. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across :lii|Bi|llllillllinii!; 462 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. course of tlie Oxns, where there are many flourishing farms and gardens,would again become a desert waste. Much less water flows througli theOxus than in former times, and the engineers who have studied the ques-tion do not think the river would be navigable when returned to its an-cient bed. The other river of Central Asia, the Jaxartes, or Sjr Darja, is sma
. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across :lii|Bi|llllillllinii!; 462 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. course of tlie Oxns, where there are many flourishing farms and gardens,would again become a desert waste. Much less water flows througli theOxus than in former times, and the engineers who have studied the ques-tion do not think the river would be navigable when returned to its an-cient bed. The other river of Central Asia, the Jaxartes, or Sjr Darja, is small-er than the Oxus, and about eleven hundred miles long. It rises in thePamir region, and empties, like the Oxus, into the Aral Sea, Its course isgenerally parallel to the Oxus, and in the same way it fertilizes a large area. of what would otherwise be desert. Its volume has greatly diminished inthe last few centuries, and is even known to be considerably less than itwas sixty or eighty years ago. The Oxus enters the southern end of theAral Sea, while the Jaxartes comes in considerably farther to the diversion of these two rivers would probably result in drying up theAral Sea, a shallow body of water two hundred and fifty miles long byhalf as many wide. Fred asked if the Caspian was higher or lower than the Aral Sea. They are of the same level, or nearly so, was the reply, though KAILWAY TRAVEL IN CENTRAL ASIA. 463 some engineers say the Aral is about one hundred and fifty feet higherthan the Caspian, and the indications are that the two seas were formerlyconnected. The whole plain of Turcomania is thought to have been atone time an inland sea. At its southern extremity the Aral is borderedby an immense marsh, and it is through this marsh that the Oxus dis-charges its M^aters. Khiva stands near t
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