The Greeks in Bactria and India c27.6

c27.6

Herrmann has envisaged a regular lost river, perennial and large enough to carry shipping, not an occasional spill-way, though Obrutschew called it an overflow channel for Sary Kamish when it got full; but both were rather obsessed by the belief that they had got to explain the northern or Oxo-Caspian trade-route from India, which never existed (App. 14). It was unfortunate therefore that Obrutschew discovered two (dry) waterfalls on his line of route, which would necessitate unloading and reloading vessels twice, a point already rubbed in.⁴ Herrmann claimed one of these waterfalls, that at Igdy, as a confirmation of his view, it being, he thought, the waterfall of Polybius x, 48; it may suffice to say that Obrutschew gives the fall at Igdy as 3 to 5 metres high, while that in Polybius shoots the river clear to such a distance that a quarter of a mile of dry ground is left between cliff and water, a feat which even Niagara makes no attempt to emulate. In fact, that chapter in Polybius, with its Oxus running into the Caspian near Hyrcania (the Atrek again), is only a couple of yarns, told as such to Polybius or to his source: nomads can cross the Oxus because *either* (a) there is a miraculous waterfall *or* (b) the river conveniently dives underground for a space. They crossed in fact as Turkomans have always crossed, swimming and holding on to their swimming horses. Herrmann's theory is reproduced without comment on E. Herzfeld's map in Sakastan and elsewhere, but naturally has not escaped criticism;¹ for example, J. Kirste² has pointed out that Herrmann has neglected to notice the view of Fr. von Schwarz in his book Turkestan (1900) that the Uzboi was a salt-water channel connecting Aral and Caspian, which is why they were sometimes treated as a single sea (in fact, others beside von Schwarz have believed in a salt-water connection); and R. Hennig³ has recently collected examples of other rivers which were supposed in antiquity to discharge into, or send a branch into, some sea which they never in fact entered.