IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Overland to India : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
188 OVERLAND TO INDIA CHAP.
at that time, but it does not prove at all that the country j
was covered with forests and lakes of fresh water." ~ 0
Still more plainly does W. Tomaschek express opinions 0
at variance with the results arrived at by Huntington. To draw conclusions from the existence of ruins may be very misleading. Tomaschek has made use of the most reliable historical material that can be found, and therefore his conclusions are of extraordinary weight. By comparing
the abundant notices of Arabian geographers with explora- °
tions of our own times in the same regions he has arrived I
at the following result :-
" The comparison shows with certainty that the con-
ditions in this region have remained remarkably constant I
during the past thousand years. Statistics of human
habitations are an important factor in this comparison, a 1
measure of the rising or falling capability of the soil for cultivation. If, for instance, Istakri informs us that the village Kharânek had 200, and Sâghand 40o, families, and we now, a thousand years later, find in the same places
almost the same number of inhabitants, we obtain valuable x
evidence of the stability of natural conditions in certain parts of the dry region, and a proof that this soil is
absolutely incapable of supporting more living beings than 3
now and in former times."
" It can be shown of some regions that the cultivation of
the soil within their bounds has markedly improved owing
to the restless activity of man, in spite of years of scarcity
and the raids of plundering nomads. In other places, on
the contrary, nature has of itself changed for the worse, the
constantly increasing evaporation has caused the drainage I
to fail, and advancing masses of dust and sand have buried
old cultivated oases for ever. While the changes of nature l
proceed so extremely slowly that a thousand years is a I
short period in the existence of the earth's surface, yet the I
almost imperceptible changes in all existing things is I
clearly apparent to the attentive observer, even in tracts which bear outwardly a character of stagnation." 2
By describing fourteen of the Arabs' desert routes and
1 " Zur Theorie der Entstehung der Salzsteppen," etc. , Jahrbuch d. K.K. Geologischen
Reichsanstalt, Bd. 27 (1877), p. 341.
2 Zur historischen Topographie von Persien, vol. ii. p. 3.
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