32 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
Congres international geologique," and the section is reproduced by Mushketof 
(1899, I, 304). Tlie ridge may be reached by going ni>hill, southwest from Baku, 
past a church and cemeter*' on a gravel-covered ])ench that o\-erlooks the cit)- at a 
height of about 330 feet. A quarn,- on this bench shows the late Tertian,- strata, 
with abundant shells. The view from the ridge over the Bibi-Eibat valley with 
its oil-wells and the Caspian beyond (fig. 18) is a repaying one. The spit is 250 
feet wide at its proximal end, 20 or 25 feet thick, and 1,300 feet long; it trends 
N. 20° W. (magnetic) for most of its length, but turns N. 70° E. near its end. It 
descends gradually, so that the northern or free end is 50 feet lower than the 
southern or attached end. Its eastern or seaward side slopes about 5° ; its western 
or landward side slopes 18°. A number of pits tliat have been dug in its western 
Fig.. 19. — A Cobble Spit on a ridge near Zuyk. seven miles northeast of Baku, looking north; fissured 
Aralo-Caspian Strata in the foreground. 
side show that it is made in great part of small pebbles that seem to ha\'e been 
derived from the somewhat pebbly sandstone of the horseshoe ridge; but it also 
contains rounded sandstone and conglomerate cobbles and bowlders up to 3 or 4 feet 
in diameter. The anomalous feature here is the absence of corresponding marks of 
shore action on the slopes of the higher ground to the southwest, where the hill-tops 
are nearly 300 feet higher than the ridge on which the spit is fonned. Furthermore, 
on crossing the barren monoclinal \-alley of the \'assaniala (which is followed by 
the railroad to Tiflis, a few miles west of Baku, fig. 15), to the anticlinal hills of 
petroleum-bearing strata, whose summits reach about 1,000 feet altitude, we 
were unable to find any well-defined shore marks corresponding to the level of the 
long spit The highest safe record here was a bed of cobbles at 200 feet altitude. 
