Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/454

Rh OXUS, or, one of the great rivers of Central Asia. Prior to the meeting of the commissions appointed for the determination of the Russo-Afghan boundary in 1885, no very accurate geographical knowledge of the upper Oxus regions existed, and the course of the river itself was but roughly mapped. Russian explorers and natives of India trained for geographical reconnaissance, and employed in connexion with the great trigonometrical survey of India, had done so much towards clearing away the mists which enveloped the actual course of the river, that all the primary affluents were known, although their relative value was misunderstood, but the nature of the districts which bordered the river in Afghan Turkestan was so imperfectly mapped as to give rise to considerable political complication in framing the boundary agreement between Great Britain and Russia. From Lake Victoria (Sor-Kul) in the Pamirs, which was originally reckoned as the true source of the river, to Khamiab, on the edge of the Andkhui district of Afghan Turkestan, for a distance of about 680 m., the Oxus forms the boundary between Afghanistan and Russia. For another 550 m. below Khamiab it follows an open and sluggish course till it is lost in the Sea of Aral, being spanned at Charjui, 150 m. below Khamiab, by the wooden bridge which carries the Russian railway from Merv to Samarkand. The level of Lake Victoria is 13,400 ft. above sea. At Khamiab the river is probably rather less than 500 ft.

For many years a lively geographical controversy circled about the sources of the Oxus, and the discussion derived some political

significance from the fact that the true source, wherever it might be found, was claimed as a point in the Russo-Afghan boundary. The final survey of the Pamir region (wherein the heads of all the chief tributaries of the river lay hidden), by the Pamir boundary commission of 1895 established the following topographical facts in connexion with this question. The elevated mountain chain which is now called the Nicolas range, which divides the Great from the Little Pamir, is a region of vast glaciers and snow-fields, from which the lakes lying immediately north and south derive the greater part of their water-supply. On the north the principal glacial tributary of Lake Victoria forms, within the folds of the gigantic spurs of the Nicolas mountains, a series of smaller lakes, or lakelets, before joining the great lake itself. On the south a similar stream starting farther east, called Burgutai (denoting the position of a difficult and dangerous pass across the range) sweeps downwards towards Lake Chakmaktin, the lake of the Little Pamir, which is some 400 ft. lower than Victoria. But at the foot of the mountain this stream bifurcates in the swamps which lie to the west of Chakmaktin, and part of its waters find their way eastwards into the lake, and part flow away westwards into the Ab-i-Panja, which joins the Pamir river from Lake Victoria at Kala Panja. This at any rate is the action of the Burgutai stream during certain seasons of the year, so that the glaciers and snowfields of the Nicolas range may be regarded as the chief fountain-head of at least two of the upper tributaries of the Oxus, namely, the Aksu (or Murghab) and the Pamir river, and as contributing largely to a third, the Ab-i-Panja. Neither Lake Victoria nor Lake Chakmaktin derives any very large contributions from glacial sources other than those of the Nicolas range. It is possible that there may be warm springs on the bed of Lake Victoria, as such springs are of frequent occurrence in the Pamirs; but there is no indication of them in the Chakmaktin basin, and the latter lake must be regarded rather as an incident in the course of the Aksu—a widening of the river channel in the midst of this high-level, glacier-formed valley—than as the fountain-head of the infant stream. There are indications that the bed of Lake Victoria, as well as that of Chakmaktin, is rapidly silting, and that the shores of the latter are gradually receding farther from the foot of the hills. The glacial origin of the Pamir valleys is everywhere apparent in their terrace formations and the erratic blocks and boulders that lie scattered about their surface. It is probable that the lakes themselves are evidence of (geologically) a comparatively recent deliverance from the thraldom of the ice covering, which has worn and rounded the lower ridges into the smooth outlines of undulating downs.

Another important source of the river (considered by Curzon to be the chief source) is to be found in the enormous glaciers which he about the upper or main branch of the Ab-i-Panja (called the Ab-i-Wakhjir or Wakhan), which rises under the mountains enclosing the head of the Taghdumbash Pamirs. Although the superficial area of glacial ice from which the Ab-i-Wakhjir derives the greater part of its volume is not equal to that found on the Nicolas range, it is quite impossible to frame any estimate of comparative depth or bulk, or to separate the volume of its contributions at any time from those which, combined, derive their origin from the Nicolas range. If the Aksu (or Murghab) and the Pamir river from Lake Victoria are to be considered in the light of independent tributaries, it is probable that the Ab-i-Panja contributes as large a volume of glacial flood to the Oxus as either of them.

From the point where the rivers of the Great and Little Pamirs join their forces at Kala Panja to Ishkashim, at the elbow of the great bend of the Oxus northwards, the river valley has

been surveyed by Woodthorpe; and the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, which near Ishkashim extend in slopes of barely 10 m. in length from the main watershed to the river banks, have been carefully mapped. These slopes represent the extent of Afghan territory which exists north of the Hindu Kush between Kala Panja and Ishkashim. From Ishkashim northwards the river passes through the narrow rock-bound valleys of Shignan and Roshan ere it sweeps north and west through the mountains and defiles of Darwaz. By the terms of the boundary agreement with Russia this part of the river now parts Badakshan and Darwaz from the districts of Roshan, Shignan, and Bokhara, which formerly maintained an uncertain claim over a part of the territory on the left bank of the river. All this part of the Oxus, until the river once again emerges from the Bokhara hills into the open plains bordering Badakshan on the north, falls within the area of Russian surveys, with which a junction from India has been effected both on the Pamirs and in Turkestan.

At Langar Kisht, a little to the east of the Oxus bend, there is a small Russian post of observation. About 50 m. north of the bend,

where the Suchan or Ghund joins the Oxus from the Alichur Pamir, there is another and larger post called Charog. On the left bank of the river the Afghans maintain a frontier post at the fort of Kala Bar Panja. A road will connect Charog with the Alichur Pamir, following the general course of the Ghund stream, a road which will form a valuable link in the chain of communications between Bokhara and Sarikol. Eighty-five miles north of Ishkashim, at Kala Wamar, the river which rises in the Little Pamir, and which is called Aksu, Murghab, or Bartang, joins the Oxus from the east. It is on this river that the Russian outpost, Murghabi (or Pamirski), is situated, at an elevation of 12,150 ft. above the sea. Fort Murghabi is connected by a good military road with Osh. At this point the measurement of the comparative lengths of the chief Pamir tributaries of the Oxus is as follows:—

For 120 m. the two latter are united in the main stream of the Oxus the volume of which has been further increased by the united forces of the Ghund and Shakhdara draining the Alichur Pamir and the heights of Shignan.

The narrow cramped valley of the river between Ishkashim and Kala Wamar is hedged in on the west by a long ridge flanking the

highlands of Badakshan; on the east the buttresses and spurs of the Shignan mountains (of which the strike is transverse to the direction of the river and more or less valley parallel to that of the main Hindu Kush watershed) overhang its channel like a wall, and afford but little room either for cultivation or for the maintenance of a practicable road. Yet the lower elevation (for this part of the Oxus stream is not more than about 7000 ft. above sea-level) and comparatively mild climate give opportunities to the industrious Tajik population for successful agriculture, of which they are not slow to avail themselves, and a track exists on the left bank of the river to Kala Bar Panja opposite the Ghund (or Suchan) debouchment, which is practicable for mules. There are no bridges, and the transit of the river from bank to bank can only be effected by the use of inflated skins. Beyond the Bartang (or Murghab) confluence the valley narrows, and the difficulties of the river route increase. Between Kala Wamar (6580 ft.) and Kala Khum (4400 ft.), where the Oxus again bends southwards, its course to the north-west is almost at right angles to the general strike of the Darwaz mountains, which is from north-east to south-west, following the usual conformation of all this part of high Asia. Thus its chief affluents from the north-east, the Wanj and the Yaz Ghulam, drain valleys which are comparatively open, and which are said to be splendidly fertile. At