Along the next 738 m. of its course the Volga—now 580 to 2600 yds.
wide—flows south-south-west, with but one great bend at Samara.
The Samara bend.
At this point, where it pierces a range of limestone hills,
the course of the river is very picturesque, fringed as
it is by cliffs which rise 1000 ft. above the level of the
stream (which is only 54 ft. above the sea at Samara). Along
the whole of the Samara bend the Volga is accompanied on its
right bank by high cliffs, which it is constantly undermining, while
broad lowland areas stretch along the left or eastern bank, and are
intersected by several old beds of the Volga.
At Tsaritsyn the great river reaches its extreme south-western limit, and is there separated from the Don by an isthmus only 45 m. in width. The isthmus is too high to be crossed by means of a canal, but a railway to Kalach brings the Volga into some sort of connexion with the Don and the Sea of Azov. At Tsaritsyn the river takes a sharp turn in a south-easterly direction towards the Caspian; it enters the Caspian steppes, and a few miles above Tsaritsyn sends off a branch—the Akhtuba—which accompanies it for 330 m. before falling into the Caspian. Here the Volga The lower river and delta. receives no tributaries; its right bank is skirted by low hills, but on the left it anastomoses freely with the Akhtuba when its waters are high, and floods the country for 15 to 35 m. The width of the main stream ranges from 520 to 3500 yds. and the depth exceeds 80 ft. The delta proper begins 40 m. above Astrakhan, and the branches subdivide so as to reach the sea by as many as 200 separate mouths. Below Astrakhan navigation is difficult, and on the sand-bars at the mouth the maximum depth is only 12 ft. in calm weather.
The figures given show how immensely the river varies in volume, and the greatness of the changes which are constantly going on in the channel and on its banks. Not only does its level occasionally rise in flood as much as 50 ft. and overflow its banks for a distance of 5 to 15 m.; even the level of the Caspian is considerably affected by the sudden influx of water brought by the Volga. The amount of suspended matter brought down is correspondingly great. All along its course the Volga is eroding and destroying its banks with great rapidity; towns and loading ports have constantly to be shifted farther back.
The question of the gradual desiccation of the Volga, and its causes, has often been discussed, and in 1838 a committee which included Karl Baer among its members was appointed by the Russian academy of sciences to investigate the subject. No positive result was, however, arrived at, principally on account of the want of regular measurements of the volume of the Volga and its tributaries—measurements which began to be made on scientific principles only in 1880. Still, if we go back two or three centuries, it is indisputable that rivers of the Volga basin which were easily navigable then are now hardly accessible to the smallest craft. The desiccation of the rivers of Russia has been often attributed to the steady destruction of its forests. But it is obvious that there are other general causes at work, which are of a much more important character—causes of which the larger phenomena of the general desiccation of Eastern and Western Turkestan are contemporaneous manifestations. The gradual elevation of the whole of northern Russia and Siberia, and the consequent draining of the marshes, is one of these deeper-seated, ampler causes; another is the desiccation of the lakes all over the northern hemisphere.
Fisheries.—The network of shallow and still limans or “cut-offs” in the delta of the Volga and the shallow waters of the northern Caspian, freshened as these are by the water of the Volga, the Ural, the Kura and the Terek, is exceedingly favourable to the breeding of fish, and as a whole constitutes one of the most productive fishing grounds in the world. As soon as the ice breaks up in the delta innumerable shoals of roach (Leuciscus rutilus) and trout (Luciotrutta leucichthys) rush up the river. They are followed by the great sturgeon (Acipenser huso), the pike, the bream and the pike perch (Leucioperca sandra). Later on appears the Caspian herring (Clupea caspia), which formerly was neglected, but has now become more important than sturgeon; the sturgeon A. stellatus and “wels” (Silurus glanis) follow, and finally the sturgeon Acipenser güldenstadtii, so much valued for its caviare. In search of a gravelly spawning-ground the sturgeon go up the river as far as Sarepta (250 m.). The lamprey, now extensively pickled, the sterlet (A. ruthenus), the tench, the gudgeon and other fluvial species also appear in immense numbers. It is estimated that 180,000 tons of fish of all kinds, of the value of considerably over £l,500,000, are taken annually in the four fishing districts of the Volga, Ural, Terek and Kura. Seal-hunting is carried on off the Volga mouth, and every year about 40,000 of Phoca vitulina are killed to the north of the Manghishlak peninsula on the east side of the Caspian.
Ice Covering.—In winter the numberless tributaries and subtributaries of the Volga become highways for sledges. The ice lasts 90 to 160 days, and breaks up earlier in its upper course than in some parts lower down. The average date of the break-up is April 11th at Tver, and 14 days later about Kostroma, from which point a regular acceleration is observed (April 16th at Kazañ, April 7th at Tsaritsyn, and March 17th at Astrakhan).
Traffic.—The greater part of the traffic is up river, the amount of merchandise which reaches Astrakhan being nearly fifteen times less than that reaching St Petersburg by the Volga canals. The goods transmitted in largest quantity are fish, metals, manufactured wares, hides, flax, timber, cereals, petroleum, oils and salt. The down-river traffic consists chiefly of manufactured goods and timber, the latter mostly for the treeless governments of Samara, Saratov and Astrakhan, as well as for the region adjacent to the lower course of the Don. Dredging machines are kept constantly at work, while steamers are stationed near the most dangerous sandbanks to assist vessels that run aground. The following table shows the principal river ports, with the movement of shipping in an average year:—
| Chief River Ports on the Volga. |
Vessels. | Tons. | Approximate Value. | |||
| Entered. | Cleared. | Imported. | Exported. | Total. | ||
| £ | ||||||
| Astrakhan | 2,724 | 3,228 | 938,000 | 3,734,000 | 4,672,000 | 7,812,000 |
| Tsaritsyn | 6,412 | 1,482 | 1,152,000 | 462,000 | 1,614,000 | 5,000,000 |
| Rybinsk | 3,760 | 6,295 | 590,000 | 172,000 | 762,000 | 3,573,000 |
| Nizhniy-Novgorod | 12,960 | 7,585 | 4,092,000 | 84,000 | 4,176,000 | 2,727,000 |
| Saratov | 1,639 | 1,738 | 923,000 | 128,000 | 1,051,000 | 1,882,000 |
Formerly tens of thousands of burlaki, or porters, were employed in dragging boats up the Volga and its tributaries, but this method of traction has disappeared unless from a few of the tributaries. Horse-power is still extensively resorted to along the three canal systems. The first large steamers of the American type were built in 1872. Thousands of steamers are now employed in the traffic, to say nothing of smaller boats and rafts. Many of the steamers use as fuel mazut or petroleum refuse. Large numbers of the boats and rafts are broken up after a single voyage.
History.—The Volga was not improbably known to the early Greeks, though it is not mentioned by any writer previous to Ptolemy. According to him, the Rha is a tributary of an interior sea, formed from the confluence of two great rivers, the sources of which are separated by twenty degrees of longitude, but it is scarcely possible to judge from his statements how far the Slavs had by that time succeeded in penetrating into the basin of the Volga. The Arab geographers throw little light on the condition of the Volga during the great migrations of the 3rd century, or subsequently under the invasion of the Huns, the growth of the Khazar empire in the southern steppes and of that of Bulgaria on the middle Volga. But we know that in the 9th century the Volga basin was occupied by Finnish tribes in the north and by Khazars and various Turkish races in the south. The Slavs, driven perhaps to the west, had only the Volkhov and the Dnieper, while the (Mahommedan) Bulgarian empire, at the confluence of the Volga with the Kama, was so powerful that for some time it was an open question whether Islam or Christianity would gain the upper hand among the Slav idolaters. But, while the Russians were driven from the Black Sea by the Khazars, and later on by a tide of Ugrian migration from the north-east, a stream of Slavs moved slowly towards the north-east, down the upper Oka, into the borderland between the Finnish and Turkish regions. After two centuries of struggle the Russians succeeded in colonizing the fertile valleys of the Oka basin; in the 12th century they built a series of fortified towns on the Oka and Klyazma; and finally they reached the mouth of the Oka, there founding (in 1222) a new Novgorod—the Novgorod of the Lowlands, now Nizhniy-Novgorod. The great lacustrine depression of the middle Volga was thus reached; and when the Mongol invasion of 1239-42 came, it encountered in the Oka basin a dense agricultural population with many fortified and wealthy towns—a population which the Mongols found they could conquer, indeed, but were unable to drive before them as they had done so many of the Turkish tribes.
