656 THE PULSE OF ASIA
The only alternative seemed to be the hypothesis of a change of climate, which I then thought " contrary to the facts of history." Now, however, I am inclined to believe that it accords with the facts of history. The close agreement of the fluctuations of Lake Gyoljuk in date and character with those of the Caspian Sea, and the fact that a single hypothesis fits the phenomena of both lakes, give good ground for believing that Turkey has been subject to the same changes of climate as has Central Asia.
The extent and possible significance of these changes will be manifest from a brief résumé of the main conclusions to which we have thus far been led. Including Gyoljuk, our survey of western and central Asia has dealt with six distinct basins. On the west lies Gyoljuk in Turkey; then come the Caspian basin in Russia, and that of Seyistan to the south in Persia; while far to the east we have Lop and Turfan in the heart of Asia forming part of China, and Kashmir south of the Himalayas in India. If we omit the Volga and the European portions of the Caspian drainage area, the limits of our six basins lie over sixteen hundred miles apart from north to south, and over three thousand from east to west. All this vast area seems to have been subject to the same great waves of climatic change.
In the ancient days when the Oxus River entered the Scythian gulf of the expanded Caspian Sea, and Lake Gyoljuk discharged permanently to the Tigris, the lake of Seyistan had not yet been converted into dry land by the giants; Kashmir was so cold and snowy that agriculture was impossible; its people were nomads, who were obliged to drive
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