author just mentioned. The reader must understand that the credit for the historical portion of the narra- tive is mainly due to Major Wood, whose account is little more than condensed here. Since the year 1874 such information as has been published is given in further explanation of the bursting through of the dam at Bend, which had been constructed to block up the entrance to the Loudon canal.
We need not direct our attention on the present occasion to the information which Greek and Arabian geographers have afforded as to the old course of the Oxus, and of those other rivers which, known as the Amol and Arzass, flowed from the Oxns itself, or from the Aral, into the Caspian Sea. And our interest is also exclusively confined to those of its branches which appear to have been main channels in the olden time. Of these the Doudon and the Kunya-darya- lik are the most important. Both of these branch off from the Oxus a short distance north of the town of Khiva, and they are each traceable to a common des- tination, the salt lake of Sarykamish. Beyond Saryk- amish this channel becomes the Uzboi, which is marked across the Kara Kum desert to the Caspian Sea at the bay of Balkhan. Of each of these channels Major Wood says that their " dimensions are sufficiently large to allow of their having anciently been main courses of the river."
With regard to the Doudon, which is the Turcoman for " steep " — a name which Yambery and others apply to the Oghus, or Uzboi — it branches off from the Oxus at a point almost facing the Russian port of Petro-
