Casper
a town of Wyoming, the county-seat of Natrona co. It is on the Chicago and Northwestern, and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroads, and on the Platte river. The town has an important trade in wool, live-stock, and oil. It is the seat of the Wyoming General Hospital, and has a library and other public buildings. Its chief industry is a large petroleum by-product plant. Pop. (1910) 2,639; (1920) 11,447. tries, CASPIAN SEA (ancient Mare Hyrcanum), a great salt lake on the boundary of Europe and Asia, wholly inclosed, having no outlet whatever to the ocean, and surrounded by Persia, the Azerbaijan republic, the Caucasian countries, the Russian governments of Orenburg and Astrakhan, and the Siberian provinces of Uralsk and Transcaspia.
Its greatest length from N. to S. is 760 miles; average breadth, 200; area, about 150,000 square miles. The waters of this inland sea are less salty than those of the ocean. The water has a bitter taste, ascribed by some to the great quantities of naphtha with which the surrounding soil abounds, but by others to the presence of Glauber salts, among the substances held in solution. The fish are principally salmon, sturgeons, and sterlets; a kind of herring is also found, and there are porpoises and seals. One of the most important industries of its shore towns is the manufacture and export of caviar. The Caspian Sea has no tides, but its navigation is dangerous because of violent storms, especially from the S. E., by which its waters are sometimes driven for many miles over the adjacent plains. The depth near the S. end is about 600 feet; and in some places near the center it attains a depth of nearly 3,000 feet; but near the coast it is very shallow, seldom reaching a depth CASS of more than 3 feet at 100 yards from the shore, and in many places a depth of 12 feet is not reached within several miles of the beach. On the N. E. and E. it is especially shallow. The water level of the Caspian Sea is about 85 feet below that of the Black Sea. It receives the waters of a number of large rivers, of which the greatest is the Volga. The Ural, the Tereh, and the Kur also fall into it. The most important towns on its shores are Baku in the Azerbaijan republic, Astrakhan, Petrovsk, and Krasnovodsk in Russia, and Enzeli and Resht in Persia. Communication with the Baltic Sea is possible by way of the Volga and various canals. Baku is the eastern terminal of two railways, and Krasnovodsk the western terminal of the Transcaspian railway.