Note 4 — Chapter IV · VAN

It may not be out of place to cast one’s look a little further so as to include the other great lakes. That of Urmi in the Persian frontier province of Azerbaijan has an area of 1823 square miles. Its extreme length from north to south is about 80 miles, and its breadth from east to west 24 miles. It resembles its neighbour on the west in constituting an isolated basin, many rivers flowing in but none out. On the other hand its insignificant depth invests it with the character of a lagoon; the average being probably not more than 20 feet and the maximum some 45 or 50 feet. Evaporation must be very rapid over such a sheet of water; and it is at once situated further south than the lake of Van and at a level which is lower by 1500 feet (Lake Urmi, 4100 feet; Lake Van, 5637 feet). Abnormal salinity is the special feature about the waters of Lake Urmi; and extensive beds of rock salt are found in their vicinity. It has been estimated that they are six times as salt as the ocean, though only three-fifths as heavily charged with saline matter as the waters of the Dead Sea. Viewed from a height they are coloured a deep azure, a characteristic usual with salt lakes. If they are allowed to dry upon the body of the bather it is as though he had been covered with flour, and neither fish nor molluscs can live within them. The shores of the lake, which are in general low, are impregnated with salt; and the margin, upon which are found fragments of fossil coral and shell, shines like a white ribbon by the side of the blue. Three boats of not more than 20 tons burden compose the entire fleet of this inland sea.4