The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

THE SEA OF AZOV. 425basin.Since 1865 nearly 650 beds have here been found, mostly near the surface,the seams varying in thickness from 1 foot to 24 feet, and containing everydescription of combustible material, from the anthracite to the richest bituminouscoal. The ravines here furrowing the land facilitate the study of the strata andthe extraction of the mineral. Yet these valuable deposits were long neglected,and even during the Crimean war the Russians, deprived of their Englishsupplies, were still without the necessary apparatus to avail themselves of thesetreasures. Even the iron ores,which here also abound, werelittle utilised till that event,since when the extraction bothof coal and iron has gone oncontinually increasing in theDonetz basin. In 1839 theyield scarcely exceeded 14,000tons, whereas the output ofthe Grushovka mines alonenow amounts to 210,000 tons,and the total yield of thecoal-pits exceeded 672,000tons in 1872. The coal is nowused by the local railways andthe steamers of the Don, Seaof Azov, and Euxine.** 221—Ovbaos, or Dried Water-courses, m the Do*Valley.scaOe i : 300,000.The Sea of Azov.Already reduced in extentby the terrestrial revolutionswhich separated it from theCaspian, the Sea of Azov hasbeen further diminished inhistoric times, although farless than might be supposedfrom the local traditions. NoMilesdoubt Herodotus gives thePalus Mseotis an equal area to that of the Euxine. But as soon as the Greekshad visited and founded settlements on this inland sea they discovered howlimited it was compared with the open sea. Nevertheless fifteen hundred years agoit was certainly somewhat larger and deeper than at present, the alluvia of the Donhaving gradually narrowed its basin and raised its bed.Its outline also has beencompletely changed, Strabo's description no longer answering to the actual form ofitsshores.The town of Tana'is, founded by the Greeks at the very mouth of the Don, and