The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

Tin: VOLGA DELTA. 369thirds of that of the Danube, draining- an area scarcely half as large as that of theRussian river.The volume of water discharged by the Yolga, which is at least equal to thatof all the other influents of the Caspian together, is sufficient to exercise a considerableinfluence on the level of the sea. Thus the floods of 1867, the heaviestthat had occurred for forty years, raised it by more than 2 feet, the abnormalexcess representing 9,600 billions of cubic feet, or about three times the volumeof the Lake of Geneva. On the other hand, the delta steadily encroaches on thesea, though at a rate which it is almost impossible to determine.The sedimentarymatter held in solution, estimated by Mrczkovski at about the two-thousandthpart of the fluid, continues to form islands and sand-banks, while generally raisingthe bed of the sea round the face of the delta.The Yolga abounds in fish, and the fishing industry supports a large number ofhands. Its lower reaches especially form for the whole of Russia a vast reservoirof food, varying with the seasons, and yielding large quantities even in winter, bymeans of holes broken in the ice at certain intervals. On the islands of the deltaare numerous stations where the fish is cut up, and the roe prepared to be convertedinto fresh and salt caviar. The lieUtrja and the sterlet, both of the sturgeonfamily, attain the greatest size, and are the most highly esteemed, but their numberseems to have diminished since the appearance of the steamboat in these waters.On both sides of the Yolga delta the Caspian seaboard is fringed for a distanceof 240 miles, between the mouths of the Kuma and Ural, by a multitude of narrowpeninsulas and islets, with a mean elevation of from 25 to 530 feet, and separatedfrom each other by shallow channels, penetrating in some places from 12 to30 miles inland. Seen from an elevation, these so-called biiyri (singular biujor),which occur nowhere else, at least with anything like the same regularity, presentwith the intervening lagoons the appearance of an endless series of parallel andalternating walls and moats, all of uniform width. Many have been swept awayby the various arms of the Yolga, but a large number still remain even in the deltaitself, and all the fishing stations, as well as Astrakhan, have been establishedon eminences of this sort. The thousand intervening channels form a vast andstill almost unexplored labyrinth, of which carefully prepared charts alone can giveany idea. Inirnediately west of the delta the lagoons are practically so manyrivers, but farther on they form rather a chain of lakes separated by sandyisthmuses, and in summer changed into natural salines by the rapid evaporation.Even in the interior of the steppes, far from the present limits of the sea, such saltlagoons occur here and there, separated from each other by parallel strips, as onthe coast.According to Baer, to whom we owe the first detailed account of these formations,all the elongated eminences are stratified in the form of concentric curves. Themore decidedly argillaceous layers form, so to say, the nucleus round which isdisposed the more sandy matter, a distribution pointing at the action of runningwater depositing sedimentary sands on argillaceous beds.The same conclusion isdeduced from the general direction of the bugri, spreading out like a fan north and