At Ardrishaig, six miles beyond Tarbert and on the west side of Loch Gilp, the outward run of the _Columba_ ends, and passengers for the West Highlands tranship to the _Linnet_, in order to be conveyed through the Crinan Canal.
THE VOLGA
ELISÉE RECLUS
The rivulet which, at its farthest source, takes the name of Volga, rises not in a highland region, but in the midst of lakes, marshes and low wooded hills, little elevated above the Volkosniky Les (“Volkon Forest”) and Valdaï plateau, which may be taken as the true source of the stream. The highest ridges of the Valdaï scarcely rise 220 feet above the plateau, although the chief crest, the Popova Gora, attains an altitude of 1,170 feet. The mean elevation of the land is also sufficient to give it a far more severe aspect than that of the Lovat and Lake Ilmen plains on the north-west. Its peat beds, lakes and fir forests are more suggestive of the neighbourhood of Lake Onega, some 300 miles farther north, and the climate is, in fact, about two degrees colder than in the surrounding districts. Yet the Valdaï flora differs on the whole but little, if at all, from that of the plains stretching towards the great lakes, whence it has been concluded that these heights are of comparatively recent origin. They have no indigenous vegetation, all their species coming from the region released from its icy fetters at the close of the long glacial epoch. The plateau, now furrowed by rain and frost, formed at that time a continuation of the uniform slope of the land, and like it, was covered by the ice-fields from Finland. The fish of its lakes, and even of the Upper Volga itself, do not belong to the Volga basin proper, which the Valdaï streams seem to have only recently joined. To judge from their fauna, the true origin of the Volga should be sought, not in the Valdaï, but in Lake Belo Ozero (“White Lake”), east of Lagoda. The sturgeon and sterlet inhabit the Shesksna, the outlet of this lake, as they do in the middle Volga itself. The region giving birth to the Volga is one of the swampiest in West Russia, resembling a lowland tract rather than a true water-parting. Separated by a simple peat bed from a tributary of the Volkhov, the streamlet rising in the Volgino Verkhovye, and sometimes called the Jordan from its sacred character, flows from a spot now marked by the ruins of a chapel, thence oozing rather than flowing from bog to bog for a distance of about twenty-two miles, when it successively traverses three terraced lakes, whose levels differ only a few inches from the other. The Jukopa, one of the southern affluents, often causes a back flow to Lake Peno near its course, the natural fall being so slight that the impulse of a lateral current suffices to reverse it. After leaving Lake Peno, which is close to Lake Dvinetz, source of the Dvina, the Volga turns eastward to Lake Volgo, where it is already a considerable stream, with a volume of from 3,500 to 3,600 cubic feet per second, according to the seasons. Three miles farther down occurs its first rapid, where a dam has now been constructed, which during the rains converts the upper valley, with its lakes, into one vast reservoir forty-eight miles long, over one mile wide, and containing 6,300,000 cubic feet of water. Boats and rafts are then able to descend from the lake region, and higher up the river becomes regularly navigable. Near this point the Volga is nearly doubled by the Selijarovka from the winding Lake Seligen, whose insular monastery of St. Nilus is still visited yearly by about 20,000 pilgrims. Here may be said to begin the commercial stream, the Ra, Rhas, or Rhos of the ancients and of the Mordvinians, the Yûl of the Cheremissiams, the Atel or Etil of the Tatars, the Tamar of the Armenians--that is in these languages, the “River”--and in Finnish the Volga, or the “Holy River.”
[Illustration: THE VOLGA]
Below the Selijarovka it descends the slopes of the plateau through a series of thirty-five _porogi, or rapids_, which, however, do not stop the navigation, and beyond the last of the series it winds unimpeded through the great Russian lowlands, receiving numerous navigable tributaries, and communicating by canal with the Baltic basin. After passing the populous towns of Tver, Ribinsk, Yaroslav, and Kostroma, it is joined at Niji-Novgorod by the Oka, of nearly equal volume, and historically even more important than the main stream. The Oka, which long served as the frontier between Tartar and Muscovite, rises in the region of the “black lands” and throughout a course of 900 miles waters the most fertile plains of Great Russia, bringing to the Nijni fair the produce of Orol, Kaluga, Tula, Riazan, Tambov, Vladimir, and Moscow. Over 1,440 yards broad, it seems like an arm of the sea at its confluence with the Volga. East of this point the main artery is swollen by other tributaries, which, though as large as the Seine, seem insignificant compared with the mighty Kama, joining it below Kazan from the Urals, and draining an area at least equal in extent to the whole of France. Judging from the direction of its course, the Kama seems to be the main stream, for below the junction the united rivers continue the southerly and south-westerly course of the Kama, whose clear waters flow for some distance before intermingling with the grey stream of the Volga. Below Simbirsk the tributaries are few and unimportant, and as the rainfall is here also slight, and the evaporation considerable, the mean discharge is probably as great at this place as at the delta.
Below the Kama junction there formerly existed a vast lacustrine basin, which has been gradually filled in by the alluvia of both streams. Here is the natural limit of the peat region, and here begins, on the right bank, that of the steppes. As we proceed southwards the atmosphere becomes less humid, the ground firmer, and below Simbirsk we no longer meet those mossy and wooded quagmires bound together by the tangled roots of trees, resembling matted cordage. But even in the boggy districts those floating forests are slowly disappearing as the land is brought more and more under cultivation.
Below the dried-up Simbirsk Lake the stream is deflected by an impassable limestone barrier eastwards to Samara, where it escapes through a breach and reverses its course along the southern escarpment of the hills, thus forming a long narrow peninsula projecting from the western plateau. Here is the most picturesque scenery on the Volga, which is now skirted by steep wooded cliffs, terminating in pyramids and sharp rocky peaks. Some of the more inaccessible summits are surmounted by the so-called “Stenka” Kurgans, raised in memory of Razin, Chief of the Cossacks and revolted peasantry, who had established themselves in this natural stronghold of the Volga. The hills often rise more than 300 feet above the stream, the Beliy Kluch, south-west of Sizran, attaining an absolute elevation of 1,155 feet or 1,120 feet above the mean level of the Volga.
The region of the delta really begins at the Tzaritzin bend, some 300 miles from the Caspian, for the stream here branches into countless channels between the beds of the Volga and the Akhtuba, known near the coast as the Bereket. Still the delta, properly so called, is formed only about thirty miles above Astrakhan, by the forking of the Buzan branch from the main bed. Near Astrakhan the Belda and Kûtûm, and, lower down, the Tzarova, Tzagan, Birûl, and other arms, break away, and in the vast alluvial peninsula projecting into the Caspian, and which is at least 110 miles round, there are altogether about two hundred mouths, most of them, however, shifting streams choked with mud. During the spring floods all the delta and lower courses below Tzaritzin form one vast body of moving waters, broken only by a few islands here and there, and after each of these floods new beds are formed, old ones filled up, so that the chart of the delta has to be constantly planned afresh. Two hundred years ago the navigable channel flowed due east from Astrakhan: since then it has shifted continually more to the right and now runs south-south-west.
Without including the shorter windings, the Volga has a total length of 2,230 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 parallels of latitude, and nine isothermal degrees, so that while the mean annual temperature of the region is at freezing point, it oscillates about 9° in the delta. At Astrakhan the Volga is frozen for about ninety-eight days, and at Kazan for one hundred and fifty-two, while the Kama is ice-bound for six months at the junction of the Chusovaya above Perm. The rainfall of the basin is about sixteen inches, which would give 700,000 cubic feet per second, were all the moisture to be carried off by the bed of the Volga. But much is absorbed by vegetation in the forests and steppes and in the latter region direct evaporation may dissipate about forty inches during the year in tracts fully exposed to the winds.