The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

324 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.jslaiddown at the dangerous points. Away from the coast it is generally very deep,740 feet in some places, and in the north the coast is indented by numerous inlets,all running south-east and north-west, and continued towards Lapland by chainsof lakes and rivers, with intervening ridges 800 to 1,000 feet high, all runningin the same direction. These still partly flooded water-courses are parallel withthe Finnish lakes, and their axis follows precisely the same lines as those of theWhite Sea, from the so-called Gulf of Onega to that of Kandalaksha in theFig. 173.Lake Onega.Scale 1 : 2.780.000.extreme north-west. Glacialstriae have also been traced alongthese lines, and the &sar, or sehja,£.,fPrun mostly in the same direction.Sa'i'ma, the largest lake inFinland, is also a tributary of theLadoga through the Wuoxen,or Voksa, noted for the famousfalls of Iniafra, the grandest inthe whole Neva basin. Evenwithin the present century the"Wuoxen has changed its lowercourse, its present lying some24 miles south of its formermouth near the village of Keksholm.Heavy rains swept awayan isthmus till 1818 separatingLadoga from the long LakeSuvando, which already communicatedwith the Wuoxenthrough a small canal cut by thegovernment of Finland. Theoutlet thus suddenly created immediatelylowered the level of56' tofGSuvando, which shrank to theproportions of a river, and the13 to 27.——— 25 Miles.Wuoxen, almost entirely forsakingits former outlet, dischargedsouth-eastwards through the newbed. But its fluvial form renders it probable that in a previous geological epochthe Suvando had already received the waters of the Wuoxen.Like Onega and Peipus, Ladoga was formerly far more extensive even thanat present, for its low and almost treeless southern shores consist of clays, sands,and gravels containing large quantities of erratic stones of every size, from simplepebbles to huge boulders. From these low-lying shores the bed of the lake fallsimperceptibly towards the deep waters commanded by the granitic cliffs of thenorth coast. Near some rocky islands it is from 300 to 500 feet deep, sinking to