. 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 Sea; for the last eight hundred miles of itscourse it is navigable for small steamboats, but its mouth is divided intoso many shallow channels that boats have great difficulty in entering Russians have half a dozen steamers on the Aral Sea, and as manymore light-draught steamboats for navigating the Oxus. Havent I read that the Oxus formerly emptied into the CaspianSea V said Frank. 460 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMriRE. Quite
. 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 Sea; for the last eight hundred miles of itscourse it is navigable for small steamboats, but its mouth is divided intoso many shallow channels that boats have great difficulty in entering Russians have half a dozen steamers on the Aral Sea, and as manymore light-draught steamboats for navigating the Oxus. Havent I read that the Oxus formerly emptied into the CaspianSea V said Frank. 460 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMriRE. Quite likely you have, said Mr. Ivanovicli, as there is little doubtthat such was the case. The old bed of the Oxus can be distinctly traced,and geographers are generally agreed that the river entered the Caspianby three mouths. Ptolemy and Strabo both state distinctly that in theirtime the Oxus flowed into the Caspian, and formed the principal trade-route between Europe and Asia. How came it to change its course ? Much of the region traversed by the Oxus is a desert, and the onlyagi-iculture possible there is by irrigation. In order to increase the area. TURCOMAN IRRIGATING WHEEL. under cultivation, the Turcomans built dams that turned the Oxus in thedirection of a vast plain wdiich contains the Aral Sea. Since the occupa-tion of the country by the Russians, it has been proposed to return theOxus to its ancient bed, and bring it down to the Caspian. It is not like-ly that this will be done, as the result would be that the whole lower CROSSING AN ASIATIC EIVER. 461 tBIIlllllllllllilllBI
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