THE VOLGA. 



36i 



and rafts are then able to descend from the lake region, and higher up the river 

 becomes regularly navigable. JYear this point the Volga is nearly doubled by 

 the Selijarovka from the winding Lake Seliger, whose insular monastery of St 

 Nilus is still visited yearly by about 20,000 pilgrims. Here may be said 

 to begin the commercial stream, the Ra, Rhas, or Rhos of the ancients and of the 

 Mordvinians, the Yul of the Cheremissians, the Atel or Etil of the Tatars, the 



Fig. 192. — Sources of the Volga and Dvina. 

 Scale 1 : 575,000. 



E of P. 



E of G. 



12 Miles. 



Tamar of the Armenians — that is, in these langruaffes, the " Eiver " — and in Finnish 

 the Volga, or the " Holy River." 



Below the Selijarovka it descends the slopes of the plateau through a series of 

 thirty-five porogi, or rapids, which, however, do not stop the navigation, and 

 beyond the last of the series it winds unimpeded through the Great Russian 

 lowlands, receiving numerous navigable tributaries, and communicating by canal 

 Avith the Baltic basin. ' After passing the jjopulous towns of Tver, Rîbinsk, 

 Yaroslav, and Kostroma, it is joined at Nijni-Novgorod by the Oka, of nearly 



