Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/116

104 OXUS square miles. The Yashil-Kul, area 16 square miles, height 12,550 feet, is in the Alichur Pamir, where in 1759 the Chinese troops surprised and defeated the Khwajas of Badakshdn. The great Shiva-Kul, lately visited by Dr Regel, has, according to him, an area ex ceeding 100 square miles, and an altitude of 11,800 feet, and Wood alludes to it as of considerable magnitude. There are numerous small lakes, of which the most im portant is the Oikul (13,100 feet), the source of the Ak-su river, in the Little Pamir. Hill ranges crop up out of the table-lands in various quarters ; their general direction is from north-east to south-west ; they form the boundaries between the several Pamirs and the principal water-partings between the valleys. The portion of the Hindii Rush range which lies immediately to the south of this region is of very varying altitude, sinking at the Baroghil pass to 12,000 feet, or only 1000 feet above the adjoining table-lands, but rising to heights of 22,600 to 25,400 in peaks to the west of that pass. In 1872 the Panjah river was adopted by the British and the Russian Governments as the line of boundary between Bokhara and Afghanistan. But rivers which are readily crossed, and pass through valleys both sides of which have much of life in common, rarely serve as bound aries between the people residing on the opposite banks. The Panjah river has been found to divide no less than four states, Wdkhdn, Shighnan, Roshdn, and Darwdz, into two parts each ; the first three of these are claimed by Afghanistan and the fourth by Bokhara, by whom they are administered or at least are attempted to be admin istered without regard to the conventional boundary line of the Panjah ; presumably, therefore, this line will have to be abandoned for the lines of water-parting along the hill ranges which form the natural boundaries of the several states. The Pamir plateaus are generally covered with a rich soil which affords very sweet and nourishing grasses, though at too great an altitude for husbandry ; there is an unlimited extent of summer pasture lands for the Khirgiz and other nomad tribes and the herdsmen of the surrounding districts. But for the plentiful supply of food for cattle which these regions afford during several months of the year, they could never have been crossed by the great armies and hordes which are said to have passed over them. The culturable areas are small, and are usually restricted to narrow ledges on the margins of the rivers, which, however, when well cultivated and manured yield rich returns ; food stuffs have to be largely obtained from the plains below ; mulberry trees thrive well and are much prized, because their unripened berries are ground to flour and form a serviceable article of food. Wakhan contains some twenty-five scattered villages with about as many houses in each, and a population estimated at 3000 souls. Shighnan and Roshan may at present be regarded as one state, as they are governed by one ruler ; the valleys of Sochdn-o-Giind and Shakhdara belong to the former, and that of Bdrtang to the latter (villages, 234 ; houses, 4477 ; souls, 22,000). Darwdz is famous for its difficult roads, called "averings," which are carried along the faces of perpendicular precipices, on planks resting on iron bolts driven into the rock ; the roads are, however, said to be much improved since the state came under Bokhara. Darwdz extends over the valley of the Khing;ib river to the north as well as over the valley of the lower Panjah. It has three amlakdarates on the Khingab Upper Wakhia, Lower Wakhia, and Khulds and one, Sagridasht, on an affluent of the Khingdb, containing 84 villages with 2458 habitations ; it has also three subdivisions on the Panjah south-eastern or upper Darwdz terminating at Kila Khiim, south-western Darwdz terminating at Zigor, and lower Darwdz which contain 31 villages with 896 habitations on the right bank, including those of the Wanjab affluent, and 45 villages with 1379 habitations on the left bank, including those of the Kufau river, which comes from the Shiva Pamir. Russian officers have found that at the point where the Panjah enters the plains the level is about 1800 feet above the mean sea, or 12,100 feet below the sources of the river in Lake Victoria ; 50 miles lower down, at the junction with the Kokcha, where the Panjah merges into the Amu Daria, the height is given as 1000 feet; at Kilif (214 miles) it is 730 feet; and at Chahdrjui (203 miles), 510 feet, thence the length of the course of the river to the Sea of Aral is somewhat over 500 miles. The Aral is 158 feet above the mean sea-level. Thus the average slope of the Amu is about 1 4 inches in the mile above and 8 inches below Chahdrjui. The river has been reported to be navigable for steamers up to the junction with the Wdkhsh or Surkhdb; and in 1878 a Russian steamer ascended it up to Khwdja Sdleh, at the junction of the boundaries of Bokhara and Afghanistan. The testimony of antiquity is almost unanimous in representing the Oxus as having once flowed into the Caspian Sea. Herodotus asserts that in his day the Jaxartes also entered the Caspian, but this statement is so highly improbable that it throws much doubt on his geographical accuracy as regards these regions. Greek historians also mention a river Ochus to the south of the Oxus, flowing towards the Caspian, into which it is supposed to have fallen either directly or after joining a branch of the Oxus ; Strabo says that both this river and the Oxus were crossed by Alexander in marching from Samarkand to Merv. Maps recently published by both English and Russian geographers show the supposed ancient beds of the two rivers in the Turkomani deserts, the Oxus flowing southwards from the province of Khiva and joining the Caspian below the Balkhan Bay, the Ochus flowing from east to west in a lower latitude, and possibly striking the Oxus before it turns towards the Caspian. The first is called the old Oxus in English and the Uzboi in Russian maps ; the second is called the Ongiiz in Russian and the Chahdrjui in English maps, and is some times drawn as if it had been a bifurcation from the Oxus at some point near Chahdrjui. But the recent explorations of the Russian engineer Lessar have shown that what hitherto has been taken for the dry bed of the Ochus is not the bed of a river, but merely a natural furrow between sand-hills, that it cannot be the continuation either of a river from the east bifurcating from the upper Oxus or of the Tejend river from the south as has been supposed, and also that it does not join the Uzboi, but ceases at a distance of fully 60 miles from the ancient bed of that river. Thus the bed of the Ochus has still to be discovered. As regards the Oxus, some eminent geographers are of opinion that it has disembogued into the Aral Sea from time immemorial as at this day ; other geographers of equal weight have asserted that the Aral has fluctuated at different periods of history between the condition of a great inland sea and that of a reedy marsh, according to the varying course of its two feeders the Jaxartes and the Oxus. Now the position and height of the head of the delta of the Oxus relatively to the Aral and the Caspian Seas are such that comparatively slight changes in the relations of the river to its banks and bed would readily divert its course from one sea to the other. Khwdja-ili, at the head of the delta, is 217 feet above the mean sea ; the Aral is 158 feet above and the Caspian 85 feet below the mean sea. The length of channel from Khwdja-ili to the Aral is 110 miles, with a fall of 59 feet, or about 6 inches