364 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



The Volga and its Tributaries. 



The rivulet which, at its farthest source, takes the name of Volga, rises not in 

 a highland region, but in the midst of lakes, marshes, and low wooded hills little 

 elevated above the Volkosnkiy Les (" Volkon Forest ") and Valdai plateau, which 

 may be taken as the true source of the stream. The highest ridges of the Valdai 

 scarcely rise 220 feet above the plateau, although the chief crest, the Popova Gora, 

 attains an altitude of 1,170 feet. The mean elevation of the land is also sufficient 

 to give it a far more severe aspect than that of the Lovat and Lake Ilmen plains 

 on the west and north-west. Its peat beds, lakes, and tir forests are more 

 suggestive of the neighbourhood of Lake Onega, some 300 miles farther north, 

 and the climate is, in fact, about 2° colder than in the surrounding dis- 

 tricts. Yet the Valdai flora differs on the whole but little, if at aU, from that of 

 the plains stretching towards the great lakes, whence it has been concluded that 

 these heights are of comparatively recent origin. They have no indigenous 

 vegetation, all their species coming from the region released from its icy fetters at 

 the close of the long glacial epoch. The plateau, now furrowed by the rains and 

 frosts, formed at that time a continuation of the uniform slope of the land, and, 

 like it, was covered by the ice-fields from Finland. Its hills are strewn with 

 erratic boulders of all sizes brought down by the northern glaciers. In its water 

 fauna also this plateau forms part of the Finno-Scandinavian region. The fish of 

 its lakes, and even of the Upper Volga itself, do not belong to the Volga basin 

 proper, which the Valdai streams seem to have only recently joined. To judge 

 from their fauna, the true origin of the Volga should be sought, not in the Valdai, 

 but in Lake Belo Ozero ("White Lake"), east of Ladoga. The sturgeon and 

 sterlet inhabit the Sheksna, the outlet of this lake, as they do the Middle Volga 

 itself. 



The region giving birth to the Volga is one of the swampiest in "West Russia, 

 resembling a lowland tract rather than a true water-parting. Separated by a 

 simple peat bed from a tributary of the Volkhov, the streamlet rising in the 

 Volgino Verkhovye, and sometimes called the Jordan from its sacred character, 

 flows from a spot now marked by the ruins of a chapel, thence oozing rather than 

 flowing from bog to bog for a distance of about 22 miles, when it successively 

 traverses three terraced lakes, whose levels differ only a few inches one from the 

 other. The Jukopa, one of its southern affluents, often causes a back flow to 

 Lake Peno near its source, the natural fall being so slight th:it the impulse of a 

 lateral current suffices to reverse it. After leaving Lake Peno, which is close to 

 Lake Dvinetz, source of the Dvina, the Volga turns eastwards to Lake Volgo, 

 where it is already a considerable stream, with a volume of from 3,500 to 3,600 

 cubic feet per second, according to the seasons. Three miles farther down occurs 

 its first rapid, where a dam has now been constructed, which during the rains 

 converts the upper valley, with its lakes, into one vast reservoir 48 miles long, 

 over 1 mile wide, and containing 6,300,000 cubic feet of water. Boats 



