396 
The Hon. Mr. Strangways on the 
distance, with which the name of this headland seems to be 
connected ; the present description, it must be remembered, is 
merely topographical. This bank is very well defined, and 
continuous throughout its whole extent, with the exception only 
of that part south of the town, where the rise is insensible. The 
western portion of it, now separated from the gulph by bogs and 
marshes, has evidently been its ancient shore, as the eastern is now 
that of the Neva. Its average height is from thirty to forty feet, 
gradually rising towards the west. The great road to Riga runs 
at its foot, and the slope is ornamented with villas and gardens, 
being no longer dangerous from the undermining of the waters, 
which still affects the banks of the river above Petersburg. 
A similar bank skirts the northern shore till it meets the gulf 
near Cesterbeck. With the exception of the great marsh near 
Lakhta, which interrupts it, it is more continuous than that on the 
southern side of the town, leaving the river near Okhta, and being 
easily traced behind the Wyborg gate to the village of Colomyagy, 
meets the marsh opposite Lakhta. 
This bank appears in like manner to have formed the northern 
shore of the gulf, at a period when the alluvial deposits had not yet 
risen to the surface of the waters, and when the apex of the delta 
was the real mouth of the Neva. Where the banks became wider 
apart, and the current consequently slacker, the first deposit of sand 
was formed : this, at first a bar, then shewed itself above the level 
of the river as an ait or island ; many of these at last formed the 
delta as we now see it, and as it is now, by a repetition of the same 
process, extending itself towards Cronstadt. As the breadth of the 
channel becomes gradually wider towards the west, and the water 
deeper, this deposition takes place slower and slower as it advances; 
and the silt or sand of which it is composed, being also finer in 
