The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

27GRUSSIA IN EUEOPE.nowhere an absolute fall, the greatest incline being only a little over 2 inchesin a yard.Here and there occur lateral cascades, besides back flows and secondaryrapids in several places.At present the pilots reckon nine main rapids altogether,but these are decomposed into hundreds and thousands of lesser falls. The rivervaries greatly in width, expanding to133. The Dmfpeb EiriDS.Scale 1 : 410,000.5,676 feet at the most dangerous point,and contracting to 520 feet at the " Wolf5Q -50L of PGorge," towards the end of the falls.They are navigable only during the eightweeks of the spring floods for small craft,all those of heavy draught stopping atYekaterinoslav above, and at Alexandrovskbelow them. Of the boats runningthe rapids none return, all beingbroken up either at Kherson or elsewhere,and sold for building purposes.The attempts atcanalisation carried onfor over a hundred years have hithertoremained ineffectual, and the throughnavigation, consequently still continuesinterrupted at this point.The Bug, Dniester, and other southernrivers have also their rapids on theirpassage through the granite zone, andone of the smaller tributaries of the Bughas even a clear fall of over 30 feet.Hence the steppe rivers may be said, onthe whole, rather to hinder than promotecommercial intercourse.The Dnieper forms no delta beyonda few straggling branches shifting withthe floods, and discharging into a liman,or lagoon of brackish water, partlyseparated from the Black Sea by a sandbank.A navigable channel for vesselsdrawing 20 feet is kept open with somedifficulty by dint of constantdredging.In summer the water ofthe liman, fed55"I0 E of Gchiefly from the sea, is too salt for use,but at other times it is employed for all'domestic purposes, and drunk by cattlewith impunity.The liman also receivesthe Bug, the Boh of the Little Russians, a term meaning " God," and conferredon it through some now forgotten superstition ; it is the Hypanis of the Greeks.