The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

378 RUSSIA IX EUROPE.more than 4,000 feet, culminating with Mount Iremel, which is over 5,000feet thus rivalling the highest summits of the Northern Urals. Less elevatedare the two other chains ; that is, the central, which continues the main axisof the ran°-e, and the eastern, which gradually merges with the plateaux borderingon the Aral Sea. At its southern extremity the Ural system is no less than 180miles wide.*The river Ural, whose course continues the Ural range as the official limit ofEurope and Asia, was formerly known as the Yayik, a name which has beensuppressed in consequence of its association with the insurrection of the YayikCossacks under Pugachov. The Ural ranks with the great European rivers inthe leno-th of its course, but not in the volume of its waters. Rising in theKalo-antau gorges on the Asiatic side, it receives its first tributaries from thevallevs sheltered from the moist winds, and the mean annual snow and rain fall ofits upper basin is probably nowhere as much as 16 inches, diminishing graduallysouthwards. Much is also carried off by evaporation, its argillaceous bed beingnearly everywhere over 330 feet, and in some places 5S0 feet wide, but nowhere deep.Hence the commercial town of Orenburg is unable to utilise it for navigation,although it here flows west and east in the most favourable direction for the transitof o-oods between Russia and Turkestan. In its middle course it has only twoimportant tributaries, the Sakmara in the north, and the Ilak in the south.Lower down it receives nothing but rivulets, and below Uralsk, where it resumesits southerly course, the affluents are few and far between. Many even fail toreach its bed, being absorbed in the sands, or forming stagnant pools, which are attimes displaced by the pressure of the shifting dunes (barkhani) of the plains. Afterreceiving the brackish water of the Solanka, the last of its tributaries, it windssluggishly through the steppe for a distance of 300 miles, or about one-fourth ofits entire course, without receiving any fresh supplies. All the streams, such asthe Great and Little Uzen, which flow towards its valley, are absorbed beforereaching its bed. Hence the current diminishes southwards, and at the head ofthe delta the volume of water is less than half of what it was at Uralsk.The Ural has certainly become impoverished during the last hundred years,partly, doubtless, owing to the destruction of the forests along its middle course,first by the Kalmnks, and then by the Kirghiz, but mainly in consequence of ageneral diminution of the rainfall throughout the entire zone, comprising SouthernRussia and Turkestan. In 1769 Pallas found that it reached the Caspian throughnineteen mouths, and the delta had an area of over 1,000 square miles. In 1821the delta had been reduced to less than one-half, and the mouths to nine, of whichfour were still deep enough to float small craft ; but since 1846 there have usuallybeen but three mouths, the other water-courses being only occasionally flushed during* yarious elevations of the Middle and Southern Urals :Middle Urals.Southern- Urals.Denejkin Kamen . . . 5,360 feet. Iremel 5,040 feet.Konchatkov .... 4,795 „ Yurma 3,447 „Blagodat 1,515 „ Taganai 3.441 „Pass of Yekaterinburg . . 1,180 „ Akktuba 2,698 .,