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The most important of the ranges are the Great and Little Balkan, near the Caspian Sea, between the 39th and 40th parallels, the Khalata and Urta Tagh, north-west, of Bokhara, and the Kukuth; still further to the north-west in latitude 42° nearly.
All along this intervening tract, once sea but now dry land, banks of shells belonging to kinds still living in the Caspian and the Black Sea alike testify to the old line of water communication. Now, when a bit of the sea gets cut off in this way from the main ocean, evaporation of its waters generally takes place rather faster than the return supply of rain by rivers and lesser tributaries.
He subdued Hindustan and the empire of the Chowares, which had been founded by a Seljukian slave, and spread his power from the Caspian Sea through Persia to India . Bokhara and Samarcand were among the populous cities which were burned with all their treasures by these ruthless invaders. Libraries were converted into stalls for the horses of the brutal conquerors.
For from there no way out appears, except indeed a small gate set there by nature, just as if it had been made by the hand of man, which has been called from of old the Caspian Gates. From there on there are plains suitable for riding and extremely well watered, and extensive tracts used as pasture land for horses, and level besides.
There is a Sinai in the middle of an Arabia, Etna in the centre of Sicily, the Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian, &c. names badly applied, for neither mountains nor seas recalled the configuration of their namesakes on the globe.
They are, most ethnologists agree, probably the most ancient race in Europe, there being every reason to believe that they are the lineal descendants of those adventurous Aryans who, leaving the ancestral home on the shores of the Caspian, crossed the Caucasus and entered Europe in the earliest dawn of history.
At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don.
If that direction was persisted in they would cross the equator in six more degrees. The "Albatross" would then abandon the continents and fly not over the Bering Sea, or the Caspian Sea, or the North Sea, or the Mediterranean, but over the Atlantic Ocean. This look-out was not particularly pleasing to the two friends, whose chances of escape had sunk to below zero.
The Persian monarch chooses the southern rather than the northern side of the mountains for the site of his capital, preferring the keen winter cold and dry summer heat of the high and almost waterless plateau to the damp and stifling air of the low Caspian region. The narrow tract of which this is a description can at no time have sheltered a very numerous or powerful people.
For here, crossing the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, stretches a mountain range over seven hundred miles in length, rising abruptly out of the plains on either side. These are the Caucasus Mountains, forming the boundary between Europe and Asia. The highest peaks are in the most central chain; Mt. Elburz, attaining an elevation of 18,000 feet above the sea, while Mt.
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