e Oxus has been changed in its
course, accidentally or artificially, more than once. Disputes have
arisen before now between the Russian Government and the Tartars, on the
subject of one of these diversions of the bed of a river.[26] One
province of Khorasan, which once was very fertile, is in consequence now
a desert It may be questioned, too, whether the sands of the adjacent
deserts, which are subject to violent agitation from the action of the
wind, may not have encroached upon Sogdiana. Nor should it be overlooked
that this rich country has been subjected to the same calamities which
have been the desolation of Asia Minor; for, as the Turcomans have
devastated the latter, so, as I have already had occasion to mention,
Zingis swept round the sea of Aral, and destroyed the fruits of a long
civilization.

Even after the ravages of that conqueror, however, Timour and the
Emperor Baber, who had a right to judge of the comparative excellence of
the countries of the East, bear witness to the beauty of Sogdiana.
Timour, who had fixed his imperial seat in Samarcand, boasted he had a
garden 120 miles in extent. Baber expatiates on the grain and fruit and
game of its northern parts; of the tulips, violets, and roses of another
portion of it; of the streams and gardens of another. Its plains are
said by travellers to abound in wood, its rivers in fish, its valleys in
fruit-trees, in wheat and barley, and in cotton.[27] The quince,
pomegranate, fig, apricot, and almond all flourish in it. Its melons are
the finest in the world. Mulberries abound, and provide for a
considerable manufacture of silk. No wine, says Baber, is equal to the
wine of Bokhara. Its atmosphere is so clear and serene, that the stars
are visible even to the verge of the horizon. A recent Russian traveller
says he came to a country so smiling, well cultivated, and thickly
peopled, with fields, canals, avenues of trees, villages, and gardens,
that he thought himself in an enchanted country. He speaks in raptures
of its melons, pomegranates, and grapes.[28] Its breed of horses is
celebrated; so much so that a late British traveller[29] visited the
country with the special object of substituting it for the Arab in our
Indian armies. Its mountains abound in useful and precious produce. Coal
is found there; gold is collected from its rivers; silver and iron are
yielded by its hills; we hear too of its mines of turquoise, and of its
cliffs of lapis lazuli,[30] and