MHHHM

86

JOURNEY FROM St. PETERSBURG TO TZARITZIN.

at prefent are rivulets, and others dry dells. The fteppes onthe banks of the Cafpian Sea alfo exhibit fimilar traces, thoughthe flower decreafe of the water there, has produced lefs per-ceptible effects. Perhaps even the fuppofed ancient bed of theOxus, which is faid to exift between the Sea of Aral and theCafpian Sea, is only another trace of the retreating waters.

" Whoever examines the country along the Sarpa, from thenature of its furface, will readily embrace my hypothefis, andconfider it as highly probable. And if an accurate menfurationwere made of the fituation and boundaries of the high country,not only that from Tzaritzin, and Dmitreffk, through the fteppeof the Kalmuks in a N. E. dire&ion, but likewife S. W. fromthe Sarpa towards the river Don, and through the fteppe ofthe Crimea, I have reafon to believe that we could prettyaccurately determine the former limits of the Black and CafpianSeas, in thofe ages when they formed one body of water.

" I could ftill allege many incidental arguments in corro-boration of what I have here afferted. But that I may not bethought too prolix, I fhall only mention two remarkable appear-ances near the verge of the high country: thefe will clearlydemonftrate that a Sea really exifted here in former times.

" The firft, is a fandy concretion, combined with calcareousmatter, on the declivity of the prominent angles of the fandypromontory called Moo-Khamur, near the colony of Sarepta.As this concretion appears to have taken place from the effectof the falt water and its calcareous conftituents, which may beeafily recognifed in the feculence or foam of the fea; and asthis production feems to have been formed by being alternatelymoiftened and dried on the fhore, I venture to affirm that it

might