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It is clear that only two routes are possible between Eastern and Western Asia: that between the Kuen-lun and the Thian Shan via Kashgar and Bokhara, and that south of the Altai, skirting the north of the great lakes Balkash, Aral, and Caspian, to the south of Russia.
In 1846 the Great Kirghiz Horde acknowledged its subjection to Russia on the farther side of the Balkash, while at the same time a fort was constructed on the lower Yaxartes. In 1847 the encroachments of Russia in Central Asia had brought her upon the borders of the important khanates of Khiva and Khokand, and, like some huge boa-constrictor, she prepared to swallow them.
In this expedition the Mongals are said to have penetrated to the Caspian mountains, which being of adamant, attracted their arrows and other weapons of iron . The Kirguses, inhabiting Western Turkestan, between Lake Balkash and the Caspian. The remainder of this short section is so ridiculously fabulous as not to merit translation, and is therefore omitted.
This sea is obviously the lake Balkash, or Palkati-nor, at the south end of which our maps represent a group of islands. The Arrival of Carpini at the Court of the Emperor elect. Leaving this place on the eve of St Peter and Paul, 28th June, we entered the country of the pagan Naymani , and next day was excessively cold, attended by a great fall of snow.
Another region over which extinct craters are distributed lies along the banks of the Rhine, above Bonn and the Moselle; a fourth in Hungary; a fifth in Asia Minor and Northern Palestine; and a sixth in Central Asia around Lake Balkash. These are all continental, and the linear distribution is not apparent. For an interesting account of this range of volcanic islands see Kingsley's At Last.
They crossed the country of the Bashkirs and visited Kenchat, Talach, passed the Axiartes and reached Equius, a town of which the position cannot be accurately ascertained in the present day; then by the land of Organum, by the Lake of Balkash, and the territory of the Uigurs, they arrived at Karakorum, the capital of the Mongolian empire, where Carpini had stopped without entering the town.
On leaving Kara-Kâty the envoys rode for some days along the banks of a lake lying to the north of the town of Zeman, which must be, according to M. de Rémusat, the Lake Balkash. There lived Ordu, the eldest of the Tartar captains, and here Carpini and Stephen took a day's rest before encountering the cold and mountainous country of the Maimans, a nomadic people living in tents.
A broad depression the Aral-Caspian desert has arisen where the plateau-belt has reached its greatest height and suddenly changes its direction from a north-western into a north-eastern one; this desert is now filled only to a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian, Aral and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin.
Probably near the north side of the Arguin or Alak mountains. This position of Rubruquis is sufficiently distinct: Having ferried over the river Tshui, and crossed the Jimbai mountains, the route now lay between the Alak mountain on his right, or to the south, and the lake of Balkash or Palkati Nor, to the left or north.
A few days later we were rolling up the valley of the Ili, having crossed that river by the well-constructed Russian bridge at Fort Iliysk, the head of navigation for the boats from Lake Balkash. New faces here met our curious gaze. As an ethnological transition between the inhabitants of central Asia and the Chinese, we were now among two distinctly agricultural races—the Dungans and Taranchis.
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