Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/521

 OTIS. (Virg. Aen. vii. 675) and " nemerosus" (Lucan, vi. 337). It is now usuhIIv called Gura, from a large villace of tliis name upon its sides; but its highest summit, which lies to the east of this village, is named Jeracovouni, and is 5669 feet above the level of the sea. The subsoil of the whole range is a lime.-tone of various and highly-inclined strata occasionally mixed with iron ore, amyanthe and asbestos. (Leake, Xorthern Greece, vol. ii. p. 17, vol. iv. p. 330, seq.; Journal of Geogr. Society, vol. vii. p. 92.) OTIS, a town on the Euphrates below Babylon, jnst above the commencement of the Babylonian Marshes. ( Plin. v. 26.) [V.] OTTOROCORRAS {' OrropoKop^as, Ptol. vi. 16. §§ 2, 3), the E. termination of the Emodi Montes. This is an example of a Sanscrit word ■which has been preseiTed in Ptolemy's geography, as it is meiely llie Greek form of the Uttarakuru of the " Maliabhirata," or the highland of the happy Indian Hyperboreans, who lived there sheltered from the cold blasts, about whom, under the name of Attacorri, as Pliny (vi. 20) relates, a cerUiin Amometus wrote a book. Ammianus (xxiii. 6. § 65), copying Ptoljmy, has Opurocarra, and Oro.sius (i. 2) Ottorogorras. The sacred race of men living in the desert of whom Ctesias (/ret^. 8, ed. Balir) speaks, belong to this imaginative geography, which saw in the snow-capped summits of the Hima- laya the chosen habitation of the Gods and of the Blessed. According to Ptolemy (vi. 16. § 5, viii. 24. § 7) there was a people of the Ottorocorrae, with a town of the same name, to the E. of the Casii Montes, or mountains of Kasckgar; as the city is one of Ptolemy's points of recorded astronomical obserrations, having almost 14 hrs. 45 min. in its longest day, and being 7 hrs. E. of Alexandreia, there must have been some real locality bearing this name, which must be assigned to E. Thibet. (Lassen, Ind. Alt. vol. i. pp. 511, 847.) [E. B. J.] OVILABA ( Wels on the river Traiin), a town of Noricum, on the road from Laureacum to Augusta Vindelicorum. {Itin. Ant. pp. 235,258,277; Tab. Pent., where it is called Ovilia.) It is said, accord- ing to an inscription, to have been a Roman colony under the name of Aurelia Antoniniana. (Muchar, Noricum, i. pp. 217, 238, 266, &c., 285, &c.) [L.S.] OXEIAE. [ECHINADES] OXIA PALUS, a lake which was formed by two very large rivers, the Arasates (Jasartes) and Dymas (probably the Demus of Ptolemy, vi. 12. § 3). at the foot of the Sogdii Montas. (Amm. Marc, xxiii. 6. § 59.) This has been supposed to inti- mate, though very vaguely, the formation of the Sea of Aral; but there seems to be more reason for identifying it with the lake of Karakoul to the SSE. of Bokhara, formed by the Zarafshan or " gold-scattering " river of Samarcand, called also the Kokik, or more correctly the river of the Koh- ak or " hillock."' This river is the Polytimetus, which, according to Aristobulus (op. Strab. xi. p. 518), traversed Sogdiana, and was lost in the sands; while Q. Curtius (vii. 37) describes it as entering a cavern and continuing its course under ground, though it really discharges itself into this lake, which the Uzbeks call Denghiz, the Turkish word for " sea." The Greeks translated the indigenous name Soghd — the valley of which is one of the four Paradises of the Persian poets — into that of Poly- timetus, " the very precious," — an epithet which it well deserves from the benefits it showers upon this OXIA PALUS. 505 region, the plain of Bokhara, famed for its gigantic melons. Ptf)lemy (vi. 12. § 3), if a correction be made in his latitudes, which are uniformly put too far forward to the N., gives the Oxiana Palus ('n|e(ai/7j Ai/U.) its true position between Zariaspa and Tribactra (^Balkh and Bykund). " From tlie mountains of the Sogdii," says that geographer, " descend several rivers with no name, but which are confluents ; one of these forms the Oxiana Pa- lus." The Sogdii Montes of Ptolemy are the A.ferah mountains, by which the volcanic chain of the Thian-Schan is prolonged to the W. be- yond the N. and S. break of Bohr, and Kosuyrt. It is singular that Ptolemy does not connect the Polytimetus with his Oxian lake, but mentions it (vi. 14. § 2) as one of the rivers discharging itself into the Caspian between the Oxus and Jaxartes. Pliny knows nothing of the Polyti- metus; and his Oxus Lacus (vi. 18, xxsi. 39; Solin. 49) is either the crescent-shaped lake of Sirikol, on the Bami Lunyd, or " terraced roof of the world," near the pass of Pamir, from which the infant Amu [Oxus] issues, or son e other Alpine lake in the Bolor chain, from which this river derives most of its waters. The marshes of the JIassagetae, into which the Araxes of Herodotus (i. 202) flows, with the exception of one of its 40 channels, indicate some vague notion of the Sea of Aral. Strabo (xi. p. 531), when he blames the opinion of Herodotus and Callisthenes, about the 40 channels of the Araxes, also (p. 512) asserts that some of the Massagetae live in marshes formed by rivers and in islands; adding (p. 573) that this dis- trict is flooded by the Araxes, which is divided into many channels, of which only one discharges itself into the sea of Hyrcania, while the others reach the Northern Ocean. It is surprising that Strabo does not give to this river of the country of the Mas- sagetae (which is undoubtedly the same as that of which Herodotus speaks) the name of Jaxartes, which he mentions so often (pp. 507, 509, 511, 517, 518), and carefully distinguishes (pp. 527 — 529) from the Araxes of the Matieni, or Armenian river, which was known to Hecataeus {Fr. 170). Strabo (p. 513) as well as Herodotus (i. 202) allude to the seals, with the skins of which the natives clothe themselves; and it is well known that these animals are found in the Sea of Aral as well as in the Cas- pian, and the lakes Baikal and Oron; for these and other reasons it would seem that both Herodotus and Strabo were acquainted with that series of lagoons from which the Sea of Aral has been formed. This was the opinion of Bayer (^Acta Petrop. vol. i. p. 398) and of D'Anville, who {Carte du Monde des Grecs et des Romains, 1763) designates the Aral by these words, " Paludes recipientes Araxen apud Herodotum." With Herodotus all this network of lagoons forms a basin of the interior, while Strabo connects it with the N. Ocean, directly, and not through the medium of the Hyrcanian sea, and the channel by which, according to the systematic cos- mographers of Alexandreia, this sea was united to the Ocean. It must be observed that Strabo <iistiii- guishes clearly between the single mouth of the Araxes of the Massagetae (Jaxartes) and the nume- rous channels which go directly to the N. Ocean. This statement acquires great importance as imply- ing traditions of a channel of communication between the waters of the Aral and the Icy Sea; a com- munication which probably took place along that remarkable depression of 5° of longitude in length,