Volga River

“ The White Sea has also been brought into connexion with the central Volga basin while the sister-river of the Volga—the Kama—became the main artery of communication with Siberia.
But although the rivers of Russia rank before the rivers of W. Europe in respect of length, they are far behind them as regards the volumes of water which they discharge. They freeze in winter and dry up in summer, and most of them are navigable only during the spring floods; even the Volga becomes so shallow during the hot season that none but boats of light draught can pass over its shoals. ”

“ Here is a case where people are to be pitied; they have only a little land, and in the springtime the Volga overflows its banks, carries away the earth, and lays it upon its own sand-banks. Then others complain that the bed of the Volga is choked up. The springtime streams and summer rains tear up the gulleys, and again earth is carried away to the river. ”

“ From the boundary between Europe and Asia the train takes us onwards past Ufa to Samara. The hills of the Urals [Pg 208] become lower and the country flattens out again. Snow lies everywhere in a continuous sheet, and peasants are seen on the roads with sledges laden with hay, fuel, or provisions. At Batraki we pass over the Volga by a bridge nearly a mile long. The Volga is the largest river in Europe; it is 2300 miles long, and has its source in the Valdai hills (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) at a height of only 750 feet above sea-level. ”

“ Having crossed a flat tract of country, we reached the Volga at a point about five miles from Kazan, and as many above its confluence with the Kama. It is truly a noble river, and the high banks enable one to get a sort of bird's-eye view of the broad sheet of water. I should rather say a compound of water, ice, and snow, for the surface of the river was covered with large blocks of ice, loaded with snow, moving rapidly down the stream, with a few open spots of clear water here and there. There was great commotion at the ferry among moujiks, Cossacks, and Tartars. ”

“ Vanya looked at it.
"Grandfather," he asked, "when the frost went, which was water first—the big river or the little river?"
"Why, the little river, of course," said old Peter. "It's always the little streams that wake first in the spring, and running down to the big river make it swell and flood and break up the ice. It's always been so ever since the quarrel between the Vazouza and the Volga." ”

“ The Volga, with a total length of 2400 miles is the longest river in Europe, but its direct length of 1080 miles is but little superior to that of the Danube with a length of 980 miles. Twenty-one basins in all incline to the Atlantic, five to the Arctic Ocean, thirteen to the Baltic, eight to the North Sea, thirteen to the Mediterranean, three to the Caspian, and five to the Black Sea. ”

“ O’er the mighty river floats?
’Tis a song, they say—the chanting
Of the men who haul the boats.
Thou dost not in spring, vast Volga,
Flood the fields along thy strand
As our nation’s flood of sorrow,
Swelling, overflows the land. ”

“ This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional. France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a63 waterway; and during winter also it continues rendering great services to humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it has fertilized with its beneficent waters. ”

“ This is the usual route to Siberia below Nijni, and the one by which convicts are sent. Instead of going up the Kama, you could continue down the Volga, passing the large towns of Simbirsk, Saratoff, to Tsaritsin, from which there is a railroad to Kalatch, on the River Don, down which steamers descend to the Crimea. From Tsaritsin you may proceed down the river to Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea, on which steamers ply to ports in Persia and elsewhere. The Volga is the Mississippi of Russia, and of quite as much importance to that country as the Father of Waters to us. ”

“ After the great bulk of the people left at Saratov the ship's human machinery ran with greater smoothness.
A trip on the Volga was supposed to be one of the great experiences of the rich traveller before the war. It is an experience anyone may be very glad and proud to have had. More of the heart and soul of Russia lies on each bank of this mighty river than can be found in Russia's cosmopolitan cities. The country is low and fertile, except for the desert stretches of the lower reaches. The green of its grass is a bright emerald. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach extends the vast alluvial plain, rich with culture, and occasionally dotted with forests; whilst the Volga, flowing down from Tver, [294] looks like a broad blue ribbon stretched over the country from one extremity of the horizon to the other. Much of the plain below is inundated in spring by the overflowing of the river, leaving a fertile deposit which considerably enhances the value of the land. The stationary population of the town does not exceed 30,000 or 40,000, but during the fair the inhabitants swell up to considerably over 200,000 ”

“ WATER CARRIER IN A VÓLGA RIVER VILLAGE. merchandise produced, even in the strip of country directly tributary to the Vólga itself, is enormous. Many of the agricultural villages, such as Lískovo, which the steamer swiftly passes between Nízhni Nóvgorod and Kazán, and which seem, from a distance, to be insignificant clusters of unpainted wooden houses, load with grain 700 vessels a year.
The scenery of the upper Vólga is much more varied and picturesque than one would expect to find along a river running through a flat and monotonous country. ”

“ That is the reason why Russia suffers so often from drought. This is especially the case in the south where no forests are found to attract rain.
Nature has provided a substitute in the splendid waterways. In about the center of European Russia, rises the Valdai plateau to a height of 1,100 feet above the sea level. This is Russia's great watershed. Near it, in Lake Volgo, rises the largest river of Europe, "Mother Volga," as the Russian ballad singers love to call it. Its entire length is 2,336 miles, or nearly the length of the Missouri; it has a basin of 590,000 square miles. ”

“ Sometimes some huge bark would float by, like a wreck vainly struggling with its fate amid the sea of ice, and carried along with irresistible force; sometimes an uprooted pine or sombre fir might be seen dashing against everything in its way.
Many fatal accidents occur at these times. I remember a sad day we once passed at Jaroslaf when the Volga was breaking up. The ice is a long time floating past, from the immense length of the river and the numerous tributaries that empty themselves into it. We used, when the weather was fine, to go in a party to the shore to enjoy the sight. ”

“ The excursions laid out certainly cover a vast territory, including the Ural Mountains, Moscow, Volga River region. Samara to Kazan, the glacial formations of Esthonia, Finland, basin of the Donetz, mineral waters of Vladikavkaz, Nijni-Novgorod, Kiew, Dnieper River, to Tifiis and glaciers by military route of Georgia, Tifiis to Baku, Batoum, and Kertch, all parts of the Crimea, Sebastopol, southern Russian mining region, to the glacier Guenaldon at Piatigorsk. ”

“ Her rivers equal her plains in proportion: the Obi, the Yenisei, the Amur, in Asia; the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, in Europe. The central artery of Russia is the Volga—a river that, in its winding course of nearly twenty-four hundred miles, is not altogether European. Nine tenths of the Russian territory are as yet nearly empty of inhabitants, and nevertheless the population, according to the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland, numbered 129,000,000; and the annual increase is very nearly two million. ”

“ The Volga, like the Mississippi, is only a national river, while the Danube majestically sweeps through many principalities and kingdoms and empires of Europe and assures easy relations between regions widely separated. And, as the Danube in the past has served as the great natural route for the migrations of nations and the warring hordes of Asia and Europe, so it is now, more than ever before, one of the world’s great highways of commerce and industry, and from present indications the day is not far distant when, economically, it will be the greatest. ”

“ Wild horses roam the steppes with the Cossacks and Tartar tribes, some of whom live close to the river, their brown, substantial houses seeming to rise straight out of the water in the estuary of the Volga. The enormous rafts which float slowly down the river, composed of the trunks of great trees bound together, are things of wonder. They are of enormous size. Whole families live on them, and huts have been erected on them for shelter. ”

“ Many boats of great power are used for towing barges up and down the river, and find plenty of employment during all the time the Volga is free from ice. Altogether, about five hundred steamboats of all classes are engaged in the navigation of the Volga.
It is sixteen hundred miles from Nijni to Astrachan, and the voyage usually takes five or six days. The boats do not run at night, on account of the difficulty of navigation, which is worse than that of the Lower Mississippi, and more like the Missouri than any other American stream. ”

“ All great things in nature have the power of crushing the human intellect. Russians are thus crushed by the vastness of their country, of their rivers. Man is but a small thing in a great country, and those who live by Nile, or Guadalquivir, or Volga seem to hold their lives on condition. They exist from day to day by the tolerance of their river.
Steinmetz and Paul paused for a moment on the wooden floating bridge and looked at the great river. All who cross that bridge, or the railway bridge higher up the stream, must do the same. ”

“ The Volga, the Don, and the Danube produce the largest species.
We are indebted to the Russian naturalist Pallas for the information we possess respecting the mode of taking the sturgeon in the Volga and other Asiatic rivers. Stakes are placed across the river, leaving just sufficient space between each pile to permit the animal to pass. Towards the centre this dike forms an angle opposed to the current, and, consequently, opposed to the fish which ascend the river towards the summit of this angle. ”

“ These people have abundance of swine, honey, and wax, precious furs, and falcons. Beyond these dwell the Merdas [1] or Merdui, who are Saracens or Mahometans. Beyond them is the Etilia or Volga, the largest river I ever beheld, which comes out of the north, from the country of the Greater Bulgaria and runs southwards, into a vast lake of four months journey in circuit, of which I shall speak afterwards. In the northern region, by which we travelled, the Tanais and Volga are not above ten days journey asunder, but towards the south they are at a much farther distance ”

“ And even at the present day the common people are in the habit of expressing, by some kind of offering, their thanks to a river on which they have made a prosperous voyage. It is said that Stenka Razin, the insurgent chief of the Don Cossacks in the seventeenth century, once offered a human sacrifice to the Volga. Among his captives was a Persian princess, to whom he was warmly attached. But one day “when he was fevered with wine, as he sat at the ship’s side and musingly regarded the waves, he said: ‘Oh, Mother Volga, thou great river! ”

“ Sailing up the Dvina to Vologda, he noted that town as a place for future trade; crossed the water-shed of Central Russia to Jaroslav and Moscow; dropped down the river Oka; and fell into the Volga at Nijni, the only town in which trade was being done, until he reached the Caspian Sea. The Volga banks were overrun by Tartar hordes, who took their spoil from every farm, and only spared the towns from fear. In ten weeks his rafts reached Astrakhan, where he saw, to his great surprise and joy, the riches of Persia and Bokhara lying about in the bazars in heaps ”

“ The bays of Kronstadt, Koporya, Luga and Narva afford good anchorage, but the coast is for the most part fringed with reefs and sandbanks. The chief river is the Neva. The feeders of Lake Ladoga-the Volkhov, the Syas, and the Svir, the last two forming part of the system of canals connecting the Neva with the Volga-are important channels of commerce, as also is the Narova. ”

“ The only historical importance attached to the Caspian's inland basin is that inherent in the Volga's mighty stream. The Mediterranean has always suffered from its paucity of long river highways to open for it a wide hinterland. ”

“ The summer road from Kazan westward follows the high ground in the vicinity of the river, but often several versts away. The winter road is over the ice of the Volga, keeping generally pretty near the bank. A double line of pine or other boughs in the ice marks the route. These boughs are placed by the Administration of Roads, under whose supervision the way is daily examined. No one is allowed to travel on the ice until the officials declare it safe.
Night came upon us soon after passing the first station. ”

“ Bell was informed of a circumstance, while travelling in Kûrdistan, which raises still higher our admiration of the falcon’s courage; for it is trained by the Tartars to fly at foxes and even wolves.
But to return to the Volga: On arriving on the 5th of November at Kazan, they found that the winter had set in, that the Volga was filled with floating ice, and that, therefore, since the nations inhabiting both banks of the river were hostile to Russia, or extremely barbarous in their manners, it would be necessary to defer the prosecution of their journey until the following spring. ”