the Caspian ends, its shore trending away to the northward, there
succeeds to this mere strip of territory a broad and ample tract of
sandy plain, extending from about the 54th to the 68th degree of east
longitude--a distance of 760 miles--and reaching from the 36th to the
50th parallel of north latitude--a distance not much short of a thousand
miles! This tract which comprises the modern Khanats of Khiva and
Bokhara, together with a considerable piece of Southern Asiatic Russia,
is for the most part a huge trackless desert, composed of loose sand,
black or red, which the wind heaps up into hills. Scarcely any region on
the earth's surface is more desolate. The boundless plain lies stretched
before the traveller like an interminable sea, but dead, dull, and
motionless. Vegetation, even the most dry and sapless, scarcely exists.
For three or four hundred miles together he sees no running stream.
Water, salt, slimy, and discolored, lies Occasionally in pools, or
is drawn from wells, which yield however only a scanty supply. For
anything like a drinkable beverage the traveller has to trust to the
skies, which give or withhold their stores with a caprice that is truly
tantalizing. Occasionally, but only at long intervals, out of the
low sandy region there issues a rocky range, or a plateau of moderate
eminence, where the soil is firm, the ground smooth, and vegetation
tolerably abundant. The most important of the ranges are the Great
and Little Balkan, near the Caspian Sea, between the 39th and 40th
parallels, the Khalata and Urta Tagh, north-west, of Bokhara, and the
Kukuth; still further to the north-west in latitude 42° nearly. The
chief plateau is that of Ust-Urt, between the Caspian and the Sea of
Aral, which is perhaps not more than three or four hundred feet above
the sandy plain, but is entirely different in character.

This desolate region of low sandy plain would be wholly uninhabitable,
were it not for the rivers. Two great streams, the Amoo or Jyhun