i ASIA 296 ASIA Lake Balkash with its tributaries, the Hi and other smaller rivers; the great Lake Aral, with the Syr-daria ( Jaxartes) and Amudaria (Oxus), as also the nu- mero is rivers which flow toward it or its tributaries, but are desiccated by evaporation before reaching them, and finally the Caspian with its tributaries, the Volga, Ural, Kura, and Terek, we find an immense surface of more than 4,000,000 square miles; that is much larger than Europe, which has no outlet to the ocean. The plateaus of Iran and Armenia, two separate areas in Arabia, and one in Asia Minor, represent a sur- face of 5,567,000 square miles. The drainage area of the Arctic Ocean includes all the lowlands of Siberia, its plains and large portions of the great plateau. The chief rivers flowing N. to the Arctic Ocean are the Obi, with the Irtysh ; the Yenisei, with its great tribu- tary, the Angara, which brings to it the waters of Lake Baikal, itself fed by the Selenga, the Upper Angara, and hun- dreds of small streams; and finally the Lena, with its great tributaries, the VibJm, Olekma, Vilui, and Aldan. Three great navigable rivers enter the Pacific: the Amur, composed Qf the Arguii and Shilka, and receiving the Sungari, a great artery of navigation in Manchuria,, the Usuri and the Zeya; the Hoang-ho; and the Yangtse-kiang, the last two ris- ing on the plateau of Tibet. Freighted boats penetrate from the seacoast to the very heart of China. The Cambodia, or Me-kong, the Salwen, and the Irawadi, rising in the eastern parts of the high plateau, water the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Rising on the same height, the Indus and the Brahmaputra flow through a high valley in opposite di- rections along the northern base of the Himalayas, until both pierce the gigantic ridge at its opposite ends, and find their way, the former to the lowlands of the Punjab, where it is joined by the Sutlej, and the latter to Assam and Bengal, where it joins the great river of India, the Ganges, before entering the Gulf of Bengal by a great number of branches forming an immense delta. The plateau of the Deccan is watered by the Goda- vari and Krishna, flowing E., the Nar- bada, flowing W., and a great number of smaller streams. The Tigris and Euphrates, both rising in the high pla- teau of Armenia, flow parallel to each other, bringing life to the valley of Mesopotamia, and join before entering the Persian Gulf. Arabia proper has no rivers worthy of notice. The Irmah, which enters the Black Sea. is the only river worthy of notice in Asia Minor. In Caucasus, the Rion and Kuban enter the Black Sea, and the Eura and Terek, ths Caspian. Irdand Seas and Lakes. — A succession of great lakes or inland seas are situated all along the northern slope of the hi.c;h plateaus of western and eastern Asia.j their levels becoming higher as we ad- vance farther E. The Caspian, 800 miles long and 270 wide, is an immense scaJ even larger than the Black Sea, but its^ level is now 85 feet below the level of the ocean: Lake Aral, nearly as wide as the ^gean Sea, has its level 157 feet above the ocean; farther E. we have Lake Balkash (780 feet), Zaison (1,200 feet), and Lake Baikal (1,550 feet). Many large lakes appear on the plateau of Tibet (Tengri-nor, Bakha), and on the high plateau of the Selenga and Vitim (Ubsa-nor, Ikhe-aral, Kosogol, Oron) ; and smaller lakes and ponds are numerous also in the plateau of the Dec- can, Armenia, and Asia Minor. Three large lakes, Urmia, Van, and Goktcha, and many smaller ones, lie on the high- est part of the Armenian plateau. On the Pacific slope of the great plateau, the great rivers of China and the Amur, with its tributaries, have along their lower courses some large and very many small lakes. Geology. — The great plateaus, built up of crystalline unstratified rocks, gran- ites, granitites, syenites, and dionites, as well as of gneisses, talc, and mica- schists, clap-slates and limestones, all belong to the Archaean formation (Hu- ronian, Laurentian, Silurian, and partly Devonian), and have been submerged by the sea since the Devonian epoch. The higher terrace of the plateau of Pamir and the plateaus of the Selenga and Vitim are built up only of Huronian and Laurentian azoic schists; and even Silu- rian deposits, widely spread on the plains, are doubtful on the plateaus. During the Jurassic period, immense fresh water basins covered the surface of those pla- teaus, and have left their traces in Ju- rassic coal beds, which are found in the depressions of the plateaus and lowlands^ Carboniferous deposits are met with in Turkestan, India, and western Asia; while in eastern Asia the numei'ous coal- beds of Manchuria, China, and the archi- pelagoes are all Jurassic. More than 120 active volcanoes are known in Asia, chiefly in the islands of the S. E., the Philippines, Japan, the Kurile, and Kamchatka, and also in a few islands of the Seas of Bengal and Arabia, and in western Asia. Numerous traces of volcanic eruptions are found in eastern Tian-shan in the northwestern border ridges of the high Siberian pla- teau, and in the S. W. of Aigun, m
