30 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
lines are much less developed than are those of our Quatemar)- Lakes Bonneville 
and Lalioiitan in Utah and Nevada, or of our Laurentian C.lacial (keat Lakes in New 
York and farther west. The Caspian shorelines are, howexer, easil\- recognized at 
many points on the hillsides about Baku, where they are marked by horizontal 
benches of cobbles, gravel, and shells, more or less cemented, at various levels up to 
300 or 500 feet (fig. 16). Sjogren says that the last rise of the Caspian left 
marls and clays 50 or 55 meters o\'er the present water level. On the most exposed 
headland that we visited, about 6 miles northeast of Baku and 160 feet above the 
sea, blocks of sandstone, 5 or 10 feet in size, were detached from their ledges and 
left standing in disorderly attitudes, which seemed less the result of ordinar)- pro- 
Fig. 1 6. — An old Caspian Shoreline, near Baku. 
cesses of weathering than of former seashore forces. There are also occasional 
mounds or delta-like deposits of fine silt in protected re-entrants of fonner shorelines 
as at A, fig. 15, at altitudes similar to those of the cobble benches ; but these features 
are so discontinuous that it was not possible to correlate them safely. Their discon- 
tinuity does not appear to be due to subsequent erosion, for none of the shore 
records seem to have suffered significant change, except one of the silt deposits that 
lies in a ravine, and that has been channeled by its wet-weather stream. This silt 
deposit (A', fig. 15) is just west of Bibi-Eibat and contains land shells in its upper 
part, but its fonn and jx)sition are such as to indicate the deposition of its greater 
volume as a delta. It lies on a bed of well-rounded cobbles and bowlders, exposed 
