THE OXUS EXPEDITION.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 57, 5 August 1874, Page 3

THE OXUS EXPEDITION.

[From a Correspondent of the "Daily News."] St Petersburg, May 3. The despatch of the Russian expedition, under the orders of the Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovitch, to explore the waters of the Lower Oxus and their surrounding localities excites rnucli interest here. The latter have been hitherto shrouded in a good deal of mystery. Opinions iu high places have, it is believed, varied as to the organisation of the expedition; but for the rest of the world such differences can scarcely have much significance. The observations to be made by the different sections into which the expedition is divided in the various branches of scientific inquiry will go far to settle important, geographical questions. Still more* these labours may tend to a solution of the difficulties attaching to the navigation of that great line of water comnmnication whose sources were first visited by the Englishman Wood. It is not for England, who has sacrificed so many of her sons iu the path of geographical enterprise, to regard with jealousy a Russian expedition of this nature. England, engaged in the task of civilising the 200,000.000 of her Indian Empire, can display no carping spirit should Russian researches on the Oxus result in opening up communication with the heart of Asia, aud in establishing a route by which commerce and the arts may cope with the barbarism and ignorance of those distant populations. The objects of the expedition may be described in this wise :—A close examination is to be made of the lower waters of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya; surveys of their branches and the adjacent localities are to be entered on, and lines of levels from the one river to the other are to be taken. The delta of the Amu will be examined in the greatest detail, and stations for meteorological observations will be established along its course. The geology of the adjacent districts, together with tbeir flora and fauna, will be thoroughly explored ; while in the ethnographic aud statistical sections observations will be made on the population and its economic conditions, and the local archaeology will not be forgotten. The navigation of the river will be examined to as great an extent as the political exigencies of the moment will allow ; while subsidiary parties will investigate the country between the Caspian and the Aral, with a view to a solution of the question whether those seas did not originally form a single one. The well-known dry bed of the ancient Oxus is to be thoroughly examined, as well as what may be called its continuation from the head of the existing delta, in a north-easterly direction towards the Syr Darya. These investigations, it is hoped, may throw light on the theory, recently promulgated, that in times when the Caspian and Aral formed one single sea, the Syr Darya (from the point where now-a-days it spreads out in unhealthy marshes) took a south-westerly direction, passing by Khiva, into the Caspian, near Krasnovod3k. That a full measure of success may attend the labors of the different sections under the able .superintendence of Colonel Stoletoff, of the stall', must be the wish of all interested in geographical enterprise and the advancement of humanity.