broad, which lies very low, and has a luxuriant growth of high-stemmed reeds.

Some spots on the banks of the Ili are peculiarly adapted to settlements, and even well suited for permanent colonisation. This is borne out by the numerous military stations and penal settlements that have been established by the Chinese throughout the upper part of the basin of the Ili, which lies between Iren-Khábirgán and the ThiánShán. It is here that stream forth the waters of its many tributaries, such as the Kásh, the Pilitshi,' the Yklyk," the Korgás,3 the Uesük,4 on the right, and the Tarksyl, the Kogushi, the Yagústái, the Kainák and Búgra" on the left bank; these streams are ingeniously made use of for the purpose of irrigating the rich but dry and clayey soil of the fields, which are thus rendered capable of yielding fine crops and plentiful harvests; the woods also are in the same manner artificially renewed. And the aspect of a village with enclosures of quickset hedges, and shaded by large trees, delights the traveller's eyes after the descent of a stern and frowning mountain-pass, or the crossing of an inhospitable steppe.

In the extensive valley forming the basin of the river Ili, which is only towards the west, during the summer, exposed to the hot westerly winds, the climate is peculiarly

'It discharges itself into the Ili, not far from Kúlja.

2 Also into the Ili, close to Kúlja.

3 Falls into the Ili 20 to 30 versts westwards, and divides its waters into several arms; its bed is about half a verst wide, and contains large deposits.

4 It may be considered until lately as the frontier between China and Russia. It is the most important of all the tributaries of the Ili; its bed is from two to three versts wide, traversing a thickly wooded valley. The river itself is about fifty fathoms wide; it is very deep, and has a very considerable fall.

5 Concerning these affluents further particulars are still wanting.

dry, and, like that of the more southern Dzungarian portion of the Kirghiz Steppe, determines the point where the climate gradually changes from the raw bleakness of Siberia to the tropical heat of the regions beyond the Thián-Shán. But here, notwithstanding the dryness of the air, thrive vines, rice, maize, sorghum (a kind of seed used as flour), wheat, water-melons, and melons; of European fruit trees are found the peach, apricot, pear, and plum tree; consequently such fruits as grow in Istria, the corresponding latitude in Southern Europe. Winter lasts here only three months, and rarely maintains a severe degree of cold for more than three weeks. But, on the other hand, summer is terribly hot, so that, even in the shade, the thermometer of Réaumur occasionally reaches in August 36° to 38°. The climate agrees particularly well with the inhabitants, who are rarely visited by epidemics.1

The advantages of this favourable situation are enjoyed by the important Russian colony settled at Fort Vyernoe, although it is built on the south of the valley of the Ili and of the ford, already described, at the foot of the AláTáu, which is 2,533.4 P.F.2 above the level of the sea. It is here that the mountain-torrents of the Almáty gush forth and rush impetuously down the ravines into the plains below. The fort has now become a small town,3 and

Radlov, Das Ili-Thal in Hochasien und seine Bewohner (Petermann's Geogr. Mittheilungen, 1868, pp. 88–97, and 250-264). A work that enters fully into ethnography, and is well worth reading.

2 2,430 feet according to Captain Obukh, of the Russian État-MajorGénéral, who during a whole year made meteorological observations at Vyernoe. M. C. de Sabir, Aperçu des récentes explorations des Russes dans l'Asie centrale. Le pays des sept rivières et la contrée transilienne. In the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1861, vol. ii. pp. 335–364.

3 Concerning the importance of this place, vide Michel Wolkov, Notice sur le pays transilien (Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1861, vol. ii. pp. 113-119).

contains from 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants; it was originally founded by some Cossacks and Russian emigrants in 1854. The slopes of the adjacent Trans-Ilian Alá-Táu, richly clothed with Siberian fir-trees, served to furnish them with materials to build their dwellings, and the rivers Aksái and Almáty, of which the valleys are covered with fruit trees, supplied the water to irrigate the fields and plantations. And now agriculture flourishes in this almost unknown spot of Asia.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COUNTRIES BORDERING ON THE SÍR- AND AMU-DARIá. WHILST no other considerable streams than the Ural and the Emba (the Jastus of the ancients) flow from the regions engaging our attention into the Caspian Sea, the Aral receives the two most important rivers of Central Asia-the Jaxartes and the Oxus of classical antiquity.

The Jaxartes'—the present Sír-Dariá (Dariá signifying in Persian ‘a sea,'a river;' the Arabs call this river the Saihún)-is still, as regards its course, partially unknown to us, consequently incorrectly delineated on all maps. The length of its course is computed at about 400 German miles, of which 200 are navigable. The first light thrown upon the topography of the Sír was as lately as 1863, when the Russian Rear-Admiral Butakov2 undertook an exploration of the river from Fort Perovsky as far as Baildyr-Túgái. Its sources, however, were in 1869

The Jaxartes or Orxanthes is written Araxes by some of the old classical writers. The historians of Alexander the Great called it erroneously the Tanais, the Massagetæ Silis.

2 A notice on the upper course of the Sír-Dariá (Jaxartes), between Fort Perovsky and Baildyr-Túgái (Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, in Berlin, 1866, No. 2, pp. 114-128), together with an excellent general map of the Sir, with the position of places changed according to the recent survey, and also with a specification of the points in those countries that have been astronomically determined.

first discovered by Baron Kaulbars, whose surveys embraced the different chains of the Thián-Shán mountain system, extending from the frontier of the khanate of Kokán and the valley of the Aksái on the south-west to the Tengri-Khán and the Músárt-Khán on the north-east. By means of these surveys the source of the Naryn was also determined, which is the most easterly and important affluent of the Sír; it was found to spring from a glacier in the Ak-Shirák mountains, lying nearly in the same meridian as the east end of the lake of Issik-Kúl. Thus the river Sír takes its rise in the Thián-Shán mountains. Little is yet known of its upper course beyond Kokán as far as Baildyr-Túgái, distant 807 versts from Ak-Mesjed or Fort Perovsky. The confluence of the Gúlishán with the Naryn1 near Kokán unites their waters into one stream. Thence, increased to an imposing volume of water, it flows on in one bed, wide and deep, between its banks, which are generally low, consisting sometimes of a clayey soil impregnated with salt, and at other times of sand. At high-water, or at seasons of flood, it oversteps its banks, and, commingling with some considerable tributaries, expands its waters far and wide over a land that is only equalled in luxuriant vegetation by the most fertile valleys of India. From Khojend to Hazret-i-Turkestán it takes a northerly course, and passes through the sandy desert of Kizil-Kúm. Here all begins to assume a different aspect. The banks become bare and sterile;

Even Andrian Balbi, relying on Klaproth's information, considered the Naryn to be the upper course of the Sír (Abrégé de Géographie, Paris, 1833, p. 685), and the latest Russian explorations entirely corroborate this view. The Naryn, or Tá-akhái, runs through a narrow valley between the almost parallel chains of the Thián-Shán, in a west-south westerly direction. In 1867, Syevertsov, the leader of the scientific expedition into Turkestán, very nearly reached its sources.