THE VOLGA DELTA. 3G9 



thirds of that of the Danube, draining an area scarcely half as large as that of the 

 Russian river. 



The volume of water discharged by the Yolga, which is at least equal to that 

 of all the other influents of the Caspian together, is sufficient to exercise a con- 

 siderable influence on the level of the sea. Thus the floods of 18G7, the heaviest 

 that had occurred for forty years, raised it by more than 2 feet, the abnormal 

 excess representing 9,600 billions of cubic feet, or about three times the volume 

 of the Lake of Geneva. On the other hand, the delta steadily encroaches on the 

 sea, though at a rate which it is almost impossible to determine. The sedimentary 

 matter held in solution, estimated by Mrczkovski at about the two-thousandth 

 part of the fluid, continues to form islands and sand-banks, while generally raising 

 the bed of the sea round the face of the delta. 



The Yolga abounds in fish, and the fishing industry supports a large number of 

 hands. Its lower reaches especially form for the whole of Russia a vast reservoir 

 of food, varying with the seasons, and yielding large quantities even in winter, by 

 means of holes broken in the ice at certain intervals. On the islands of the delta 

 are numerous stations where the fish is cut up, and the roe prepared to be converted 

 into fresh and salt caviar. The bielùga and the sterlet, both of the sturgeon 

 family, attain the greatest size, and are the most highly esteemed, but their number 

 seems to have diminished since the appearance of the steamboat in these waters. 



On both sides of the Volga delta the Caspian seaboard is fringed for a distance 

 of 240 miles, between the mouths of the Kuma and Ural, by a multitude of narrow 

 peninsulas and islets, with a mean elevation of from 25 to 30 feet, and separated 

 from each other by shallow channels, penetrating in some places from 12 to 

 30 miles inland. Seen from an elevation, these so-called hùgrî (singular biigor), 

 which occur nowhere else, at least with anything like the same regularity, present 

 with the intervening lagoons the appearance of an endless series of parallel and 

 alternating walls and moats, all of uniform width. Many have been swept away 

 by the various arms of the Volga, but a large number still remain even in the delta 

 itself, and all the fishing stations, as well as Astrakhan, have been established 

 on eminences of this sort. The thousand intervening channels form a vast and. 

 still almost unexplored labyrinth, of which carefully prepared charts alone can give 

 any idea. Immediately west of the delta the lagoons are practically so many 

 rivers, but farther on they form rather a chain of lakes separated by sandy 

 isthmuses, and in summer changed into natural salines by the rapid evaporation. 

 Even in the interior of the steppes, far from the present limits of the sea, such salt 

 lagoons occur here and there, separated from each other by parallel strips, as on 

 the coast. 



According to Baer, to whom we owe the first detailed account of these formations, 

 all the elongated eminences are stratified in the form of concentric curves. The 

 more decidedly argillaceous layers form, so to say, the nucleus round which is 

 disposed the more sandy matter, a distribution pointing at the action of running 

 water depositing sedimentary sands on argillaceous beds. The same conclusion is 

 deduced from the general direction of the bûgrî, spreading out like a fan north and 



