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0332 Explorations in Turkestan 1903 : vol.1
Explorations in Turkestan 1903 : vol.1 / Page 332 (Color Image)

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[Photo] 170 Lacustrine Bluffs and Recent Sand-dunes near Seh-Kuheh. View to the northeast.

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doi: 10.20676/00000177
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296   THE BASIN OF EASTERN PERSIA AND SISTAN.

is shown by the bluffs (fig. no). Wherever they are fronted by a beach they are extremely fresh, as though the waves had been at work on them but yesterday. Their tops present a clean, sharp angle and are little dissected, and their slope is almost perpendicular. Yet the material of which they are composed is by no means resistant and contains many sandy or silty portions which are subject to rapid degradation. Moreover, the beach is also fresh and is not concealed by talus from above. Where the beach and the bluffs diverge the character of the latter at once changes. They become rounded and well dissected, a sloping body of talus lies at their base, and the cliffs slope so gently that they are covered with gravel and waste derived from the battered tops. The beaches and the fresh bluffs can not be old. The accumulation of sand at the base of the latter is of very recent date. The large

Fig. 170.—Lacustrine Bluffs and Recent Sand-dunes near Seh-Kuheh. View to the northeast.

dune shown in the illustration (fig. no) is said by the natives to have accumulated in three years. Under it are seen the cross-bedded remains of older dunes which have been repeatedly formed and swept away. Under the lowest of them, and resting upon the old beach, I saw the ruined mud walls of an ancient garden. This is said to have belonged to a certain Rustum Khan, who died a hundred years ago. It is clear that the accumulation of the dunes is the work of a comparatively short time, probably not more than two or three hundred years. Moreover, it is probable that the accumulation of the dunes would begin within a relatively short time after the retirement of the water. Accordingly, from the recency of the sand-dunes and the freshness of the beach and bluffs, I am inclined to believe that the lake stood at the level of the Seh-Kuheh beach at a date which is to be measured in hundreds