Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/60

has to be considered is, which of them offers the easier and more satisfactory means of carrying the water of the Amou Darya in a perennial stream across the Khivan desert to the shores of Balkhan bay? The beds of both of those channels are now dried up save where the excess waters of a time of flood are diverted into various portions of them as a matter of safety; and along their course may be traced numerous dams which have been erected at several periods to keep out the main stream of the Oxus. It is important to note that these channels are a continuous low and level hollow in the Khivan plain; and at a glance there appears to be no other obstacle in the way of re-flooding them than the dams already referred to. These have certainly not been the only, or perhaps the chief, cause of the change in the course of the Oxus in the seventeenth century; but it is natural to suppose that they have contributed to that result, which has been of the most complete kind. With regard to the Uzboi itself, which extends in a southerly direction as far as the Igdy wells, and then in a westerly direction as far as Balkhan bay, it has been described as possessing the appearance of a "great ruined ravine," and in its bed are to be found lakes and wells, often of salt or brackish, but sometimes of fresh, water. The Uzboi forms the highway across the northern portion of the Kara Kum, and it has at times been suggested that it forms an admirable track for a railway from Krasnovodsk to Khiva. But the more hopeful plan, both in its prospects of success and utility, has been to make it a waterway to Central Asia. The Uzboi is also