CASPIAN SHORELINES NEAR BAKU. 31
in the ravine, and thus shows that the high-water stand when the silt was deposited had been preceded by a time of less high water. A few miles east of Baku, a flat hill-top (B, fig. I7) was sparsely strewn with water-worn cobbles at a height of 43o feet ; and here we found a well-formed pothole, about 3 feet in diameter, and of
somewhat less depth, with a round stone lying in it. Southwest of Baku, near the southern end of the monoclinal ridge beyond the oil-wells of Bibi-Eibat, a small patch of cemented cob
bles, pebbles, and broken shells lay at a height of about 46o feet ; but it may be that this is simply a remnant of a Pliocene deposit.
The most interesting records of the modern high-level Caspian near Baku were found in three cobble spits at about 600 feet altitude above the present water level. As no accounts of the Baku district that I have read make mention of shore records
Fig. 18.—The Oil-Wells of Bibi-Eibat, two miles south of Baku, looking south.
at so great an altitude, these spits will be described in some detail. The first one was found at S, fig. 15, on the top of the horseshoe ridge of the late Tertiary Aralo-Caspian (Pontic) sandstones that incloses the anticlinal valley of the Bibi-Eibat oil-wells. The spit was somewhat east of the apex of the ridge curve. The anticline is figured in section in the little handbook, " Guide VII des Excursions du VII
Fig. 17.—Three-mile section of Ridge, six miles northeast of Baku,