A Journey Across Turkestan. 
By William M. Davis, 
Sturgis-Hoopcr Professor of Geology, Harvard University. 
ITINERARY. 
Ou April 17, 1903, accompanied by Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, who had been 
appointed research assistant b}- the Carnegie Institution of Washington, I left 
Boston; sailed from New York, April 18; landed at Cherbourg, April 24; spent 
April 25 in Paris, April 28 in Vienna, and May i to 3 in Constantinople; crossed 
the Black Sea to Batoum, May 4 to 8 ; and went thence by rail to Tiflis, May 10, 
and to Baku ou the Caspian, where we arrived Ma}- 12. We crossed the Caspian on 
the night of May 22, and started from Krasnovodsk on the Central Asiatic Railway 
on the afternoon of May 24. After making short stops at Jebel, May 25, Kizil Arvat, 
May 26, and Bakharden, May 27, to examine the piedmont border of the great plains 
of Turkestan, we delayed at Askhabad, May 27 to June 9, long enough to make a 
five-day excursion. Ma)- 30 to June 4, into the Kopet Dagh, the mountain range along 
the Russo- Persian frontier. Leaving Askhabad by train the evening of June 9, we 
stopped at Mer\', June 11 to 14, and Samarkand, June 16, and on June 17 reached 
Tashkent, where we remained three days. On June 20, accompanied by IMr. 
Huntington and Mr. Brovtzine, intei-preter, I went b)- rail to Andizhan, where we 
stopped from June 21 to June 27, to outfit for an excursion across the western ranges 
of the Tian Shan Mountains to Lake Issik Knl. We set out from Andizhan, June 
27 ; spent two days, July 8 and 9, at Lake Son Kul ; reached Issik Kul on July 14 ; 
made a short trip into the mountains on its southwestern side, and then moved along 
the northern shore to the Russian settlement of Sazauovka. Here, on July 22, IVIr. 
Huntington turned southward to begin his excursion to Kashgar, with the object 
of continuing over a large district of the high ranges the study of old moraines and 
terraces that we had begun together on the road to Issik Kul ; while I turned 
northward with Mr. Brovtzine and began my homeward joume}-. \'yem\i was 
reached Juh- 26 ; we went in tarautass to Semipalatinsk, August 2 ; by boat down 
the Irtysli to Omsk, August 7; by train to St. Petersburg, August 15, where Mr. 
Brovtzine resided ; I continued by train to Ostend and London, August 1 7 ; and by 
steamer from Liverpool to Boston, August 20 to 28. 
NATURE OF OBSERVATIONS. 
In the geologic and physiographic reconnaissance of the region tra\-ersed, the 
chief subdivisions of Turkestan were visited in the following order : The Caspian 
Sea on the west, the central plains, and the mountains on the south and east. 
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