Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/465

Rh hand it over to England just because she wants it. We have cotton factories and other manufacturing establishments, as England has, and the more markets we can have the better it will be for us."

The gentleman paused, and gave Fred an opportunity to ask if there were any navigable rivers in Turkestan, and, if so, what they were.

"There is no navigation worth the name," was the reply. "Central Asia contains only two rivers of any importance—the Oxus and the

. The Oxus is sometimes called the Amoo Darya, or Jihoon, and the Jaxartes the Syr Darya. The Oxus is the largest; it rises in the Pamir district, in a lake fifteen thousand feet above the sea, and in the upper part of its course receives several tributary rivers that drain Bokhara and the north-eastern part of Afghanistan. It is about twelve hundred miles long, and flows into the Aral Sea; for the last eight hundred miles of its course it is navigable for small steamboats, but its mouth is divided into so many shallow channels that boats have great difficulty in entering it. The Russians have half a dozen steamers on the Aral Sea, and as many more light-draught steamboats for navigating the Oxus."

"Haven't I read that the Oxus formerly emptied into the Caspian Sea?" said Frank.