THE JUNCTION OF THE SEAS.
M. ELISEE Ramis, in the present number of the Revue des Deux Monde; adds some new facts to our knowledge of a project which, from time to time, has excited the keen interest of Russian sovereigns. This is the re-excavation of the canal known to have ex- isted between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and which offers some tempting facilities for a ship canal, a work which, were it but pos- sible, would double the aggressive strength of the Northern Empire. It would turn the Caspian into a vast Russian dock, where fleets of any magnitude might be constructed in secret, and lie ready for the ultimate debouch on Constantinople. Even a boat canal would enormously increase her force, allowing of the collection of an army of almost any strength on the shores of the Black Sea, yet out of sight of Europe. It was reported, two years ago, that the Rus- sian engineers had convinced themselves of the feasibility of the plan, and the statement was partially true, but the conditions of the problem were still misunderstood, and we are indebted to M. R,eclus for a precise account of the difficulties to be conquered, and the measure of success it is rational to expect.
A glance at the map reveals a difficulty which appears at first si„alit almost insuperable. The Caucasian Isthmus, as it ought to be called, which divides the Black Sea from the Caspian, is everywhere six hundred miles broad, to the south crossed by grand ranges of mountains, and to the north presenting a smooth surface, rising sharply towards the centre, and covered with a sterile steppe. The labour of ages would not cut a canal sheer through that steppe, and if it did, the experiment would be one of almost inconceivable danger. Careful levelling, tested by a treble system of calculation, has esta- blished the fact that the waters of the Black Sea are 78 feet above those of the Caspian, and if a free passage for them could be opened, the Hyrcanian Sea, the boundless marsh which once stretched from the Mediterranean through the Caspian and the Sea of Aral, up to the Arctic Ocean, would be once more established. Russia would be flooded up to Saratov, and the whole face of Western Asia would be permanently changed. The task, therefore, when blankly stated, seems impossible, but the true conditions of the problem remain to be ascertained. Ascending the Don from the Sea of Azof, the north- eastern arm of the Black Sea, the traveller conies on a mighty bend of the river trending towards the east. A bend as sharp in the Volga, which flows into the Caspian, but trending towards the west, brings that river within a few miles of its rival. The little isthmus between is called by the Russians Tzaritzin, and is only fifteen miles across, and so early as the end of the seventeenth century a canal was commenced, which has again been reported on within the last three years. The extreme difficulty of the work, however, caused it in both instances to be relinquished, and the canal, though recorded on Mr. Keith Johnstone's last map as a projected work, remains to the present day a dream of the Russian engineers. They have a notion, we believe, that Nature will do their work for them, that the Volga is slowly cutting its way to the westward, but rivers move slowly out of their beds, and work which is left to geological forces is scarcely within the province of postdiluvian savans.
The two schemes hitherto most considered must, therefore, be given up, but M. Reclus confirms the report that there is a third route which not only offers more hope than any of the others, but has within a few months been actually traversed in boats. It was suggested to the Russian Government, apparently by some German savans, who reasoned from observation of the levels between the Isthmus of Tzaritzin and the great Caucasian slope. The whole .of this country is the bed of a dried-up sea, which has left a vast sterile steppe pierced by huge saline marshes, and crossed by one or two rivers which discharge an unusual volume of water. It was, the Germans considered, possible, by using these marshes at the time of the highest inundation, to pass from the Caspian, at a point not named but apparently somewhat north of the Kuma, up to the Don, some fifty miles north of its mouth. The route to be tried had been pre- viously surveyed, with a result which surpassed expectation. It was discovered that in the centre point of the peninsula a vast lake or marsh had been left which occupies the highest point of the country, and pours its surplus waters through the Manytch into the river Don. As the Manytch was navigable, here was half the distance accomplished at once. Then, at the south of the lake, a spur of the Caucasian range gives birth to a stream, the Kalaous, which, after running into the lake, turns to the south-east, and, when swollen by the melting of its snows, pours its waters over a valley which extends down to the Caspian.
Mr. Bergstrasser, employ 6 apparently of the Russian Government, resolved to test how far this route was passable, and M. Reclus thus briefly relates his adventure. Building two boats, one of which was large enough for twelve rowers, he put them afloat near the salt works of Modchar. "In ascending to Modchar, the stream, nearly ten feet in depth, permitted the vessels to advance rapidly; but when the boats entered the vast lake of Basta, the waters of which, swollen by the inundation, covered a great part of the steppe, they wandered over that immense surface into unknown shallows, and struck more than once upon sand-banks, or quitted the canal to find themselves, without knowing it, in the midst of the overflowed plains. Thin the expedition lost most of its time in seeking the true course of the Manytch. Yet, when they arrived at a point where the con- traction of the valley permitted them always to mark the bed, they had to struggle painfully against too strong a current. At last, the expedition reached the embouchure of thebKalaous, but the inunda- tion had already decreased considerably, and it. was impossible to penetrate directly into the Eastern Manytch. The members of the expedition had to reascend the Kalaous in a parallel line with the Caspian depression, and then, arrived at the bend, where the valley of the Kaltious trends to the north, they had to transport their boats to the point nearest to that where the Western Manytch begins to be navigable, and descend the course of that river till it pours into the Don. En route, a boat struck on a sand-bank, but the problem was none the less solved; the expedition had demonstrated the possibi- lity of passing from one sea to the other during the highest floods of the spring. At that time two currents of water, running in two directions, create an unbroken canal between the seas." M. Reclus, from these facts, draws a deduction which is sufficiently broad. It is evident, he says, "that a river which separates into so many branches, which expands into such vast marshy basins, submitted to an evaporation so strong, which supplies an unhealthy marsh on each bank, and pours the rest of its water into channels for irriga- tion, could, without doubt, become navigable, if the mass were re- strained within one proper bed." The creation of a boat route is, therefore, he thinks, quite easy, and, apart from the expense, he is probably right. But, accustomed to a soil like that of France, he overlooks entirely the frightful expense of restraining a river almost tropical in its character within its bed for a course of five hundred miles. The dykes would have to be built and maintained in a marsh, and one of two things would occur. Either the river would burrow, i.e. eat away the banks from below, or its bed would steadily rise, the dykes rising with it—as in Lombardy—till the expense of their maintenance in a depopulated tract became unendurable. The Go- vernment of India, the only European Government which has ever made enormous experiments of the kind, has found this difficulty almost insuperable, and the other day levelled one side of a river thus protected, and flooded a vast plain, rather than continue to incur the unendurable expense of keeping it up. This expedition proves, we think, only a physical possibility of no practical value, and demonstrates that, as a matter of real effort, the river communi- cation between the Black Sea and the Caspian must be abandoned,
even for boats. • M. Reclus is at the pains to show that the work would not benefit the world, but we think his demonstration was scarcely required. If it would benefit Russia, that is amply sufficient excuse for an outlay of Russian funds. lie is a little too hard, too, in attributing to the czars the destruction of cities from which trade has naturally rolled away. Still, his picture of the destruction which has overtaken the old highway of nations is strikingly picturesque.
"The Caspian," he says, "seems destined to become the great highway of commerce between Europe, China, and India, and the Volga, that mighty river which Strabo took for an arm of the sea, is practically like a strait dug out to our hands to carry the riches of Western Europe into the farthest East. Eh bien! those privileges which the Bulgarians knew how to use have never to this day yielded to the flexile and mobile Russians, so inclined by nature to commerce, a trace of profit. During the Middle Ages, Astrakhan was the great mart whither the dealers of Venice and Genoa came to traffic in spices and Indian silks, but Ivan the Terrible passed by there, and that which he did not destroy by fire and sword the administrative des- potism of his successors may be charged with having accomplished. la vain did Peter the Great, who had a sense of the high destiny re- served to his empire, endeavour to recal commerce a coups de decrets, the decisions of the autocrat could not oblige Indian traffickers to repair the route to the abandoned city. Astrakhan, which one thinks through habit may again be the rendezvous of the peoples of Asia, is to-day a purely Russian city., containing with difficulty a few hundreds of strangers ; her greatest industry is a local one' that of fishing, and her commerce inferior to that of an English port of the third order. Her annual commerce with Persia represents a value of less than 240,0001. a year, and she extracts with difficulty 12,0004 a year by a traffic with Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand, those capitals of fertile Plains which, from the time of Alexander the Great, have merited the title of Sogdiana or Paradise, and the marvellous splendour of which in the days of the Khalifs is recalled to us by the Arabian Nights. Instead of the highway of nations, the Caspian is an enclosure sur- rounded by deserts. Commerce has fled from it. One sees the cottons of Mazanderan, collected on the edge of the Russian Medi- terranean, carried to 'England by way of the Persian Gulf, and Trebi-
zond owes her importance to the address with which commerce knows how to escape from the frontiers of Russia. It is absolutism winch tells on these changes ; when it leaves a people only material interests, those interests themselves are in danger ; and the people pauperize themselves by seeking fortune so greedily. Dead to pohtical life, they end by losing all energy, and know not how even to enrich themselves. Civilization is not to be decreed by a government, and no durable prosperity was ever founded save upon liberty." The last words, of course, are intended for the meridian of Paris, but the facts are none the less true, because the writer draws from them the deduc- tion which will hit hardest against the Empire.
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