Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
shown in the Jenkinson's map. Whereas the existence of the camels and sheep on the same
latitude as
“Kitaia Lacvs”
and between the mountains steppes indicate in turn the Altai
mountains. Then, as we can see, solving the problem is not so easy and probably it will be
never solved. Some final conclusion could be supported, too, by the description of the name
“
Kitaya
” in Wikipedia under the entry “
Kitay-gorod
”.
There is one more interesting geographically questionable element in Jenkinson's map. This
is the Amu-Darya river which as Ougus flows into the Caspian Sea. The problem have been
already interestingly and accurately described by many authors (Menn G.F.C., 1839,
Alenicin V.D., 1879, Barthold W., 1910). As have been here already mentioned the
representation of the mouth of Ougus river can still be found in the 18
th
century maps. The
history of the mouth of Amu-Darya from the oldest times had been very accurately
described by G.F.C. Menn in Latin
20
. There are some interesting testimonies which we can
find in Herodot's work in following sentence (translated: “the biggest river in this region is
“
Arakses”
or “
Oksos”
and that one of the branch flows into the Caspian Sea”). What is
interesting, he also calls the river as “marshes of Aral”. Alenicin in turn asks himself a
question - which way Jenkinson has gone when, as he writes in his diary, he met so-called
“priasna” water, i.e. sweet water. The author comes to conclusion that at some point
Jenkinson had to confuse the directions of the world. Alenicin realized that if Jenkinson met
a sweet water it could be neither the Aral Sea nor the Caspian Sea - it must have been
probably Sary-Kamysh - a big lake situated between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea,
because it goes from Mangyshlak peninsula across the Ust'- Urt'. On the 12 page of his topic
Alenicin writes about yet another conception. He there claims that in 1878 came into the
Caspian Sea a branch of the river which probably reached it. Interesting description on
Amow river (a tributary of the Sur river on Jenkinson's map) we read in already quoted
geographical dictionary (transl.:
“Amou or Amu it is the river of Asia, which by our contemporary
geographers is named Amu. Because “Ab” word in Persian means water or river. Arabs call it Gibon,
but accurately Balkh, river Balkh, because it flows across city of the same name. The old called it Oxus
and Bactus. This river flows out from the Imaus mountains and directs its course from the east to the
west. As a matter of fact, when it comes close to the Khovarezm country, it runs in meander way, and
seems to flow to its source direction, however it comes back again, and flows into Caspian Sea in the
west”).
It is worth here to quote before mentioned Menn (G.F.C., 1839). In his topic in the
chapter I entitled
“Oxi fluminis vetustae navigationis in mare Caspium documenta”
on 5
th
page
we read (transl.:“…Oxus flows into the Caspian Sea across Scythia…”
W. Barthold (1910, s.
68), who discusses the Jenkinson's map writes (in transl.: “south branch flows to the
lengthened gulf of the Caspian Sea, i.e. Sary-Kamysh”
(see Tolstov 1962, pp. 261-267
)
where
the author writes that the river Amu-daria at the beginning of the 10
th
century had flown
into the Caspian Sea
.
This Russian archeologist Tolstov (1953, p. 62) recalls Jenkinson's
opinions from his diary, which are opposite to his map's picture. Namely, Jenkinson claims
that the water in his times did not flow into the Caspian Sea as it was in the early times. So
20
For translation of the fragment of this interesting work I would here like to express my gratitude to Aleksandra
Krajczyk, the teacher of Latin at the University of Wrocław.
