GREAT DELTAS AND NEW LANDS FORMED. 
573 
So great, indeed, must have been the increment of matter in the Caspian, the 
Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, that we must not be surprised to find very essen- 
tial distinctions between the features of the present lands near the mouths of such 
rivers, and those which prevailed during the earlier days of their occupancy by 
man. Thus freshwater shells common in the Volga have been found at about 
300 feet below the city of Astrakhan, which is thus built upon the mud of that 
river. By its daily increasing delta, the Caspian Sea is, indeed, constantly en- 
croached upon and diminished in area, the shallow water already extending to 
forty and fifty miles south of the present embouchure 1 * * 4 . Thus also, near the mouth 
of the Don, the formation of new land has proceeded very rapidly ; and even since 
the commercial port of Taganrog was founded by the Empress Catharine, the 
waters of the Sea of Azof have been so silted up, that large ships cannot now 
approach within eleven versts of their former anchoring-ground. 
Again, in regard to the Dnieper, if we may rely upon Herodotus, who personally 
examined the coasts of the Black Sea between that river and the Danube, a still 
greater change must have taken place in its relations to the land. The father of 
history speaks, for example, of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) having two distinct 
navigable mouths ; and of these features he seems to have been an eye-witness. 
The easternmost branch, he adds, dividing from the main stream a long way up, 
fell into the sea to the east of the race-course of Achilles (the Kosa Tendra and 
Kosa Djarilgatch of our maps) ; whilst he further speaks of two intermediate, in- 
land, but navigable streams, one of which united with the present river, the other 
with the lost branch. Whether the desiccation and stoppage of the lost branch of 
the Dnieper has been occasioned by the formation of fresh land at its mouth, which 
occupying a portion of the low sandy tract between the mainland and the Grume a, 
eventually forced back the waters, and threw them into the present stream ; or 
whether the operation was aided by a rise of the land connected with, or parallel to 
the great lines of ancient disturbance in the Crimsea and the Caucasus, are points 
i These new lands at the mouths of the great south-flowing Russian streams are marked upon our Map, 
PI. VI., in a peculiar tint. The Sea of Azof, near Taganrog, is ten to twelve feet deep only, and in no part 
of it do the soundings exceed forty-five feet. The new port of Berdiansk, established by that enlightened 
administrator of the governments of New Russia and the Crimea, Count M. Woronzow, is one of the 
best havens in the Sea of Azof. In the Caspian, which has no outlet, observations are wanting to prove, 
whether its volume of water is really diininishiny by an evaporation which exceeds the annual supply of 
the Volga. 
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