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Updated: June 10, 2025
In the course of the following centuries, under the shadow of their more civilized brethren, other similar hordes were introduced, nomad and pagan still; they might indeed happen sometimes to pass down from the east of the Caspian as well as from the west, hastening to the south straight from Turkistan along the coast of the Aral; either road would lead them down to the position which the Chozars were the first to occupy in Georgia and Armenia, but still there would be but one step in their journey between their old native sheep-walk and horse-path and the fair region into which they came.
The southern Steppes have a characteristic and well-marked flora, forming a continuation of that of the Aral, Caspian and Volga plains. The treeless northern tundras also constitute a vegetable domain as sharply defined as the desert itself, while between these two zones of Steppe and tundra the forest region of Europe stretches, with many subdivisions, west and east right across the continent.
It was called in ancient times Sogdiana; in the history of the middle ages Transoxiana, or "beyond the Oxus;" by the Eastern writers Maver-ul-nere, or Mawer-al-nahar, which is said to have the same meaning; and it is now known by the name Bukharia. To these may be added a third province, at the bottom of the Aral, between the mouth of the Oxus and the Caspian, called Kharasm.
How can Missionaries be sent to such a country! Bokhara is the only large town in the kingdom. The sea of Aral lies to the north of the kingdom: it is an immense lake, but not nearly so large as the Caspian Sea. The river Oxus flows into the Caspian. It is famous for its golden sands.
So has the great desert of Sahara, which occupies the major part of Northern Africa. The Caspian and the Aral seas have been one, and their united waters have probably communicated with both the Arctic and the Mediterranean oceans. The greater part of North America has been under water, and has emerged.
After these may be placed the sturgeon and sterlet of the Caspian, the silurus of the Sea of Aral, the Aleppo eel, and the palla, a small but excellent fish, which is captured in the Indus during the flood season.
The chief plateau is that of Ust-Urt, between the Caspian and the Sea of Aral, which is perhaps not more than three or four hundred feet above the sandy plain, but is entirely different in character. This desolate region of low sandy plain would be wholly uninhabitable, were it not for the rivers.
Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," after finishing its tragic story of the son slain by the unwitting father, closes with a lyric description of the majestic Oxus stream flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all seems, this close is intensely personal, permeated with the same tender stoicism which colors Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "A Summer Night."
The medium is blank verse, of a partly but not wholly Miltonic stamp, very carefully written, and rising at the end into a really magnificent strain, with the famous picture of "the majestic river" Oxus floating on regardless of these human woes, to where the stars "Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea."
Tochtamysh had been placed by him on the throne of the Golden and the Blue Ords, and acknowledged as "the son." But when his sovereign authority extended from Aral to Crimea, over more lands than were in the rest of Europe, "the son" wanted to be an independent ruler.
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