhere 
