DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15174#0152
136
KINGDOM OF BOKHARA.
BOOK I.
than the features of a lofty range of mountains ; but
we have here fewer opportunities to observe and
describe. The great plain of Toorkistan has an
elevation of 2000 feet, and gradually declines west-
ward from Balkh, as the slope and direction of the
rivers testify, till it meets the Sea of Aral and the
Caspian. With the country north of the Oxus,
and from the base of the mountains to Bokhara, I
am best acquainted. We have a succession of low
rounded ridges of limestone, oalite, and gravel,
thinly overgrown with verdure, alternating with
vast and hardened plains of argillaceous clay, which
offer in this dry climate the finest roads to the
heaviest artillery. On these there occur some fields
of sand-hills, of no great extent, but sufficient to
absorb the waters of all the rivulets flowing towards
the Oxus. They seem to extend in a narrow line
parallel to that river; and between it and Karakooi
have their greatest breadth, which is about twelve
miles. Further to the eastward, they do not ex-
ceed half that width ;, and there are only a few
scattered hillocks between Kurshee and the Oxus.
Westward of Bokhara, the sand-hills increase in
volume, and approaching close on either side of the
river of Kohik, leave but a small space for cultivation;
they then run north and west into the deserts of
Kipchak and Kharasm. On their extent and con-
tinuance south of the Oxus I have spoken in my
narrative, as well as in a subsequent chapter on
Toorkmania. These sand-hills are based on the
firmest land; and it can at once be discerned that
they have been blown by the wind from some other
KINGDOM OF BOKHARA.
BOOK I.
than the features of a lofty range of mountains ; but
we have here fewer opportunities to observe and
describe. The great plain of Toorkistan has an
elevation of 2000 feet, and gradually declines west-
ward from Balkh, as the slope and direction of the
rivers testify, till it meets the Sea of Aral and the
Caspian. With the country north of the Oxus,
and from the base of the mountains to Bokhara, I
am best acquainted. We have a succession of low
rounded ridges of limestone, oalite, and gravel,
thinly overgrown with verdure, alternating with
vast and hardened plains of argillaceous clay, which
offer in this dry climate the finest roads to the
heaviest artillery. On these there occur some fields
of sand-hills, of no great extent, but sufficient to
absorb the waters of all the rivulets flowing towards
the Oxus. They seem to extend in a narrow line
parallel to that river; and between it and Karakooi
have their greatest breadth, which is about twelve
miles. Further to the eastward, they do not ex-
ceed half that width ;, and there are only a few
scattered hillocks between Kurshee and the Oxus.
Westward of Bokhara, the sand-hills increase in
volume, and approaching close on either side of the
river of Kohik, leave but a small space for cultivation;
they then run north and west into the deserts of
Kipchak and Kharasm. On their extent and con-
tinuance south of the Oxus I have spoken in my
narrative, as well as in a subsequent chapter on
Toorkmania. These sand-hills are based on the
firmest land; and it can at once be discerned that
they have been blown by the wind from some other