Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
The bottom of the deepest part of this vast inland mere is about 3000 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, while its surface is lower by 85 feet. At present, it is separated, on the west, by wide spaces of dry land from the Black Sea, which has the same height as the Mediterranean; and, on the east, from the Aral, 138 feet above that level.
In landscapes the eye is caught by colors. And is there not a good deal of landscape about geography? It appears that this desert was formerly occupied by a huge central basin. It has dried up, as the Caspian will dry up, and this evaporation is explained by the powerful concentration of the solar rays on the surface of the territories between the Sea of Aral and the Plateau of the Pamir.
The original diversion was artificial, and the dikes which direct it into the Aral are said to be maintained with difficulty. It has been proposed to send an expedition to remove these barriers and turn the river into its former bed. Coupled with this project is another to divert the course of the Syr-Daria and make it an affluent of the Oxus.
These turned off sharp to the South immediately on descending the high table-land; and, crossing the Jaxartes, found themselves in a fertile and attractive country, between the Aral and their old country, where they settled. It is a peculiarity of Asia that its regions are either very hot or very cold.
East of that sea also was a vast steppe-region rolling plains of sand or grass the home of nomadic hordes similar in character to those who drank the waters of the Don and Wolga. The Sacse, Massagetse, and Dahse of this country, who dwelt about the Caspian, the Aral, and the Lower Jaxartes, were an enemy scarcely less formidable than the Sarmatians and the Scyths of the West.
His ambition was to establish a republic on the shores of the lake Aral, of which in imitation of Plato or Rousseau, he was to be the legislator. Pre-occupied with the reformation of despotism, he did not sufficiently look into his own heart, or seek to avoid a repetition of the same errors that had already changed friends into enemies, and been such a terrible barrier to his success in life.
The Amou-Daria is the Oxus of the Ancients, the rival of the Indus and the Ganges. It used to be a tributary of the Caspian, as shown on the maps, but now it flows into the Sea of Aral. Fed by the snows and rains of the Pamir plateau, its sluggish waters flow between low clay cliffs and banks of sand.
But within this realm of sand lie a number of oases whose soil is well watered and of the highest fertility. Two mighty rivers traverse these lands, the Amu-Daria once known as the Oxus and the Syr-Daria formerly the Jaxartes, both of which flow into the Sea of Aral.
All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages, prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake, properly an inland sea, like the Caspian and Sea of Aral, having a large tributary, the Bear River, and no outlet.
The Cossacks carry on a profitable sturgeon fishery in this lake, which in area is not very much smaller than Scotland, and contains a great number of small islands whence its name, for the word aral means "island." With fresh horses we speed along the bank of the Syr-darya. Here grow small woods and thickets where tigers stalk their prey, and in the dense reed beds wild boars dig up roots.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking