DON COSSACKS. 
as 7 
the end of June : during the rest of the year, 
the water is so low, that upon several of the 
shallows it is not above eighteen inches deep 8 . 
In the Spring floods it rises from sixteen to 
eighteen feet, and the current is very rapid. 
The principal rivers falling into it are, the 
Danaetz, the JVoronetz, the Ckoper, the Med- 
veditz, and the Ilavla 2 3 ; but there are others, 
unnoticed hitherto by geographers, not perhaps 
of equal importance, although entitled to a 
place in maps of the country, owing to the 
number of inhabitants found upon their shores. 
About twenty miles below JVoronetz, close to 
the river, near a town called Kastinshoy, Gmelin 
observed one of those deposits of fossil 
elephants’ bones, of which there exist such 
wonderful remains in Siberia, at the mouths 
of rivers falling into the Jcy Sea. These bones 
are described as lying in the greatest disorder ; 
teeth, jaw-bones, ribs, vertebras, not mineralized, 
but in their natural state, having only sustained 
a partial decomposition 4 . The antiquities of the 
(2) Lord Whitworth's Account of Russia, p. 1 20. Strawberry Hill, 
edit. 1788 . 
(3) Tableau abrflg<5 de l’Empire de la Russia, par Pleschtjeief, p.23. 
Moscou, 1796. 
(4) Journal des Savans Voyageurs, p. 34. 
CHAP. 
XIII. 
Natural 
Curiosities 
and Anti- 
quities. 
