The Earth and Its Inhabitants/Asia/Volume 1/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE ARALO-CASPIAN BASIN.
Russian Turkestan, the Turkoman Country, Khiva, Bokhara, Region of the Upper Oxus.
I.—GENERAL SURVEY.
EST of the Caspian the limits of Europe are clearly defined by the ancient Ponto-Caspian Strait, which runs as a natural dividing line along the foot of the Caucasus. But north and east of the Caspian Europe and Asia are merged together in a vast plain, where dreary wastes of sand, clay, or rock, saline steppes and muddy swamps, stretch from horizon to horizon. Here the only natural limit of the two continents is the lowest part of the elevated tract between the Aral basin and the Ob valley. Both sides of this ridge are studded with countless ill-defined lakelets, the remains of dried-up seas. But beyond it the lowlands stretch away to the foot of the plateaux and highlands forming part of the main continental mountain system.
Thus the Aralo-Caspian slope of the Central Asiatic tablelands blends north-westwards with the Russian steppes between Ural and Caspian, while scarcely separated northwards from the Ob valley. But everywhere else it is sharply defined westwards by the Caspian, southwards by the highlands separating it from Persia and Afghanistan, and stretching in an elongated curve from the south-east corner of the Caspian to the Hindu-Kush. Eastwards and north-eastwards rise the upland pastures and snowy peaks of the Pamir, the Tian-shan, and Tarbagatai ranges. The whole region, including the Russian protected states, Wakhan, Badakshan, Balkh, and the Turkoman country, has an estimated area of over 1,200,000 square miles, and to this has now been added a tract of over 400,000 square miles in the Ob basin, henceforth administratively included in the general government of Russian Turkestan.*
This region, which slopes westwards and northwards to the Caspian, Aral, and Balkhash, is about equally divided into a lowland and highland district. Climate, flora, and fauna vary as much as the geological formations in a land rising in some places to elevations of 20,000 and 22,000 feet in others, as along the Caspian shores, sinking below sea-level. Nevertheless a certain analogy is maintained between the eastern highlands and the western lowlands. In both cases the annual variation of temperature is greater than in Europe or in any other sea-girt land. In autumn and winter the north-east polar blasts prevail on the plains and uplands, giving place in spring and summer to the hot equatorial winds from the south-west. Thus the normal climate of each season becomes intensified here as elsewhere in the interior of the continent, so that in July this region is included in the isothermals of 20° to 25° Centigrade, a temperature answering to that of the Cape Verd Islands, 1,650 miles nearer to the equator, while in January the isothermals are those of Canada, South Greenland, and Spitzbergen, some 1,800 miles nearer to the North Pole. But the variation between the hottest and coldest days is even still greater, averaging no less than 130°, or from about 111° to −12° and even −20° Fahr. On the plains the dryness of the atmosphere and absence of dew add to the rigours of the climate. Whole years have passed without any rainfall, and in 1858 the rains lasted only four hours altogether in the Kara-kum Desert. The moisture borne by the south-west breezes is precipitated on the slopes of the Pamir and in the Tian-shan valleys; but even here the discharge is relatively far less than on the European and Indian highlands.
Another characteristic of Russian Turkestan is the continuous drying up of the soil going on throughout the whole of the present geological epoch. The twin rivers, Oxus and Sir-daria, flowing from the Pamir and Tian-shan nearly parallel to each other, at present discharge their waters into the Aral Sea; but these formerly far more copious streams united in a common channel, disemboguing in the Caspian. Though still ranking in length amongst the great Asiatic rivers—over 1,200 miles each—they are far inferior in volume to the Siberian, Chinese, and Indian streams flowing seawards. Their basins show evident signs of gradual absorption—old channels now partially filled up, numerous rivers formerly reaching the main streams, but now lost in the sands, or expanding into brackish morasses, thousands of lakelets now indicated only by saline incrustations. Even the large inland seas, such as Aral and Balkhash, have diminished in size, while others have been replaced by the Kulja and Ferghana plains. Owing to this continually increasing dryness a large portion of the country has been transformed to steppe lands even on the higher grounds, as on the Pamir, Tian-shan, and Tarbagatai, where the growth of vegetation is limited to three months, partly by the winter snows, partly by the summer droughts.
| Fig. 83.—Routes of Explorers in the Aralo-Caspian Basin. |
| Scale 17 : 400,000. |
|
 300 Miles.
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Such a region is necessarily but thinly inhabited, the average being rather less than four persons to the square mile, or six or seven times less than in Caucasia, notwithstanding its vast extent of waste lands. But the local traditions, historical records, and the ruins of numerous cities leave no doubt that the country was formerly far more densely peopled. The inhabitants have disappeared with the running waters. The powerful empires of the Oxus and Sogdiana basins have vanished; the great centres of Eastern civilisation have become eclipsed; many cultured peoples have reverted to barbarism; and the nomad has triumphed over the agricultural state. Even the ruling race has changed, the original Aryan element having been largely replaced by Turkomans, Kirghiz, and other Tûrki peoples.* The upland Pamir valleys from Karateghin to Wakhan are still occupied by Aryan agricultural tribes, some probably autochthonous, others driven to the highlands when the plains were overrun by the nomads from the north-east. The ethnical evolution begun by climatic changes was hastened by wars and massacres. But the urban populations were rendered partly independent of the changed outward conditions by trade and industry, so that the original stock, diversely intermingled with the intruders, has here held its ground to the present time. Aryan and Tûrki peoples thus continue to dwell in the same towns, forming distinct communities, which adapt themselves to the surroundings according to their respective temperaments and hereditary habits. Hence, in a political sense alone, the Oxus has for ages served as the limit between Iran and Turan. North of this river Iran has at all times maintained a footing in the midst of the Turanian peoples.
And now the incentive to a higher development flows once more from a race of Aryan stock. The Russians, strong in the power imparted by a superior culture, are enabled to grapple with the difficulties of climate and vast distances in consolidating their new Aralo-Caspian conquests. After having surveyed the land as naturalists, traders, or envoys, they have settled down as its political masters. They establish themselves in the already existing towns, found others on more favourable commercial and strategical sites, and have even begun a more systematic colonisation in the upland valleys east of the Tatar plains, thus assigning definite limits to the nomad regions. Lines of steamers on the two main streams, roads, and, later on, railways, will cause the hitherto insurmountable distances to vanish, thus enabling the Slav element all the more easily to establish its political and social predominance. In the midst of Tajiks, Sartes, and Uzbegs, Tashkend and Samarkand are becoming Russian cities, just as Kazan has been Russified in the midst of the Tatars, Chuvashes, and Cheremissians of the Volga basin.
| Fig. 84.—Russian Encroachments in Turkestan. | ||
| Scale 1 : 22,000,000. | ||
| ||
 Possessions in 1865. |
 In 1875. |
 In 1881. |
| 300 Miles.
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Since the middle of the present century the Russian power has rapidly advanced in this region, notwithstanding the final limits from time to time laid down by the St. Petersburg authorities. Since the capture of Ak-Mejid, on the Sir, in 1853, a territory of about 460,000 square miles has been acquired, partly through the caprice of some ambitious captain, partly under pretext of chastising some unruly tribe. Gorchakov's circular of 1864 limited the farther advance of the imperial arms to a few settled tracts beyond the nomad districts, "where both interest and reason required them to stop." But since then vast strides have been made towards the subjection of the whole Aralo-Caspian basin, and by the fall of Geok-tepe in January, 1881, the independence of Merv and of the few remaining Turkoman tribes is directly menaced. An official treaty concluded in 1873 between Russia and England includes a large portion of their territory in the Afghan states. But such diplomatic triflings cannot prevent Russian influence from making itself more and more felt in these regions, which are cut off from Afghanistan proper by the Hindu-Kush, and which belong physically and ethnically to the Aralo-Caspian basin. All the lowlands stretching from the Caspian to the foot of the Pamir, and from the Iranian tableland to the sources of the Ob and Irtish, may already be considered as practically Russian territory, separated by a single range from British India or its immediate dependencies.
East of Turkestan the Russians have for neighbours the Chinese, whose empire is separated from them by the Pamir, the Tian-shan, and farther east by a conventional line running through the gates of Zungaria, and at many points offering no obstacle to invasion. But so far from having anything to fear from the possible irruption of some modern Jenghis Khan, here the advantage is entirely on the side of the Russians, both in arms, resources, strategical positions, and military science.
II.—THE PAMIR AND ALAÏ.
The Pamir and Tibet, which converge north of India and east of the Oxus, form jointly the culminating land of the continent. Disposed at right angles, and parallel, the one to the equator, the other to the meridian, they constitute the so-called "Roof," or "Crown of the World," though this expression is more usually restricted to the Pamir alone.
With its escarpments, rising above the Oxus and Tarim plains west and east, the Pamir occupies, in the heart of the continent, an estimated area of 30,000 square miles. With its counterforts projecting some 300 miles, it forms the western headland of all the plateaux and mountain systems skirting the Chinese Empire; it completely separates the two halves of Asia, and forms an almost impassable barrier to migration and warlike incursions. Yet notwithstanding its mean elevation of 13,000 feet above arable land, it has been frequently crossed by small caravans of traders or travellers, and by light columns of troops. The attempt could not fail to be frequently made to take the shortest route across the region separating the Oxus from Kashgaria, and Europe from China. Hence the Pamir has often been traversed by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Italians, Chinese, some as traders, some as explorers, some inspired by religious zeal. But of these travellers very few have left any record of their journey, and all took the lowest routes across the plateau. Here are neither towns nor cultivated land, so that it becomes difficult to identify any of the former routes. It was reserved for modern explorers to convey a general idea of the plateau, by their methodic surveys introducing order into the confused nomenclature of the ancients, reconstructing the geography of Central Asia, and getting rid of the fanciful mountain ranges traced at haphazard on the maps. The imaginary "Bolor," which, according to Humboldt, formed the axis of the continent, has already vanished, at least as a line of crested heights, and, like the Imaus of the ancients, it is now merged in the broad tableland of the Pamir. The name itself would seem to have been restricted to a district near the Hindu-Kush, probably identical with the present Dardistan.
. . .
* Area and population of the Aralo-Caspian lands:—
| Area in Square Miles. |
Probable Population in 1880. | ||
| Russian possessions from the Atrek to the Irtish | 1,520,000 | 4,500,000 | |
| Khiva | 23,000 | 300,000 | |
| Bokhara | 95,500 | 2,150,000 | |
| Turkoman country | 60,000 | 200,000 | |
| Afghan Turkestan | 54,000 | 950,000 | |
| Total | 1,752,500 | 8,100,000 | |
* Throughout this work the term Tûrki is to be taken as practically synonymous with the popular but less accurate Tatar, or "Tartar." Farther on occurs the expression "Turanian," used in a very vague way by most ethnologists. Here it will be strictly limited to the Tûrki nomad as opposed to the Iranian settled population.—Ed.