only, though the configuration of the shores of the
sea forms numerous bays, peninsulas, and headlands.*
The mouth of the Jaxartes is encumbered with
sandbanks, that are continually shifting the bed of
the channel. In spring the ice accumulates at the
mouth, and overspreads the sandbanks. The water
rushing under the ice scoops out the sand from underneath,
and forms a new bed, which again silts up in
summer and undergoes fresh changes. The northeastern
portion of the sea is partially shut off by the
island of Kug-Aral f from the so-called lesser sea
(Kichkine-Denghiz), out of which the Gulf of Sari-
Chaganak runs deep into the mainland, and is thought
to have been once a strait connecting the Aral Sea
with the Lake Aksakal-Barda.
The southern part of the Aral is not frozen every
year, and immense numbers of birds winter there. In
* The northern' shores are usually composed of clayey, salt-impregnated
cliffs, rising to a height of from 100 to 300 feet. The line of the
western shore follows the edges of the high tableland of Ust-Urt,
which is made up of sandy, clayey, and limestone layers, sometimes
attaining the height of 500 feet. Throughout the whole of the western
coast no suitable anchorage can be found, owing to its precipitous
character and the great depth of the water. The low southern shore
is composed either of reed-covered alluvial deposits brought down by
the Amu-daria, or of waves of sand. The eastern shore is also low.
f The island o f Kug-Aral measures 26 miles by 7, and contains a
quantity of mica. Another island with an area of 86 square miles
is Barsa-Gilmaz, which means, “ You may go, but not return,” in
memory of some natives who once crossed on the ice just before it
broke up. A third island is that of Tokmak-Ata, that derives its name
from a saint’ s tomb found there. It has an area of 57 square miles,
and, being separated from the mainland by a strait about 2 miles wide,
and only 2 feet deep, it is approached by the Khivans either in small
boats or by wading. Another island of the Aral Sea, and the most
remarkable of them all, is that of the Emperor Nicholas, with an
area of 133-square miles. It is almost covered with an extraordinarily
thick growth of saxaul and tamarisk. There are numerous saiga Antilopes
upon it. Hedgehogs also have been found, and the traces seen
of Foxes. It also contains Snakes and Land Tortoises.
other places the Aral freezes near the shores, and the
ice is sufficiently strong to bear camels. An interesting
point connected with the Aral is that its waters are
perceptibly drying up, and its circumference diminishing.
The natives account for the disappearance of
the water that flows into the lake by saying that in
the middle there is a terrible whirlpool, and that the
waters of the Aral pass into the Caspian by an underground
channel. The real cause, M. Maieff points
out, is the physical law that, if rivers flow into any
water, the body of the latter continues to fill up and
extend in area until its surface is such that the quantity
of water yearly evaporated equals the quantity brought
down by the rivers.*
This drying up, however, is little enough in comparison
with the decrease that would take place should
the Oxus again from any cause flow into the Caspian.
In this case, the Aral-, deprived annually of more than
a million millions (1,175,000,000,000) of cubic feet of
river water, would lose the first year the twentieth part
of its contents. In 10 or 12 years Reclus reckons it
would have no more than half its present volume, all
* The most patent illustration of the lessening of the waters of the
Aral is seen in the site of the Gulf of Aibughir, which still figures on
many maps west of the mouths of the Oxus. In 1848, according to
Reclus, it measured 3 feet deep. In 1858-9 the Emperor’ s mission
sailed on it in boats. In 1870 it had become a marsh, completely
separated from the A ra l, and two years later the Russian geographers
in the Khivan expedition undeniably established the fact that the salt
Gulf of Aibughir had disappeared, and that trees were growing in the
former bed. If now it is sometimes covered with water it is no longer
as part of the Aral, but from inundations of the Oxus, and with fresh
water. This represents a lessening of the basin of the Aral, according
to Reclus, of about 2,000 square miles. A t the beginning of the present
century, the water washed the base of hills that are now more than 40
miles from the edge, and the Kirghese, according to Wood, show a
mosque, built originally upon the eastern bank, that now is several
miles off.