423 
TO AZOF AND TAGANROG. 
falling very rapidly down the current, sailed eir\i\ 
into the Palus Majotis. The mouths of the „ — 
Don are thirteen in number. In other respects, 
this river, by its shallows and islets, its perio- 
dical inundations, its rapidity and rolling eddies, 
perturbed by slime and mud, its vegetable and 
animal productions, bears, as was before re- 
marked, a most striking resemblance to the 
Nile. The inhabitants of all this part of the' Sea of 
Azof maintain that its waters annually diminish. 
A remarkable phenomenon occurs during vio- Remark- 
r . . . i able Phas- 
lent east winds : the sea retires m so singular a nomeuou. 
manner, that the people of Taganrog are able to 
effect a passage upon dry land to the opposite 
coast, a distance of twenty versts 1 2 : but when 
the wind changes, and this it sometimes does 
very suddenly, the waters return with such 
rapidity to their wonted bed, that many lives 
are lost*. In this manner, also, small vessels 
(1) Rather less than fourteen miles. 
(2) Similar changes are effected by winds towards the northern parts 
of the Red Sea ; and the author, being aware of this circumstance, had 
availed himself of the fact, in the. first edition, to explain the passage 
of the Israelites in their escape from ligypt. The allusion excited a 
considerable degree of clamour : some stupid bigots maintained that 
the reconciliation of this event to natural causes amounted to a denial 
of the truth of sacred history ; as if the miraculous interposition of the 
Almighty in behalf of his chosen people, and in the overthrow of their 
pursuers, were not as awfully manifested in “ dividing the waters," by 
“ the wind and the storm fulfilling his word," as by any other means of 
supernatural power. To bold an argument, however, with such bigots, 
would be to as little purpose as to reason with Turks in matters of 
religion : 
