A plan has been proposed to open Central Asia to steam boat navigation.  The river Oxus, or Amoo-Daria, which flows through Bakhara and Khiva, emptying into the Aral sea, was once a tributary of the Caspian.  Several steamers have been placed upon it, and others are promised soon.  The dry bed of the old channel of the Oxus is visible in the Turcoman steppe at the present day.  The original diversion was artificial, and the dikes which direct it into the Aral are said to be maintained with difficulty.  It has been proposed to send an expedition to remove these barriers and turn the river into its former bed.

Coupled with this project is another to divert the course of the Syr-Daria and make it an affluent of the Oxus.  This last proposition was half carried out two hundred years ago, and its completion would not be difficult.

By the first project, Russia would obtain a continuous water-way from Nijne Novgorod on the Volga to Balkh on the Amoo-Daria, within two hundred miles of British India.  The second scheme carried out would bring Tashkend and all Central Asia under commercial control, and have a political effect of no secondary importance.  A new route might thus be opened to British India, and European civilization carried into a region long occupied by semi-barbarian people.  Afghanistan would be relieved from its anarchy and brought under wholesome rule.  The geographical effect would doubtless be the drying up of the Aral sea.  A railway between Balkh and Delhi would complete an inland steam route between St. Petersburg and Calcutta.

Surveys have been ordered for a Central Asiatic Railway from Orenburg or some point farther south, and it is quite possible that before many years the locomotive will be shrieking over the Tartar steppes and frightening the flocks and herds of the wandering Kalmacks and Kirghese.  A railway is in process of construction from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and when this is completed, a line into Central Asia is only a question of time.

The Russians have an extensive trade with Central Asia.  Goods are transported on camels, the caravans coming in season for the fairs of Irbit and Nijne Novgorod.  The caravans from Bokhara proceed to Troitska, (Lat. 54 deg.  N., Lon. 61 deg. 20’ E.,) Petropavlovsk, (Lat. 54 deg. 30’ N., Lon. 69 deg.  E.,) and Orenburg, (Lat. 51 deg. 46’ N., Lon. 55 deg. 5’ E.) There is also a considerable traffic to Sempolatinsk, (Lat. 50 deg. 30’ N., Lon. 80 deg.  E.) The Russian merchandise consists of metals, iron and steel goods, beads, mirrors, cloths of various kinds, and a miscellaneous lot “too numerous to mention.”  Much of the country over which these caravans travel is a succession of Asiatic steppes, with occasional salt lakes and scanty supplies of fresh water.

After passing the Altai mountains and outlying chains the routes are quite monotonous.  Fearful bourans are frequent, and in certain parts of the route they take the form of sand storms.  A Russian army on its way to Khiva twenty-five years ago, was almost entirely destroyed in one of these desert tempests.  Occasionally the caravans suffer severely.