Chapter VII: Part II (3)

The great depression of the Old World begins with the deepening of the Volga basin below Simbeersk; and at the place (51¾° N. lat., near Orenboorg and Saratov) where it breaks through the last row of hills in the Obstshei-Syrtis, it commences a rapid descent toward the Caspian and the Aral Seas. This great concavity, on the confines of Europe and Asia, at the center of the greatest land-mass, and far removed from any ocean, is remarkable as having no parallel on the globe. Humboldt remarks that perhaps a similar phenomenon would be repeated at the interior of other continents, if the tertiary formation and the parts found by marine deposit did not exist. It would be profitable to follow out so weighty a thought, with the surface as it now is.

The Obstshei-Syrtis is the moderate range of hills which runs westward in two branches from the Bashkiric-Ural, at Orenboorg, the northern spur running by Uralsk and the Ural River; the southern by Samara, rising on the east shore of the Volga to a height of 600 feet, and ending at Sarepta.

Orenboorg, on the Obstshei-Syrtis, where it leaves the Ural chain, is 255 feet above the sea. Uralsk lies somewhat lower, being 234 feet above the sea. The surface of the Volga, where it breaks through the high banks of Saratov, is only 36 feet above the ocean level; while the western shore, above Saratov, is 562 feet in height. Farther down the river, Sarepta lies 30 feet below the sea level; and there is, therefore, between Saratov and Sarepta, a distance of about 180 miles, a fall of 66 feet. West of the Volga, and following the river, is the continuation of the Obstshei-Syrtis, ranging in elevation from 562 feet down to 168 feet. At Sarepta, the low hills which thus far have skirted the Volga turn to the southwest, to the Manitsh steppe, sinking to an elevation of but 75 feet, and extending as far as the Sea of Azof. At Sarepta, too, the Volga turns from its normal southerly course, and strikes southeasterly across the Astracan steppe, entering the Caspian at the City of Astracan, 72 feet below the level of the sea. The level of the sea is 4 feet below the shore on which Astracan is built.

The old statements that the level of the Caspian is 300 feet below the ocean, rested solely on conjectures made by the naturalist Pallas. The influence of this great depression on the warmer climate of that region, the peculiar vegetation of the salt steppes, and the salt morasses which exist where the land is perfectly level, as well as the great beds of oyster-shells and other crustaceous remains, led him to the hypothesis that the whole neighboring district is the dry and deserted bed of a former sea, now shrunk to the comparatively insignificant dimensions of the Caspian. The broken line of bold bluffs which bounds the Obstshei-Syrtis on the south seemed to him to be the northern boundary of this inland sea, into which the Volga entered below the pass of Kamyschin and Saratov. Parrot and Engelhardt supposed that their barometrical elevations in 1811 confirmed Pallas’ theory, that the Caspian lies 300 feet below the ocean. Many hypotheses were based upon their observations; but the whole were at length brought into discredit by Humboldt, who distrusted the accuracy of instruments made at that time. Nothing but a trigonometrical survey from Taganrog to Astracan could give conclusive results, and this was accomplished in 1837, under the auspices of the Russian government. The result proved that, so far from being 300 or 350 feet below the ocean, the Caspian is not 100 feet. Its depression, as already stated, is about 76 feet.

The level of the Aral Sea, which is evidently closely linked to the Caspian, has not yet been determined with absolute certainty. Barometrical observations were instituted for this end by the expedition under General Berg, which explored that region in the winter of 1826, but the cold was severe, and the results are questionable. The result of their investigations was, however, that the surface of the Aral lies 110 feet higher than that of the Caspian. This would make the Aral to be 34 feet above the sea level. More careful inquiries may, however, determine the level of the two seas to be the same; but at present we have to be content with the results of the expedition referred to, and accept its elevation as 34 feet above the level of the ocean.

Without, however, going into details respecting the Aral, the region around the Caspian and directly connected with it, which is below the ocean level, embraces an area of not less than 131,400 square miles. This survey extends from the Volga to the Ural River, thence to the Emba and the northernmost point of the Sea of Aral, and thence to the salt lakes of Aksakal-Barbi, lying to the northeast of this sea. The tracing of this line from the higher to the lower stages of depression gives clear indications, in the nature of the soil, of the existence of a great sea once occupying that whole tract.

Thus much for the configuration of the Caspian lowland. If to these 131,400 square miles be added the 153,000, or, according to Humboldt, 164,000 square miles of the Caspian itself, the entire depression embraces almost 318,000 square miles, and is greater than France, greater than Germany, and only to be compared with the whole Austrian empire! If to this great region be added the district around the Aral, which sea alone covers nearly 25,000 square miles, and then to this the yet unmeasured surface covered by seas yet to the eastward, the entire region of depression is immensely increased. And then if to this be added the great Siberian plain, whose level is not greatly above the sea, the combined district would be at least once and a half as great as all Europe.

The Origin of the Ponto-Caspian Depression.

Thinking of the immense extent of this depressed region, whose entire surface occupies no inconsiderable fraction of the interior of the Old World, and whose greatest depth at the bottom of the Caspian is from 500 to 600 feet below the level of the ocean, and looking at it as a phenomenon wholly unique, the question arises: How would such a condition be possible, contradicting, as it seems, all analogies? The answer, could we reach it, would not fail to illustrate many recondite geological questions, and to be full of instruction.

Yet the time has not come when a full answer can be given to this inquiry. We have not yet learned the elementary conditions of this remarkable fact; there are innumerable investigations yet to be made, before we can feel perfectly certain that its reason is understood. Still, there have been some preparatory inquiries entered upon, and some preliminary steps taken toward reaching a conclusion, or, at least, toward assuming a reasonable hypothesis. We have already indicated our belief that this depression is connected with a ring of plateaus which have been upheaved around it, and which now inclose it and isolate it from the ocean.

The hollow has its greatest depth near the southern extremity of the Caspian, where it rises abruptly to the Persian plateau. There pass, in the form of a half circle, the loftiest mountains and plateaus of central Asia. On the west side the Caucasus rises, with its giant peaks of Kasbek and Elbrooz, 15,000 to 17,000 feet high, bearing all the marks of volcanic origin,—avalanches of solidified lava on the sides, a lake lying in the abyss of an extinct crater, and the like.

At the southwest, the Armenian plateau follows the course of the Aras from its mouth back to the huge dome of Ararat, 14,656 feet high. The entire geological appearance of that region—the old lava streams, the trachyte rocks—indicate with equal clearness, as in the Caucasus, the agency of volcanic forces in the upheaval of that district. Traces of this great power are also seen in the caldron-shaped hollows, and in the narrow and deep defiles, which are abundant in that region.

South of the Caspian, which in its southern part reaches a depth ranging as low as 420, 480, and 600 feet, and, according to Hanway, even 2700 feet, rise sharply from the sea the Persian Coast Mountains. The plateau of Teheran, 3400 feet in elevation, is directly beyond, from which rise the volcanic peaks of Demavend, 20,000 feet, and Euczan, 6600 feet high. The Coast chain embraces the Elboorz Mountains, uniformly more than 5000 feet high, but which, at Schemrum, northwest of Teheran, rise to a height of 8560 feet; at Churchurah, southwest of Demavend, to 7650 feet; at Nevo, southeast of Demavend, to 8540 feet; at Nejoster, in the Seriakush, east of Demavend, to 7200 feet; and which, above Asterabad, rise in the Shahkush and the Sundukkush to a height of 7270 feet, and almost everywhere display in their trachyte rocks the traces of ancient volcanic activity. Still farther to the east, the chain which has girdled the Caspian sinks from the lofty height of the Northern Taurus to 1872 feet; in Meshed, 2628 feet; in Herat, an average elevation of 3400 to 4000 feet. But east of Herat it rises abruptly to the lofty plateaus of Bamian and Cabool, 7000 and 8000 feet high, and in the peaks of Colubeba 16,800 feet. The Hindoo Koosh, at Dsellalabad, rises to a height of 18,984 feet; the table-lands of the Bolor, at the Issikul, are at an elevation of 14,664 feet; while the gigantic Pameer is not yet measured, though its noted Pass is estimated at 18,000 feet above the sea.

At this point we reach almost the 40th degree of N. lat., whence northward the mountain ranges gradually decline in height, after throwing off eastward the great chain of Thian-Shan. From the sharp angle formed by the Hindoo Koosh and the Bolor, where the head-waters of the Gihon rise, that large but commercially unimportant river takes its way westward through the Bokharan table-land, falling so rapidly in its course to Bokhara that at the city its surface is but 1116 feet above the sea, then striking northwesterly to the Aral and Caspian. The course of that stream indicates, therefore, the direction and degree of the mountain slope toward the great depression east of the Caucasus and Armenia, north of the Persian highland, and west of the Hindoo Koosh and the Bolor systems.

The lower course of the Gihon, from Bokhara downward, is through masses of mud, sand, and gravel, and can very easily be conceived to have changed its course in the lapse of centuries, from the Caspian to the Aral, as the course of the Sihon seems also to have changed. The great Bokharan plain is covered in this part with a deposit of dried mud; it is a steppe formed evidently from a now dry sea-basin, which, no less than the northern shores of the Caspian and the Aral, displays the traces of the oceanic character of entire regions.

Halley, the astronomer, made an attempt to solve the mysterious origin of this great sunken basin, and attributed it to the stroke of a first-class comet! Arago, instead of calling into the scene meteorological forces little known, contented himself, in his theory of its origin, with the forces which we know are active even now on the earth, the plutonic powers which are only half confined by the surface of the globe. No one, he says, will hesitate now to accept the upheaval theory, through which geology is able so clearly to indicate the forces and progress of structure of the soil and rocks. The upheaval of great masses in one place predisposes the depression of districts in their neighborhood, to make good the true relation of highland to lowland. And in this case a compensation may be found, according to Arago, for the great semicircle of mountains which passes around the southern margin of the Caspian basin, in the depression caused by the natural falling in of the adjacent region when the great mountains of western Asia were upheaved.

In longitudinal mountain chains the parallel ranges of valleys have a similar origin; in volcanic chains, which have been thrown up in a circular form, similar depressions have been found in the middle, although, it must be confessed, on a much smaller scale of dimensions than in the Caspian hollow. The same feature is observable in the upheavals, by Von Buch, as observed in the Island of Palma, one of the Canaries, or in the Val di Bove, near Etna. Such depressions would at once fill with water, if connected with the sea, as in the cup-shaped island Santorini, or remain land-locked, if they occur in the interior, as in the case of Lake Laach, as the half-ring of mountains girding the lower portion of the Caspian seems to consist mainly of trachyte thrown up by volcanic agency: the analogy just drawn does not seem too remote. Yet the process of structure must have had other concomitant conditions to account for the vast reach northward of the Caspian depression. It is clear that any such volcanic convulsion as would throw up those vast mountain ranges at the south, must have affected largely the geological condition of all the adjacent region; the extent vertically of this effect would be best ascertained perhaps by deep boring. Unquestionably there was many a revolution in the upper portions of the earth’s crust during the formation of the great Caspian hollow, before it assumed its present condition. From the agencies at work in connection with a great internal ocean, the upper soil, as we have it to-day, was formed.

The Aral and the Caspian Seas remain as the lowest places of that great depression, water being found in them, while elsewhere it has entirely disappeared by evaporation: leaving us broad, low plains, instead of that great ocean which once extended from Persia over all Siberia, and west of the Caspian to the Sea of Azof. A more thorough account, geographical as well as geological, cannot be given till after much more extended investigations have been made into the physical characteristics of this region than as yet have been prosecuted. It may be remarked here, that the waters of the Aral and Caspian are bitter and salt, but not so much as those of the ocean; the bottom is covered with slime and sand. The Aral has a depth ranging from 90 to 222 feet; the Caspian, beginning with its extensive, shallows at the north, deepens toward the south, till, reaching the lower third, its depth is over 600 feet; and thence southward it is no less deep, till it reaches the bold shore of Eusellis. From this lowest point the upheaval begins, which culminates in the great mountains on its southern border.

According to Humboldt’s view, the great Caspian hollow embraces not only the basin of the sea, but a vast dry plain, extending northward as far as Saratov and the Obstshei-Syrtis; even Uralsk lies lower than the level of the Black Sea. The same physical feature, though on a less extended scale than here, is found in Holland, China, Lower Egypt, and Palestine. Subsequently to the emergence of the continents, long before the filling in of huge fissures by mountain chains, and during the continuance of those great convulsions which reach back into the remotest geological periods, the surface of the continents must have been subjected to frequent partial changes of level. The surface undulated probably in that same wave movement which is now observable, though in much less degree, in those earthquakes and upheavals which the whole western part of South America is experiencing even now.

The depressions which have assumed a permanent form since the convulsions which formed them, have gradually filled with deposited soil, and, were the naturalist able to lay bare the primitive rock, he would discover that it exists in the shape of great concavities, without a trace of that evenness which now characterizes the surface. Eichwald has made it probable, by his personal observations, that the upheaval of Ararat and of the Armenian plateau on which this trachyte mountain rests, has driven the Caspian Sea back east of the flat steppe of Karabagh and Mogan, on the lower Aras, to the neighborhood of Bakoo. The water of that sea formerly extended to the confluence of the Bargashad, (called also Bergershat and Bergernet,) with the Aras, below Ireben. The traces of volcanic action there are decisively evident: the Caspian reached, before that action occurred, up what is now the valley of the Aras, as far as Ararat; and in many places south of Erivan—at Saliyan, in Shirwan, and elsewhere—salt beds of the most crystalline quality, forming whole mountains and whole belts of salt lakes at the confluence of the Aras and the Koor, demonstrate their formation in a former sea which once covered that region. The very recent upheaval of the Ural chain cannot fail also to have had an influence in contracting the dimensions of the Caspian hollow.

Only two kindred depressions to this remain to be spoken of, which, though of not so great superficial dimensions, are of yet greater depth—the depression of the Jordan Valley and the bitter salt lakes on the Isthmus of Suez. These we must consider before we pass from the contrasts between highlands and lowlands to the transitions between them.

The Depression of the Jordan Valley and of the Dead Sea.

The nearest relationship to the Caspian hollow, displayed by any similar feature, is found near the heart of the Old World, in the comparatively diminutive and isolated valley of the Jordan, including the Dead Sea, whose absolute depth below the level of the ocean has been determined only within the most recent period. Many former travelers had noticed, in the deep gulf which holds the Dead Sea, and especially at its north end, near Jericho, a much greater degree of heat than elsewhere in Palestine, and the existence of many plants and fruits which they had met in the hotter climates of Arabia and India. The tree which yields the Mecca balsam flourishes in the oasis of Jericho; the product of the balsam of Palestine supplied the pin-money of Cleopatra. A number of German and English observers endeavored to solve the question of the depth of the Jordan basin—von Schubert, Russeger, von Wildenbruch, Moore, and Bake, later Symonds, and Lynch; de Berton and Russeger made the first barometrical observations at the Dead Sea, but they did not attempt to give more definite limits to their results than to assert that its surface is somewhere between 500 and 1100 feet beneath the ocean level.

Von Shubert’s barometer did not suffice to determine this point, but he ascertained the surface of Lake Tiberias to be 535 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean. All barometrical measurements were unreliable at that depth; yet it could not be denied that the depression could not be an insignificant one. A measurement with the level made by Symonds, an Englishman, from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, in 1843, gave us our first sure results. The surface of the lake lies 1231 feet beneath the level of the Mediterranean at Jaffa. The subsequent expedition of the Americans—Lynch, Dale, and Anderson, in 1848—has given the following additional results:—

The surface of Lake Tiberias lies beneath the ocean level, 612 ft.
” ” the Dead Sea ” ” ” 1235 ”

Soundings of the Dead Sea, made with the greatest care, determined the depth to be, according to Lynch, 1227 feet; according to Symonds, 1970 feet. The entire depression below the ocean level would be, then, by Lynch’s measurement, 1235 + 1227 = 2462 feet; according to Symonds’, 1235 + 1970 = 3205 feet. This is the greatest known depression on the globe. Jerusalem lies 2449 feet above the ocean level. From the roofs of the city to the surface of the Dead Sea is, therefore, 2449 + 1235 = 3684 feet; and the entire descent from the capital to the bottom of the Dead Sea is 4911 feet, if we adopt Lynch’s measurement, and 5654, if we follow Symonds’.

The basin of the Dead Sea consists of two very different parts—the larger and deeper northern one, the smaller and shallow southern one; the two being separated by a sandy peninsula—el Mesraa—and connected by a narrow channel of insignificant depth. The northern basin seems to owe its present form to the unchanged primitive depression; the southern one to a partial upheaval at some later epoch. But in breadth they do not vary much one from the other; both have their larger axis coincident with the Jordan valley, which here widens a little, but which is still hemmed in here, as farther north, by the parallel ranges of mountains. The chain east of the sea appears to rise a thousand feet higher than the one west of it. The depths of the two basins are entirely unlike. The southern is nowhere more than 12 feet deep, and diminishes to 5 feet and less than this near the shores, so that the southern half of it is entirely unnavigable by craft of any size; and those who wish to land have to wade for a long distance through mud as deep as their ankles. The northern part, on the contrary, attains a uniform depth of more than 1000 feet, from the north to the south; in the northern third it is even 1227 feet; toward the west coast it shoals to between 600 and 800 feet, but is 500 feet deep hard-by the coast. There is but a very narrow rim of shallow water on the western side, and the navigation is, therefore, tolerably safe. On the eastern shore the coast is even bolder, and the descent to deep water immediate. Close by the romantic mouth of the Arnon, embouching through rocks, the depth of the sea is about 1052 feet. So great a difference in the depth of the two basins seems to indicate a considerable diversity in the manner of their formation.

Volcanic activities have been felt in the Jordan valley up to the present time. They manifest themselves in various forms—deposits of salt, hot springs and naphtha springs, asphaltum beds, sulphur fumes, currents of heated air, clouds of smoke, and rumblings beneath the surface. The Jordan valley remained, from Lake Tiberias down, unfilled, as we should infer from analogy that it would be by the upheaval of a chain of volcanic mountains; or by the expansion of an internal lake or sea, the waters accumulating till at last they should acquire such volume as to break away and form new channels. In case the obstructions were too great, they would remain inland lakes. And such is the Dead Sea, its southern border being too high to allow it a free exit into the Red Sea.

Many other fissures or hollows on the surface of the continents would be regarded as lowlands, were they not filled with water. The bottoms of such lakes often sink suddenly to a great depth, while others are lagoon-like, or shallow seas of an entirely different hydrographical character. Internal lakes, regarded as isolated lowlands, merely filled with water, are an especially interesting theme of study; yet much remains to be investigated regarding their structure and historical formation. The Dead Sea has been regarded, up to this time, as the deepest of all such lakes. The greatest depth of the Caspian has not yet been fully ascertained; but if Hanway’s soundings, 2700 feet, are to be relied on, it is very great. Lake Baikal, in its deepest part, between the two steep walls of rock which rise high above the surface, has not yet been carefully sounded; but as its surface is 1500 feet above the sea, its bottom does not probably fall below the ocean level. The great chain of North American lakes, whose area embraces about 109,500 square miles, are surrounded by level country from 500 to 600 feet above the sea—a region which, in part, falls under the designation of plateaus of the lowest class, and which, in part, comes under the name of lowland; the surface of Lake Superior being 627 feet above the sea, Lakes Michigan and Huron 578 feet each, Lake Erie 565 feet, and Lake Ontario 232 feet. The three first named, having a depth of about 900 feet, have their beds about 300 feet below the surface of the ocean; Lake Ontario, with a depth of 500 feet, reaches a point 268 feet below the sea level. The depth of the St. Lawrence river bed, as related to the sea, is not ascertained. The most of the Swiss lakes, too, having a depth often of more than 1000 feet, come under the same category with the lakes under consideration above, waters from the mountains having gradually filled up chasms made at the time of the upheaval of the adjacent region. Some of these lake basins may be deep enough to lie below the level of the ocean.

The Bitter Lakes of the Suez Isthmus.

Some bitter salt lakes on the Isthmus of Suez, forming a chain from the Red Sea to the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, long claimed attention from their supposed singularity. During the occupation of Egypt by the French in 1799, a survey of the district was made with the level, in view of a prospective canal across the isthmus, connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. An account of that survey was published by Le Père, in his great Description de l’Egypte. The result of the survey was very surprising; it assigned to the Gulf of Suez a height of 25 feet at ebb tide and 30½ feet at flood tide, above the level of the Mediterranean, a result which seemed to agree with Pliny’s account (vi. 23) of the elevation of the Red Sea above the level of lower Egypt. The salt swamps lying between the two seas, and known even to the ancients, lie, according to the same authority, 20 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean, and 50 feet below that of the Red Sea. These singular statements were not received without considerable doubt as to their correctness; but during the military disturbances in that region, no revision of the investigations could be made. Certain circumstances connected with an unusual inundation of the Nile in 1800, when its waters flowed as far as the transverse valley called the Wady Tumilet, in which the salt lakes lie, and where traces of the ancient canal, built by the Egyptians between the seas, could be seen, seemed to confirm the result of the survey of 1799. The inference was a natural one—that the sandy Isthmus of Suez was an accumulation of dunes, and of the deposits of inundations of both the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and that the salt morasses in the middle are but a trace of the primitive bottom. There were not wanting defenders of the old measurement, Favier being the most prominent. Since 1845 five surveys have been made, in reference to the projected canal. These all contradict the results of 1799, and show that there is but the difference of four-sevenths of a foot between the level of the two seas, and that there is the same agreement there as in all other parts of the earth. Many hypotheses, built on the old measurement, have accordingly fallen to the ground.

The Regions of Transition between Highlands and Lowlands; the River Systems of the Globe.

Between the two great and most sharply-marked physical features—the high plateaus and mountains and the lands of very little elevation—there are regions of transition very numerous and exceedingly varied.

The conception of highlands and of lowlands having a certain, constant, and absolute value, and it being immaterial whether the elevation be specially marked or not, provided it be uniform, the regions of transition find their most marked characteristics in their want of constancy, in their very change, and the rate at which the grade ascends from a low to a high elevation, or falls from a high to a low one. Their real value lies in the mutual compensation of highlands and lowlands, which is effected through the mediation of a third physical feature or system, which has received the name Lands of Gradation, or Terrace Lands, and which, by their gradual rise from the sea level, serve as the means of transition from the lowest lowlands to the loftiest plateaus and mountains.

Terrace Lands and Rivers in their General Character.

Districts sloping to the sea, or lands of gradation, as we have called them, varying as they do in elevation and in relative situation to each other, are the true mediators between the districts but little above the level of the sea and others much more lofty. At the sources and the mouths of rivers they partake, more or less fully, in the characteristics of both highland and lowland. The manner of their mediation, as determined by the rate of the fall of water and by their direction, gives to every one of these regions of transition its peculiar character, determines its conformation and its relation to the globe. And yet, no more than in lowlands and highlands, can we rid ourselves of some arbitrary data relating to the size of rivers, when we discriminate between those which we call large and those which we call small. As in all other geographical distinctions, we must here be content with arbitrary approximation, and with the ordinary usages of speech. The comparison of streams, in regard to their breadth and fullness, determines their volume; the comparison, in respect of length and tributary waters, determines the compass of the river system. The entire characteristics, breadth, depth of channel, length and extent of drainage, determine the status of the river, whether first, second, or third class, in relation first to those of the same continent, and then to those of the world. The Volga, for instance, is, in relation to Europe, a first-class river, but, like the Danube, in relation to the entire globe, is merely in the second or third rank. Not the length alone determines the importance of rivers. The Thames, one of the smallest streams in Europe, is one of the most important. And aside from commercial considerations, a river of insignificant size can have great influence in consequence of its relation to the entire adjacent region. The little Bavarian Isar, a river which, so far as the great world is concerned, seems to have no importance, receives on the left side the water of 860 tributary brooks, among which are 44 rivulets; on the right bank the water of 433: these 1293 brooks and rivulets pour themselves into the Isar through 103 direct tributaries, and not these alone, but the waters of 136 lakes are embraced within the Isar system! Yet the Isar is only one of 34 branches of the Danube, and of the fourth rank even among them, and the Danube is by no means one of the great rivers of the globe. A short but navigable stream can have great influence over a territory limited in extent, and may make a long but shallow stream sink into insignificance in respect of comparative importance to the world. There are some great streams which are of first magnitude in all their characteristics—rivers which drain millions of square miles in their course to the sea. The number of such is small, however; there are scarcely fifty on the whole globe. Besides these, there is a large number of rivers much shorter, and of much less volume, but not deficient in the attributes which give a stream value to man, and which serve to mediate between highlands and lowlands, to fulfill the needs of navigation and to drain regions of more or less magnitude. These can be classed in four ranks: in the first place absolutely, and in the second place in relation to each continent. Yet, in classing them, it is necessary always to keep in mind that it is not size alone which gives a river its value, but a combination of all its characteristics, and its relative influence on the country through which it runs.

Looking at the direction of streams, we observe that there are some which flow northerly, as for instance those of Siberia, the Nile, the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Weser; there are those which flow southward—the Indus, Ganges, Euphrates, La Plata, Mississippi, and Volga, for example; there are those flowing eastward—Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang, the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the Danube, for instance; and some westward, instances of which may be found in the Gihon and Sihon, the Senegal, Gambia, Niger, the Colorado, the Seine, Loire, Garonne, and the Spanish rivers which enter the sea in Portugal.

And this characteristic, trite and unmeaning as it may at first seem, establishes, for the area which these rivers water, very diverse conditions. In like manner, too, their position, in relation to the oceans into which they flow, is very influential, in consequence of the action of the tide upon the lower course. The emergence of their head-waters at various altitudes, whether on plateaus of the first or second class, or on mountain tops covered with perpetual snow, gives rise to a great diversity of relations, that makes no one stream on the earth twin brother to any other. Rivers have an individuality which claims recognition, although they are usually summed up in one category.

This diversity in rivers becomes more apparent from a study of the diversified form of the terraces, or grades of transition, through which they pass on their way to the sea.

The great basin of the Nile is divided into three distinct parts or grades—Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt; and each of them has long been studied historically and physically. The great basin of the Rhine is also naturally divided into three grades—the Swiss highlands, the German moderate plateau, and the lowlands of Holland. In a similar manner there may almost always be traced in rivers three natural grades, and where they do not have, as in the cases just cited they do have, a historical significance, their physical influence is not hard to trace and to follow into all its analogies.

The word water-shed, now a familiar one, is applied to that point of division where contiguous springs pour their water in different directions. It is not even in a mountainous country necessarily coincident with the highest points of the chain, though it may be; the valleys may slope in such a way as to have more influence in determining the direction of running water than the mountains hard by. Every stream has its own water-shed system, and this system is the real boundary of its basin. If we trace this basin to its very limits on the highlands, we may find, not a mile away, the beginnings of another river, which shall flow in just the contrary direction, as for example in the case of the Rhine and Rhone, the Volga and the Dwina. The sources of the Missouri and of the Columbia lie close together, not a quarter of an hour’s walk apart; yet the waters of one flow into the Atlantic, of the other into the Pacific, and their mouths are almost 2500 miles apart. The Mongolians hold the water-shed in such estimation that they throw up a heap of stones wherever one occurs, establish it a shrine for prayer; and the Toongooses of Siberia never pass by one without casting a cedar branch upon the stone heap, that, to use their expression, “the holy mountain that parts the waters may not lessen, but increase.”

The main channel is the stream proper; the others are tributaries. The longest tributaries coming in from the region where the river proper rises, can be grouped intimately with the source of the main current, hardly distinguished from it in relative importance—the two, for instance, in the Nile, the five in the Indus, two in the Ganges, three in the Amazon, etc. All form in their confluence the real channel of the river. And the entire body of tributaries, taken in conjunction with the river proper, forms the river system, and the district which they all drain is their true reciprocal. The two, in their mutual action and reaction, form a whole, and are always thought of together. The source and the mouth are the beginning and the end of the whole system; the main channel and the circuit of water-shed, the center and the circumference of it. All the tributaries in their union constitute what may be called the arterial system of the river basin; the form of each and the characteristics of each are analogous to those of the whole, only in reduced pattern. The network which all the tributaries make is often surprisingly intricate. The symmetry with which the main characteristics of a river system are carried into the details, even of its smallest accessories, can only be compared to that observable in the architectural regularity of a tree, as it expands from the main trunk into the countless symmetrical branches.

There are some rivers which are entirely independent of tributaries—which pursue their way to the sea entirely alone. Such rivers, however, never belong to the first class; they are always of subordinate magnitude, and the humblest of them are mere coast torrents, like those west of the Andes. Others find their way to no ocean, but lose themselves in an inland sea or lake, as the Volga does in the Caspian; as the Gihon and the Sihon do in the Aral; as the Jordan does in the Dead Sea. Others disappear in sand wastes or in morasses; such are the rivers of the African steppes. Others are blocked up, as it were, by the tidal wave of the ocean, and are thus converted into estuary lakes.

There are some rivers, also, which remain equally or nearly equally full the whole year through; there are others which have their seasons of overflow: the Nile, for instance, and many rivers whose basin lies within the region of tropical rains; there are temporary rivers, now full, now empty, which, if they do not leave, like the torrents of Arabia, a perfectly dry bed, are traced in the dry season by a row of stagnant lakes, such, for example, as are found in the swampy lands of Australia.

Rivers more closely considered.

What is peculiar to every river is determined by the abundance of its sources, the forking of its tributaries, the rate of its descent, the distance from its most remote springs to its mouth, the main direction of its course, and the greater or less sinuosities of its channel, as occasioned by the structure of the country which it traverses.

The abundance of its waters is conditioned by the greater or less amount of snow which finds the highest springs, the heavy rains which it receives in tropical countries, and the exceedingly varied influences which temperate climates may exert upon it. The fall softens from the rush and plunge of the mountain district, first to an arrowy swiftness, then to a moderate course, then to a beautiful gliding motion, to end with an almost imperceptible flow just before entering the sea.

The direction of rivers is determined:—

1. By the structure of the region which they traverse, the layers being in some places horizontal, and in others tilted to a vertical position; here grouped, as in the granite Carpathian chain, in such a way that the river courses which begin there run in parallel lines, radiating like the rays of a star from a central point; then grouped in such a manner that a stream may receive tributaries from two nearly contiguous ranges, as among the spurs of the Ural Mountains, the Rhone in Valais, receiving waters from the Bernese Alps at the north, and Pennine Alps at the south; the Isère, in like manner, the Upper Rhine in Grisons, the whole Upper Inn in Tyrol.

2. The direction is also determined by the mutual action of tributaries and the main stream at the point of confluence. Very often the union of two powerful currents gives rise to a third direction, according to the law known as the parallelogram of the forces. This generally occurs when no obstacle stands in the way of their taking a normal course, and is exemplified in the cases of the Kama and Volga, the Theiss and Danube, the Rhine and Main, the Saone and Rhone. Where an obstacle stands in the way, their abnormal direction is manifested in the abrupt bendings of the river bed. An instance is found in the bending of the Rhone northward as it emerges from Valais. Its lower course, from Lake Geneva to Lyons, betrays the same angularities, resulting from the obstacles which it meets and cannot remove. The Rhine, breaking through the Jura at Basel, is another instance; the Rhine, between Bingen and Caub, and the Dal-Elf, in Sweden, also exemplify the same.

In case that rivers meet in their course large masses of stratified rocks, they force their way through them in a zigzag direction, making sharp angles always, and not unfrequently right angles, even. Instances of this are found in the Rhine, between Mayence and Coblentz, and in the Moselle, between Treves and Coblentz. When the river passes beyond these rocky barriers, and meets with obstructions of a more movable character, it crowds them more gently and gracefully aside, and leaves a path more sinuous and wave-like; and yet more gentle are its curves, as it opens a way through the plains where nothing obstructs its course. The last is strikingly exemplified in the rivers of eastern Europe, especially in all those of middle and southern Russia. The practised eye can determine the structure of the soil with considerable certainty, by merely tracing the course of rivers when represented on a faithful map. For, unless there be other reasons to prevent, rivers always force their way where there is the least resistance to overcome. In stratified rocks, where the tilt is so great as to make the strata vertical, the river beds usually run parallel with the lines of stratification. Instances are found among the Alpine rocks, in Valais along the Rhone, in Tyrol along the Inn and Adige, in Grisons, and among the Jura along the Rhine. Where the lines of stratification are horizontal, rivers usually take their course through the most marked ravines and fissures.

In most mountains, however, the lines of stratification are neither vertical nor horizontal, but intermediate between them, more or less sloping, as in most marked ranges of central Germany, for example. In such cases, the process of excavating river beds has been determined by various circumstances and conditions, and the direction of their channels does not alone depend upon the extent and tilt of the strata, but also on other forces which have exercised a favoring or a retarding influence on their direct course. The stratification has its influence, indeed, but it is general rather than specific. Still, it is very largely felt when it happens to coincide in its main lines with the direction of the mountain range, but is comparatively insignificant when it does not. We have instances in the Alps where the axis of stratification coincides with that of the main chain, from south-southwest to north-northeast; in the Jura, from southwest to northeast; and in the Scandinavian range, from south to north.

The different geological formations found in mountain districts have a very important influence in determining the direction of rivers. Mountains do not generally consist of rocks of one kind of structure, but of several. What stratification is to mountains whose geological formation is the same throughout, the superposition of different kinds of rocks is to those of composite materials. The layers may be divided into superior, inferior, and adjacent. These usually vary in respect to age, and may be traced in a regular geological seniority, as for example sandstone, gypsum, limestone, gray-wacke, and granite. These formations are either closely contiguous, or are separated merely by valleys, as for instance in the Carpathian chain, where the central granite knot is separated by valley plains from the more southern limestone chain; an example of contiguity is found on the west spur of the same Carpathian range. Wherever mountain systems of varied geological structure approach each other very closely, rivers seldom break their way through either one, but find their way along the roots of the mountains, till at last they come to a less confined place. Such river courses are often very large and deep; for the mountain streams which meet and are hemmed in by the narrow pass between the two contiguous ranges sweep all loose obstructions before them, and not only leave their path clear, but continually deepen it. We find this in the Ural, the Isère, the Rhone, Aar, Inn, in all the long and winding Alpine valleys, and in the Ebro, fed by the parallel ridges of the Pyrenees. The circle of rivers which girds the central Carpathian knot is an illustration of what was said a moment since. The Poprad, Dunayic, Arva, and Waag are found where the true Carpathian chain, which is granitic, is closely contiguous to subordinate ranges of limestone and gray-wacke. In any accurate map, the long, winding course between these two chains may be easily traced. Looking at the point where the Hartz Mountains and the Thuringian ridge touch at their roots, the groups are seen to be insulated, as it were, by the rivers which gird their bases. In the great streams of southern and southwestern Asia, too, the line of the water-courses can be traced along the narrow valleys which separate main from subordinate mountain chains; the Terek, Kooban, Koor, Aras, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Ganges, and probably the Chinese rivers, are all examples of this.

Some streams seem to be entirely independent of all these laws in forming their channels, and to have their direction assigned to them by the freaks of nature, such, for instance, as fissures in mountain chains and clefts, which remain to indicate ancient convulsions.

The entire course of a river is divided into three distinct and subordinate courses—the upper, middle, and lower. To these and their respective tributaries correspond the three grades of transition found on the banks, and which have already been alluded to. Not only the total amount of fall in the river bed, but also the angle of inclination, and the whole complex of phenomena in the basin, are reciprocal to the threefold character of transition in almost every hydrographical system in the world. Still, the variety of relations which arise from the combination of different elements is so variable, that an almost infinite diversity arises in the characteristics of rivers, and these characteristics always vary, too, according as found in the upper, middle, or lower course.

Upper Course of Rivers.

This begins at the ridge of the water-shed, and extends to the limits where the river emerges from the most rocky highlands. It depends for its existence upon the greater fall in the river bed there than lower down. At the upper course, therefore, rivers which may flow in exactly opposite directions are brought into direct neighborhood. The farther they advance from the water-shed the more they recede from each other. In the High Forest south of the Carpathian chain, and in the Bory Morass north of it, the waters which flow into the Baltic and into the Black Seas spring from the ground side by side. The name given to the districts where the head-waters of large and navigable rivers part is usually the French word portages, the English word transports being little used in that connection, although all, the German Trageplatze and the Russian Wolok, involve the idea of _carrying_, of porterage, from the head-waters of one stream to those of another. The lowest parts of a water-shed, the passes of a high mountain range, for example, the intermediate vales of lower ones, and the most elevated plains in flat districts, are the most suitable for the purpose of canal building, to serve as a connecting link between the sources of divergent streams; as, for instance, the canal which is proposed to connect the Baltic and the Black Seas by uniting the Vistula and Danube, the tributaries, the Poprad, Hernad, and Theiss being the channel of communication up to the mountains where a canal is to pass over the water-shed formed by the valleys of the Carpathian chain. Such a communication is the most available which can be made between the opposite sides of a mountain range. The practicability of constructing such canals depends very largely upon the degree of fall in the upper course of the connected rivers, as determined by the slope of the bed toward the horizon. The grade of most mountains’ sides, which stand back to back, is unlike on the two sides: steep on the one, slight on the other. Upon this depends the greater or less wildness of the streams flowing through their upper course. In the Ural chain the slope is steep on the eastern side, gradual on the western; in the Caucasus, steep on the north, gradual on the south; in the Carpathian and the Alps, just the reverse—steep on the south, gradual on the north. The rate of fall varies; but, in general, it lies between an angle of 2° and an angle of 6°, taking the entire upper course into account. On the very steep north side of the Pyrenees, the fall is between 3° and 4°; on the south side of the Alps, from the summits of Mont Rosa and Mont Blanc to the plains of Piedmont, it is 3¾°. It is far less in more unimportant ranges. And this angle, it should be remarked, is an average; it is the resultant of a great number of special, short slopes, which vary from the perpendicularity of an occasional waterfall to the equally occasional tranquillity of a meadow-like flow. The incidental slopes are, of course, much greater than the average of all. A grade of 15° is very steep; it is the maximum that can be ascended by a beast of burden. A grade of 8° is the maximum for wheeled vehicles; all roads must be less sloping than this. To accomplish the ascent of 35°, a man on foot must have some assistance. A grade of 44° in the high peaks of Mexico and Peru, Humboldt found inaccessible; only where the growth of trees and shrubs gave him an opportunity of planting his feet, could he climb where it was a little steeper than 44°. The Carpathians and the Pyrenees, on account of their steepness and their scanty verdure, are very difficult to ascend. The Alps are much more easily climbed than the mountains just mentioned, in consequence of their abundant growth of turf and undergrowth. The richest Alpine meadows of Switzerland have an inclination not exceeding 20°; at a greater slope the vegetation becomes more sparse. The grade on which it is possible for earth to cling, Lehman fixes at 45°, and considers that the normal slope, because at a greater angle, rain glances or ricochets. But Lehman is not right in assigning this as the normal slope possible for earth to cling and vegetation to grow, for on the Alps soil adheres and plants get a footing at a much steeper angle than 45°; in fact, the modifications in the appearance of the Alps, by the growth of trees clinging to steeper slopes than this, are very marked. From the highest possible grade where vegetation can get a footing, we advance to the sheer perpendicular.

The upper course of rivers is characterized rather by plunges than by equable flowing, and determines its way by a series of leaps through zigzag cuts and various ravines. It traverses bowl-shaped hollows and narrow defiles, and makes its way even through mountain lakes, depositing in them its residuum of sand and gravel which it has caught up and swept along. In its wild plunges it draws into its body considerable air, which appears as bubbles, and makes it a white mass of foam. By-and-by it reaches more level ground, becomes clear as crystal, and assumes a rich emerald green, or a deep blue. It is unnavigable, wild, romantic, and is always found in mountain districts.

The brawling brooks of Salzburg, of the Pyrenees, and of Sweden and Norway, all partake of this character. Those of the Pyrenees have a fall of an inch in every foot, and in some places cataracts of two or three feet. The same is observable in the Alps, where the continual stir of the water mixes in air enough to turn all into a mass of silvery-white foam. The Carpathian waters are the same before they reach the high plateaus lying at their feet. The Alpine lakes, too, which lie within the upper course of the rivers which feed them, have a considerable fall; Lago Maggiore, for instance, has a descent of 52 feet between Magadino and Arona.

In all the most marked mountain systems of Europe, the upper course of the rivers is especially prominent. Northern Europe is characterized by the fact that its streams have, throughout the most of their length, the peculiarities of the upper course—whether observed in northern Russia, in all Sweden, Norway, and Scotland.

With the exit of the river from the mountain district, all these relations are changed, and a new character begins.

The Middle Course.