As the river at this point has received all its important tributaries (for the Bug cannot well be counted among them), it contains a great mass of water, and its breadth is reckoned at 1700 ells. The direction of its course from north to south occasions it to rise very late in the spring, for the streams which feed it from the north do not thaw till the end of April, or the beginning of May. To this circumstance it owes another great advantage, — namely, that the rise is not so great as if the river ran in an opposite direction, for as the waim weather arrives first at the mouth, it thaws the ice there, and opens the gate, and then proceeding gradually upwards, the loosening and dissolving masses of snow and ice find always a free channel for their course. If a river flows from east to west, or from west to east, it usually thaws all at once ; and if from south to north, we must always expect frequent obstructions to the current ; for the freed waters rushingf towards the mouth will often find there an insurmountable barrier of ice, when the ice and snow about the sovuces have long since yielded to the influence of the spring. This, for instance, is the case of the Dwina.
We had scarcely pushed off from the shore w'hen I observed a sort of whirlpool in the water, beneath which lay something black, and before I had time to say, " What is that ?" w^e had stuck fast on the point of a granite rock. The boat fell o^ er on her side, some of our horses went overboard, and as they were tied fast they almost dragged the boat after them before the cords could be cut. Tlie noise and confusion were, of course, great. A crowd of spectators were standing on tlie shore without offering to come to our assistance, and I created nmch merriment unwittingly by calling out " Daitye Icshku,^' that is to say, " Bring us a spoon,'' instead of " lotku,^^ meaning a boat. Although it seemed not unlikely that this would be the last lesson in the Russian language I should ever receive, it was impossible to help joining in the laugh raised at my expense.
The Dnieper, like all the great steppe rivers, flows very rapidly, though not so much so as the Bug, the Dniester, and the Piuth, the last being the most rapid of all. This rapidity is very remarkable, for the declivity of the stepj)es is, on the whole, very slight, and the small tributary rivers flow so slowly as almost to stag-nate during the greater part of the year.
Opposite to Krementshug, on the other side of the Dnieper, lies a httle place called Kriukoff, w-hich serves as a storehouse to the former. No article is found in it in greater abundance than salt, for here are the great government magazines from which nearly all the country round is supplied. This salt is furnished partly from the lakes of the Crimean Steppe, and partly from the shores of the Euxine, from which and from the Limans of Bessarabia, enormous quantities are procured. On the Volga are found similar, but still more considerable, depots of this article. The northern provinces on the Baltic — the territory of the Dwina, &c. — receive their salt principally from Norway, and to Poland it is brought mostly from the Carpathian mountains. The animal exportation of salt from Kriukoff amounts on an average to about 25,000,000 lbs.
It is curious to find what enormous distances very insignificant goods have often to be conveyed in this vast country'. Throughout the whole wide woodless region of the south, no tar can be produced, but it is brought in immense quantities down the Dnieper from the Pohsh forests, and distributed over the Ukraine and the steppes, where there is often a great want of the article. In its absence fat bacon is often used as a substitute for greasing the wheels, and we have more than once purchased from a waggoner, for this purpose, a lump that he was just going to eat for his breakfast. The dogs seem to be aware of the custom, for whenever a travelling-carriage stops at a post-station, a whole pack of dogs often gather around to amuse themselves by licking the axletrees of the wheels.
On crossing the Dnieper we soon became sensible that we had entered a new country, as, indeed, a traveller mostly does after crossing a large river. Nothing hke a wood of the least extent was any longer to be seen, but only here and there on the distant horizon groups of smaU trees, and after passing Yelisabethgrod, the complete naked steppe lay spread out before us in all its dreariness and desolation.