132 On a change of Climate^ 



the estuary of the rivers Bog and Dnieper, from Otchakof to Kin- 

 burn. But not only straits and estuaries, but the whole sea of Azoph 

 is annually frozen in November, [ ! ] and is seldom navigable earlier 

 than April. This sea is fished during winter, through holes cut with 

 rnattoeks in the ice, with large nets, which are thrust by poles from 

 one to the other ; a method which has given rise to Slrabo's exag- 

 gerated picture, of ' fish as large as dolphins, (apparently meaning 

 the bieluga) dug oat of the ice with spades.' This remarkable se- 

 verity of climate on the northern shores of the Euxine, may induce 

 lis to give a proportionate faidi to what the ancients assure us of its 

 southern and eastern shores ; and though Ovid may be supposed to 

 have exaggerated the miseries of his banishment ; and though re- 

 ligious as well as African prejudice may have swayed Tertullian in 

 his dismal account of Pontus, it is certain that Strabo can be influ- 

 enced by neither of these motives, where he accounts for Homer's 

 ignorance of Paphlagonia, ' because this region was inaccessible 

 through hs severity of climate.' 



" To account for this phenomenon, is far more difficult than to es- 

 tablish its existence ; and the difficulty is greater, because none of 

 those theories by which the problems of climate have been usually 

 solved, v^^ill, in the present instance, apply. In elevation above the 

 sea, which, when considerable, is an obvious and undoubted cause of 

 cold, the downs of European Tartary do not exceed those of Eng- 

 land. Forests, the removal of which has in many countries been 

 supposed to diminish frost, have here never existed ; and though the 

 custom of burning the withered grass in spring, which has been for 

 so many centuries the only secret of Scythian husbandry, may have 

 produced in many parts of this vast pasture, a considerable deposit of 

 saltpetre, it is not easy to suppose with Gibbon, that a cause like this 

 can produce such hitterness of wind, or such unvarying rigor of ivin- 

 ter. It may he observed, however, (and the observation, though it 

 will not solve the difficulty, may perhaps direct our attention into the 

 right train of inquiry) that it is only in comparison with the more 

 western parts of Europe, that the climate of Scythia is a subject of 

 surprise ; and that in each of the two great continents, we discover in 

 our progress eastward, along the same parallel of latitude, a sensible 

 and uniform increase of cold. Vienna is colder than Paris ; Astra- 

 chan than Vienna ; the eastern districts of Asia are incomparably 

 colder than Astrachan ; and Choka, an island of the Pacific, in the 

 san*e latitude with Astrachan or Paris, was found by the Russian cir- 



