the Steppe till he mentions a lake, that is believed to
be Ala-Kul, with islands and a violent wind. It seems
also to have been visited by William de Rubruquis
and Tch’ang Te, both travelling hereabouts within the
following 20 years.
A drive of 20 miles from Djus Agach, the. latter
portion of which was over rising rocky ground, brought
us to Arganatinsk. By this time the sun was at its
THE PICKET POST-STATION A T ARGANATINSK.
meridian, and the thermometer in the tarantass rose
to 85°. The post-house stood, according to my
aneroid, at 1,600 feet above the sea, and on either
side rose two bare rocky hills covered with loose
shingle, up one of which I had determined to climb,
to have the satisfaction [ of getting a peep, 20 miles
off, at the famous Lake Balkhash.
This lake was called by the Kalmuks Balkatsi Nor,
Great Lake, and by the Kirghese A k-Deng his, or
White Sea ; A la Deng his, or mottled sea, on account
of its islands ; or simply Denghis, the sea. To the
Chinese it was known as Sihai, or Eastern Sea, and
it is in their records that the earliest information about
the lake is to be found. In shape Lake Balkhash
resembles the body of an ant without the legs, the
head pointing east. Its length is about 400 miles,
its width varies from 5 to 53 miles, its circumference
is 900 miles, and its area 12,800 square miles, or
about 36 times larger than the Lake of Geneva, though
M. Reclus estimates the volume of water in the
Balkhash to be only two and a half times as much as
that of the Swiss lake, the greatest depth of the Balkhash
being 70 feet, whilst in the centre and southern
portions its depth is only 35 feet, and in certain places
on the southern side it is so shallow, and the shore so
shelving, that a strong wind sometimes lays bare for
a time a portion of its bed.*
Many Kirghese pass the winter on the sandy shore,
the surface yielding a limited pasturage for their flocks.
The reeds, 16 feet high, shelter them from the north
* Through the northern or Semipolatinsk shore not one perennial
stream makes its way ; even the large stone, the Tokrau, falling short
of the lake in drought, absorbed by the sands. So it is also with
such wadys on the south as have their sources in the Steppe ; but the
majority of the streams coming from the snow mountains reach the
lake, carrying down such quantities of earth with them as threaten to
divide the lake into separate basins. The banks on the north and
part of the south-east are mountainous, whereas on the south are broad
sand-hills, and in many places the change from land to water is so
gradual that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins.
The rocky promontories on the north side, where the water is deepest,
can be approached only when the lake is smooth, whilst the low reed-
covered peninsulas on the south, for lack of water, cannot be approached
at all. The bed is sandy, except where the shores are rocky, and then
it is stony, though along the south-eastern and eastern shores, the bottom
is of ooze.
The surface of the Balkhash rises from mid-April to the end of July,