OUTLINES OF CENTRAL RUSSIA. 
20 * 
void of a single elevation approaching to the character of a mountain ; whilst with 
this absence of altitude, no portion of Europe contains so great a number of fine 
rivers. The principal watershed which divides Russia into two hydrographical 
basins, and throws off some rivers into the Baltic and White Seas, and others into 
the Black Sea, the Sea of Azof and the Caspian, is not even defined by any 
chain of continuous and decided hills. Ranging from the frontiers of Poland on 
the south-west through the Valdai Hills, and thence to the north-east, the central 
part only of this watershed is entitled to be called a ridge. As erroneous views 
have prevailed respecting them, we may here briefly state, that these hills consist 
simply of plateaux which originate between the south end of the Lake Peipus and 
the river Dima, from whence, rising to an average height of 800 or 900 feet, with 
a few summits attaining to about 1000 feet, they continue to the north-east, and 
constitute the Valdai Plills. When studied as a whole, however, these hills extend 
in reality also from Livonia to the south-east, and range by the sources of the 
Velika and the Dima to Orel, Kursk, and Voroneje, where they form a domelike 
elevation in the centre of Russia, to the geological influence of which we shall 
hereafter advert. It may in the meantime be remarked, that the south-eastern 
branch of these high grounds, near Kursk and Orel, deflects the river Oka to the 
north until it merges in the Volga, and also determines the northward course of 
the Don, until that stream finds a depression by which it escapes southwards to the 
Sea of Azof. 
It must also be stated, that the Valdai Hills do not form, as some geographers 
had supposed, a continuous elevation which unites with the mountains of the North 
Ural. On the contrary, they rapidly decrease in altitude towards the north-east, 
and are lost in marshy lacustrine tracts, just of sufficient height to determine the 
flow of the river Vitegra into the Baltic, of the Onega into the White Sea, and of 
the tributaries of the Volga to the south. These upland lacustrine grounds on the 
north-east, wherein the north- and south-flowing streams are united by the splendid 
canal of Marinsk, are, in fact, analogous to the marshes of Pinsk on the south- 
west, where the south-flowing Dnieper has, in like manner, been connected with 
the north-flowing rivers Niemen and Bug. 
And here it is worthy of remark, that a line prolonged between the very distant 
canals of Vitegra and Pinsk passes also through the grounds traversed by the in- 
termediate canals of Tichvin and Lepel, the former uniting the Volga with Lake 
Ladoga, the latter joining the south-flowing Berezina with the north-flowing Diina, 
