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This is the country, forming the two basins of the Aral and the Caspian, which terminates the immense Asiatic plain, and may be vaguely designated by the name of Turkistan. Hitherto the necessity of their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but now they may diverge, and have diverged.
Chalk occurs in north-west Ireland; it stretches over a large part of France, the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, a continuation of that of the London basin; it runs through Denmark and Central Europe, and extends southward to North Africa; while, eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia.
Also it's likely that a sixth current used to exist in the northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas joined up with certain large Asian lakes to form a single uniform expanse of water.
Finally, at Gorlen Hezaresp near Khiva, the breadth of the Oxus is so great that both banks are hardly distinguishable at the same time; but the stream is here comparatively shallow, ceasing to be navigable at about this point. The present course of the Oxus from its rise in Lake Sir-i-Kol to its termination in the Sea of Aral is estimated at 1400 miles.
A river overflows and turns a fruitful plain into a marsh; or it fails, and turns it into a sandy desert. Sogdiana is watered by a number of great rivers, which make their way across it from the high land on its east to the Aral or Caspian. Now we read in history of several instances of changes, accidental or artificial, in the direction or the supply of these great water-courses.
But if, instead, they continued their westward course, then they would skirt the north coast of the Aral and the Caspian, cross the Volga, and there would have a second opportunity, if they chose to avail themselves of it, of descending southwards, by Georgia and Armenia, either to Syria or to Asia Minor.
The river Oxus, or Amoo-Daria, which flows through Bakhara and Khiva, emptying into the Aral sea, was once a tributary of the Caspian. Several steamers have been placed upon it, and others are promised soon. The dry bed of the old channel of the Oxus is visible in the Turcoman steppe at the present day.
Numberless traces of post-pliocene lakes, now disappeared, are found over Central, West, and North Asia. Shells of the same species as those now found in the Caspian Sea are scattered over the surface of the soil as far East as half-way to Lake Aral, and are found in recent deposits as far north as Kazan.
Besides all these, there was still another wave, which is supposed to have passed between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian, and, keeping still further to the north and east, to have passed between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian tribes, and so to have lain in the background until we find them appearing as Slavonians on the scene of history.
I have the list of those for consideration belonging to this most interesting division of the globe: the Caspian, between Turkey, Persia, and Tartary; the Whang-hai, or Yellow Sea, in China; the Sea of Japan; the Sea of Ochotsh or Lama; the Chinese Sea; the Bay of Bengal; the Persian Gulf; and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea: these are the largest; but there are numbers of small seas, some of them so entirely inland that they should more properly be called lakes; of these, the largest is the Sea of Aral.
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