OX'US, the ancient name of a great river in Central Asia, which 'is called by the Turks and Persians Jintx, and A310 or A310-DARtit by the natives of the country through which it flows. The Oxus rises in lake Sari-kol, in the elevated plateau which separates Eastern and Western Turkestan. It flows through Buddakshan, Bokhara, and Khiva, and empties itself by several mouths into the sea of Aral. In the first part of its course its volume is increased by numerous affluents, but it receives no tributaries after entering Khiva, from which point its course is wholly through a dry sandy desert. Its total length is about 1150 miles. The value of the Oxus for the purpose of water communi• cation, is said by recent Russian geographers to have been much overrated in Europe; and they add that, in summer, vessels of even slight draught could only be got upon the stream by shutting off the irrigation canals, and risking the desolation of the country dependent on them for its crops. The true value of the Oxus lies in the means it will supply of irrigating the sterile alluvial wastes through which it runs. Before the
Christian era, it is believed that the Oxus flowed into the Caspian, and that since 600 A.D. it has twice changed its course (see ARAL). A great part of the old bed of the Oxus has recently been explored by M. Stebnutzki (Bulletin de la Soc. de G'eogr. de Paris, 1871), who has ascertained that it has a fall towards the Caspian, from which he infers that its course was not changed by an upheaval of the Turcoman desert, but by the simple accidents of fluvial action on an alluvial soil. In his address to the London geographical society in May, 1872, sir Henry Rawlinson said the restoration of the Oxus to its old bed was then under the serious consideration of the Russian government, that it was a work of no engineering difficulty whatever, and would assuredly be accom plished as soon as the neutrality of Khiva was secured.—See A journey to the Source of the Oxus, by John Wood, with Essay of the Geography of the Oxus Valley by col, Yale, 1872: also The Road to Merv, by sir H. Rawlinson, in the proceedings of the geog. society, 1879.