J68 



RUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



Two hundred years ago the navigable channel flowed due east from Astrakhan ; 

 since then it has shifted continually more to the right, and now runs south- south- 

 west. The Balda also, which communicates by a side branch with the Akhtuba, 

 has recently acquired considerable proportions at the expense of its neighbours, 

 and has gradually swallowed up the last vestiges of the famous Baldinskiy convent. 

 The bars and sand-banks, too, are constantly changing their position and depth. 

 None of them have more than 7 feet 6 inches of water, and the second in 

 importance had only 18 inches in the summer of 1852. But for the prevailing 

 south and south-west winds, which drive the sedimentary matter of the main bed 

 up stream, the Volga would be completely inaccessible. Hence the engineer 

 Danilov now proposes to avoid the delta altogether by constructing a canal from 



Fig. 195. — The Volga and Akhtdisa. 

 Scale 1 ; 1,230,000. 



30 Miles. 



Astrakhan to the port of Serebrasovskaya, 114 miles to the south-west, where 

 occurs the first deep bay south of the Volga. 



Without including the shorter windings, the Volga has a total length of 

 2,230 miles, presenting, with its tributaries, about 7,200 miles of navigable waters. 

 From the sources of the Kama to the delta, these waters cross sixteen parallels 

 of latitude, and nine isothermal degrees, so that while the mean annual tem- 

 perature of the upper region is at freezing point, it oscillates about 9 in 

 the delta. At Astrakhan the Volga is frozen for about 98 days, and at 

 Kazan for 152, Avhile the Kama is ice-bound for six months at the junction of 

 the Chusovaya above Perm. The rainftill of the basin is about 16 inches, which 

 would give 700,000 cubic feet per second, were all the moisture to be carried off 

 by the bed of the Volga. But much is absorbed by vegetation in the forests and 

 steppes, and in the latter region direct evaporation may dissipate about 40 inches 

 during the year in tracts fully exposed to the winds. Altogether about three- 

 fourths of the rainfall are thus lost en route, and preliminary estimates have 

 determined the mean discharge at about 203,000 cubic feet, which is less than two- 



