The sea front was swept away, and the level of the land hereabouts was lowered.
There is a tradition that Timur attempted the passage of the Hindu Kush by one of the unmapped passes hereabouts, and that, having failed, he left a record of his failure engraved on a rock in the pass.
The height and massiveness of the mountains decrease to the south-west, where the piedmont belt sweeps westward around them in western Georgia and eastern Alabama Some of the residual mountains hereabouts are reduced to a mere skeleton or framework by the retrogressive penetration of widening valleys between wasting spurs; the very type of vanishing forms, Certain districts within the mountains, apparently consisting of less resistant crystalline rocks, have been reduced to basin-like peneplains in the same time that served only to grade the slopes and subdue the summits of the neighboring mountains of more resistant rocks; the best example of this kind is the Asheville peneplain in North Carolina, measuring about 40 by 20 m.
Near the junction of the Surkhan with the Oxus are the ruins of the ancient city of Termez, on the northern or Bokharan bank, and the ferry at Pata Kesar (not far from the ruins of an old bridge) is the connecting link between Bokhara and Mazar hereabouts.
Another legend states that the Nibelung treasure is hidden hereabouts in the Rhine.