Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/468

462 course of the Oxus, where there are many nourishing farms and gardens, would again become a desert waste. Much less water flows through the Oxus than in former times, and the engineers who have studied the question do not think the river would be navigable when returned to its ancient bed.

"The other river of Central Asia, the Jaxartes, or Syr Darya, is smaller than the Oxus, and about eleven hundred miles long. It rises in the Pamir region, and empties, like the Oxus, into the Aral Sea. Its course is generally parallel to the Oxus, and in the same way it fertilizes a large area

of what would otherwise be desert. Its volume has greatly diminished in the last few centuries, and is even known to be considerably less than it was sixty or eighty years ago. The Oxus enters the southern end of the Aral Sea, while the Jaxartes comes in considerably farther to the north. The diversion of these two rivers would probably result in drying up the Aral Sea, a shallow body of water two hundred and fifty miles long by half as many wide."

Fred asked if the Caspian was higher or lower than the Aral Sea.

"They are of the same level, or nearly so," was the reply, "though