The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

Two hundred years ago the navigable channel flowed due east from Astrakhan;3G8RUSSIA IX EUROPE.since then it has shifted continually more to the right, and now runs south- southwest.The Balda also, which communicates by a side branch with the Akhtuba,has recently acquired considerable proportions at the expense of its neighbours,and has gradually swallowed up the last vestiges of the famous Baldinskiy convent.The bars and sand-banks, too, are constantly changing their position and depth.None of them have more than 7 feet 6 inches of water, and the second inimportance had only 18 inches in the summer of 1852. But for the prevailingsouth and south-west winds, which drivethe sedimentary matter of the main bedup stream, the Volga would be completely inaccessible. Hence the engineerDanilov now proposes to avoid the delta altogether by constructing a canal fromFig. 195.The Volga and Akht&ba.Scale 1 : 1,230,000.Tiirovll-.s of S.r.7|Astrakhan to the port of Serebrasovskaya, 114 miles to the south-west, whereoccurs the first deep bay south of the Volga.Without including the shorter windings, the Volga has a total length of2,230 miles, presenting, with its tributaries, about 7,200 miles of navigable waters.From the sources of the Kama to the delta, these waters cross sixteen parallelsof latitude, and nine isothermal degrees, so that while the mean annual temperatureof the upper region is at freezing point, it oscillates about 9° inthe delta. At Astrakhan the Volga is frozen for about 98 days, and atKazan for 152, while the Kama is ice-bound for six months at the junction ofthe Chusovaya above Perm. The rainfall of the basin is about 16 inches, whichwould give 700,000 cubic feet per second, were all the moisture to be carried offby the bed of the Volga. But much is absorbed by vegetation in the forests andsteppes, and in the latter region direct evaporation may dissipate about 40 inchesduring the year in tracts fully exposed to the winds. Altogether about threefourthsof the rainfall are thus lost en route, and preliminary estimates havedetermined the mean discharge at about 203,000 cubic feet, which is less than two-