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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0094 |
Explorations in Turkestan : Expedition of 1904 : vol.2 |
Captions
| [Photo] 472 |
Ruins of the Tomb of Bibi Khanum (Samarkand). |
Citation Information
OCR Text
OASES OF THE ZERAFSHAN.
RIVER-BANK (TYPE II) OASES OF THE LOWER ZERAFSHAN.
Having been a river fed almost exclusively by glaciers for all archeological
time, the Zerafshan has necessarily given a fairly constant supply of water—that
is, its oases were never affected by the sudden droughts and minor oscillations of
precipitation that ever and anon wrought famine to oases depending on streams
fed by unconsolidated snow or rain.
Everywhere along its lower course and beyond the limits of its now living
oases, rise the mound remnants of past civilization. From Paikent to Samarkand
is a land no less favored than the long stretch of the Jaxartes where there was an
unbroken belt of gardens, of whose houses it is said the roofs were so joined through
continuous villages of covered-over lanes that a cat might find his way throughout
and never come to ground. Even now, for 200 miles along the Zerafshan it is
mostly oasis, though crept upon by intervening deserts, and still stands unparal-
leled in Central Asia. Such a gifted land was naturally preyed upon by the
plundering hordes that ranged the steppes of Asia from Manchuria to the Caspian,
and enters history as a goal of conquering armies. Even now the story-tellers of
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