Ukraine: The Land and Its People. An Introduction to Its Geography.

In the highest groups of the Gorgani Range (especially in the Svidovez) are found also distinct traces of the glacial age, glacial excavations with small lakes or with swamps that have taken the place of lakes.

A splendid, only slightly thinned dress of virgin forest covers the Gorgani Chain. The lower forest section is composed of beech, ash and fir trees, the upper part of pines and stone-pines. The tree limit is very irregular and vascillates between 1100 and 1600 m. Mountain pastures are very rare, because of the seas of boulders and rubble-stone, but there are large and beautiful, tho not easily accessible, stocks of mountain pines.

The last section of the Ukrainian Carpathians is called Chornohora (Black Mountains). It extends from the Prut and the Black Theiss to the Prislop Pass; to the valley of the Visheva and of the Golden Bistritza. In this wide and long mountain district we find greater morphological variety than in the mountain sections hitherto discussed. In the wide zone of the northern foothills, which separate with a distinct edge from the sub-Carpathian hills and continue into the Bukowina, we find low ridges and rounded peaks, as in the High Beskid. Only in places on peaks and valley sides piles of rock are seen. Then toward the interior of the range follows the wide vale of Zabie, imbedded in soft slate, and above it rises the mighty chain of the Chornohora, the only part of the sandstone region of the Carpathians which has high mountain formations. The chain is composed of the hard magura sandstone, rich in mica. A whole stretch of peaks here attains a height of 2000 m., the highest being the Hoverla (2058 m.). Well-formed, partly rocky ribs branch off from the main ridge on either side. The rock piles of the Shpitzi, Kisli and Kisi Ulohy, are some of the most imposing rock formations of the Carpathian sandstone region. Between the rocky ribs, finely developed glens lie on both sides of the main ridge of the Chornohora, the beds of the ancient glaciers. Waterfalls dash down the steep rock walls in silver streams—of particular interest is the cascade of the Prut under the Hoverla—and down below lie little crater lakes reflecting the patches of summer snow on the crater walls. Almost three-fourths of the year the Chornohoras are covered with snow. In summer the snow almost wholly disappears, and the beautiful carpet of flowers of the mountain pastures, only occasionally interrupted by dark green reserves of mountain-pine, spreads out over the ridges and peaks of the Chornohora. Every summer innumerable herds of cattle, small Hutzul horses and sheep are seen here. Then an intensive dairy industry enlivens the peak regions of the range for three months. The lower regions are still covered with extensive forests; in lower locations we find mixed forests here; in higher altitudes, almost pure stocks of pines.

Standing on one of the Chornohora peaks, on the Hoverla for instance, or the Petros or Pip Ivan, we see, in the near southwest, a new and strange mountain world. It is the third zone of the Chornohora Mountains, the mountain land of Marmarosh. Situated in the region of the headwaters of the Theiss and orographically related to the Chornohora, the mountains of the Marmarosh are of entirely different geological composition and have a different morphological appearance. Gneiss and other kinds of crystalline slate, permotriassic and jurassic conglomerates and limestones, as well as eruptive rock of older and of more recent date, lend great geological and morphological variety to the Marmarosh Mountains. The high mountain character here is even more marked than in the Chornohoras. Rocky peaks, ridges, mountain walls, numerous craters, with small glacial lakes, adorn the Marmarosh mountains, which rise higher than 1900 m.: Pip Ivan, Farko, Mikhalek, Petros, Troiaga. Toward the southeast the range wanders over into South Bukowina, where its last boundary-posts, the rocky peaks of Yumalen and Rareu really stand on Roumanian ground. And in the south, beyond the Visheva Valley, which divides the settlements of the Ukrainian Hutzuls from those of the Roumanians, rises the magnificent lofty rampart of the Rodna Mountains, with its two peaks of 2300 m., Pietrosu and Ineu.

On the outside of the Carpathian curve stretches a hill country of varying breath, the sub-Carpathian hill-country, in Ukrainian: Pidhirye or Pidkarpatye. The mountain-edge of the Carpathian, which is at all points very distinct, rises steeply over the low-hill country at the foot, along an extended line in the neighborhood of the cities of Peremishl, Sambir, Drohobich, Striy, Kolomia. The Carpathian rivers leave the mountains by way of funnel-shaped valleys, bordered by boulder terraces, and spread their alluvial mounds over the low hill country. Wide stretches of meadow accompany the river courses; fields and woodland lie at a distance. The sub-Carpathian hill-country is built up of miocene gray clays which, along the edge of the Carpathians, contain an enormous treasure of petroleum, ozokerite, kitchen salt and potash salts. Boulders lie on the clay, not only along the rivers, but also on the hilltops—traces of old watercourses, which transported Carpathian and northern rubble-stone toward the east in the direction of the Dniester. The yellowish cover of loam and loess lies over the whole, and its surface-layer, abounding in vegetable soil, is, in places, very fertile.

The sub-Carpathian hill country reaches to the two sub-Carpathian plains in the north—the Vistula and the Dniester Plain. Only along the European main divide a tongue of hill-country projects in the direction of Lemberg. In the glacial period, watercourses of great volume flowed directly across this hill-country divide, which, as might be expected, is now completely cleft by the bifurcation of the Vishnia, depositing considerable masses of rubble-stone and sand. Thru destruction of forests, the sands have become subject to wind action and dreary landscapes of sand-dunes have been formed.

Only the southeastern reaches of the Vistula Plain, extending along the San River to Peremishl are part of Ukrainian territory. The low loam bags, which lie between sandy and swampy valleys of the San, form the only rises of ground in this plain, which borders in the northeast on the spurs of the Rostoch.

The Dniester Plain extends in a broad ribbon along the river from the place where it leaves the mountains to the delta of the Striy. Its western part is a single great swamp region, a one-time large lake. The rivers flow on flat dams, and when the melting snows come and the rains of early summer, they overflow their banks and flood the swampy plains far and near. In some years the swamp region changes into a lake for days and weeks. In the dry season only a few swamp lakes remain, but the entire region remains a swamp and produces only a poor sour hay. Settlements lie only on the high banks of the rivers.

The eastern part of the Dniester Plain extends beyond the great alluvial mounds of the Striy River, and then reaches over into the broad valley of the Dniester, which ends in the Podolian Plateau at the point where the river enters. The eastern Dniester Plain is not very swampy, and only in places do ravines, swamps, and old river beds accompany the river course. For the most part pretty meadows, fields and woods lie on the thick sub-layer of rubble-stone and river-loam.

If the Carpathians represent a primeval section of Ukrainian ground, the mountain ranges of Crimea and the Caucasus were entirely strange to the Ukrainians not so very long ago. How many Ukrainian slaves, in the time of Tartar oppression, cursed the rocky-wall of the Yaila which separated them from their beloved home. How discontented was the enslaved remainder of the Zaporogs when transported to the Western Caucasus.

Now the conditions are quite changed. The great colonizing movement of the Ukrainians touched the Yaila as much as twenty years ago, and has extended the frontiers of the Ukrainian settlements along the outer mountains of the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea. And the once strange, hostile mountain-worlds have opened their doors to Ukrainian colonization.

The Yaila Mountains of Crimea are, in comparison with the Carpathians, a small mountain system hardly 150 km. long and 35 km. wide. They lie in three parallel ranges, separated by longitudinal valleys, along the southeast shores of the peninsula. The northern declivities of all the ridges are gently sloping, the southern ones steep. The southern main range exceeds a height of 1500 m. with its peaks, Chatirdagh, Roman-chosh, and Demir Kapu. This main ridge, which declines toward the sea in steep precipices, is flat and rocky on top, strewn with rock-craters; it bears the name Yaila and serves as a lean mountain pasture. Deep gorges cut the rough surface of the summit and divide it into single table mountains.

The mountains of Crimea, like the Carpathians, are mountains of plication. They are composed of Jurassic, chalk, and miocene-layers. The large blocks of lime of the Jurassic, which rest on softer slates and clays, form the main ridge of the mountains. Besides craters, we find, in the limestone mountains of the Yaila, impassable furrows (German Karrenbildungen) and numerous hollows.

Very picturesque is the magnificent precipitous decline of the main range of the Yaila to the sea. Here the entire southern part of the range has sunk in great ravines and the resisting power of the eruptive rocks which appear here has created a coastal mountain landscape of great beauty. Protected by the mountain wall from northerly winds, a Mediterranean flora has been able to develop here at the southern foot of the range, while beautiful leafy forests partly cover the declines of the mountains.

On the peninsula of Kerch, which forms the eastern extreme of Crimea, a low steppe-like hill-country extends seemingly as a prolongation of the Yaila Range. The new tertiary clays are here laid in flat folds, which are more closely related to the Caucasus. Here, and on the quite similarly formed Taman peninsula, we find many small cone-shaped mud volcanoes which emit gases, smoke, and thinly flowing blue-gray mud from their miniature craters.

The magnificent lofty range of the Caucasus forms the boundary-post of the Ukraine on the east. Only the western part of the mountain system lies within Ukrainian territory. We shall, therefore, discuss it quite briefly.

The Caucasian Mountain system, which is 1100 km. in length, lies like a huge wall of rock between Europe and Asia. Most geographers consider the Caucasus as part of the latter continent, which is correct in so far as these mountains show many characteristics of Asiatic mountain ranges. First of all they are hard to cross, much harder than the highest mountains of Europe, the Alps. Along a stretch of 700 km., the ridge of the Caucasus descends only twice to a level of 3000 m. On the other hand, the Caucasus is not wide—on the average only 150 km.—and at the point where the Grusinian army road crosses the range, barely 60 km. Then, the Caucasus, like many mountain ranges of Asia, stretches in a straight line from the peninsula of Taman to the peninsula of Apsheron, famous for its abundance of petroleum.

The Caucasus is a plication-formed mountain range composed of folded crystalline and sedimentary rock of varying ages. Along huge ravines, the entire southern part of the range has sunk down, so that the highest crystalline central zone of the range declines directly and very steeply toward the south. The highest Caucasus peaks are old extinct volcanoes, set over the basic mountains; the Elbrus (5630 m.), at the source of the Kuban and the Kasbek (5040 m.), at the source of the Terek. Proof that the subterranean powers are still active are the numerous tectonic earthquakes of Transcaucasia.

The main chain of the Caucasus possesses, besides the volcano peaks, many rocky granite peaks 4000–5000 m. in height, and, besides these, hundreds of lower peaks, all of which find their counterparts in the Alps. The present glaciation of the Caucasus is very considerable, while that of the glacial period was also very extensive and determined the present mountain forms of the Caucasus. Only the most beautiful ornament of the one-time glacial landscape is lacking in the Caucasus—the lakes, which are so abundant in the Alps.

All the larger Caucasus rivers rise as milky glacial brooks in the main range. Then, by way of deep cross-valleys, they break thru the lower ranges, which face the main ridge in several rows, and are composed of sedimentary rock formations of jurassic, cretaceous, and old-tertiary age. Their crests and peaks become constantly lower and more rounded toward the north. Beautiful mountain pastures and thick virgin forests, full of animals that may be hunted, cover the mountains.

In the country at the foot of the Caucasus, a low hill-region is spread, which consists mainly of new-tertiary layers abounding in petroleum. At the Ponto-Caspian divide, the hill-district and plateau of Piatihorsk and Stavropol, which is composed of recent lime formations, projects from the Caucasus. From a height of 600 m. this structure declines slowly in flat hills toward the west, north and east to the Ponto-Caspian steppe-plain, in which lies the famous Manich Furrow. The Manich, or rather Calaus River rises like the Kuma in the Plateau of Stavropol and separates, in the Furrow, into two branches. The one flows thru extended Manich lakes toward the northeast into the Don River, and, incidentally, into the Sea of Azof; the other turns toward the south to the Kuma River and the Caspian Sea. But its waters reach this goal very rarely; the burning sun and the sandy soil of the Caspian steppe rob the little river of its small supply of water.

The Ukrainian Plateau Country

The Carpathians, the Yaila and the Caucasus, are immovable boundary-walls, marking the southern borders of the Ukraine. On its wide surface there are only these narrow zones of mountain country. All the remaining territory of our fatherland is occupied by plateaus and plains. Upon these the Ukrainian nation has lived since the dawn of history. Not cloud-capped highlands, but level, lightly undulating plateaus, furrowed by picturesque river valleys and immeasurable plains, are characteristic of the Ukraine.

Between the Carpathians and the Ural Mountains there extends an immense space which once bore the name of Sarmatian Plain and is now generally called the Russian Tableland, tho the name East European Lowland would be geographically the most fitting. In this space, which embraces half the surface of Europe, only one group of hills in the Pokutia rises above 500 m., and only one small part of the Podolia above 400 m. The entire remaining space of Eastern Europe, with slight exceptions, keeps below the 300 or even 200 m. level.

In the northern part of Eastern Europe, the lands over 200 m. high take up very little room. Like great flat islands, they rise gently from the spacious cool lowlands. In Central Europe the surface of the high part of the flat country is relatively the greatest, but these rises of ground are so insignificant and the transitions to the low plain so imperceptible, that the main features of the surface of this part of Europe were only discovered in the second half of the Nineteenth Century.

In the Ukrainian south of Eastern Europe the character of the ground elevations is different. They are the highest of all in Eastern Europe and separate very distinctly, largely by means of steep edges, from the surrounding plains. The genuine plateau landscape is the type of landscape peculiar to the Ukraine.

The Ukrainian plateau group, the real morphological nucleus of the land about which its borderlands are gathered, extends from the sub-Carpathian country and the Polish Vistula-region to the Sea of Azof and the Donetz River. It consists of the following plateaus: Rostoche, Podolia, Pokutye (Bessarabia), Volhynia, Dnieper Plateau and Donetz Plateau.

We shall begin our survey of the Ukrainian plateaus with the Podolia. The Podolian Plateau is the most massive of all the plateaus in the Ukraine, the highest, and the one possessing the most distinctive features of a heavily cut high plain.

If, leaving the Carpathians, we overlook the surrounding country from the edge of the mountain range, we observe behind the wide stretch of the sub-Carpathian hills and plains, just on the horizon, wide, flat elevations, which obstruct the horizon in the north. These are the edges of the Podolian Plateau.

The western boundary of Podolia is formed by the wide valley of the little Vereshitza River, a valley covered with swampy meadows and large ponds. On the south and southeast, Podolia is bounded by the valley of the Dniester River, which is first wide and then narrows down to a cañon. Between the lower course of the Dniester and the Boh, the Podolian Plateau gradually leads into the Pontian Steppe-plain. On the north and northeast, Podolia is bounded by the rocky valley of the Boh and then by the river divide, which extends toward the west, between the basins of the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers. Near its limit begins the well-known steep edge which forms the decline of the Podolian Plateau to the plain of the Buh. From Brody to Lemberg, the northern boundary of Podolia is very clearly marked by this steep edge.

Despite its distinct plateau character, Podolia is by no means lacking in beautiful landscapes. The northern, steep, border of the Plateau occasionally rises for 200 m. above the swampy Buh plain, and its height above sea level is in some places 470 m. The whitish-gray chalk-marl which forms the basis of this land grade glitters from a distance, exposed thru the action of the water, which flows down the steep side. The miocene sandstone lying above shows fantastic rock piles and ravines. Beautiful beech forests are to a great extent still maintaining themselves on the steep edge. From a distance, everything produces the illusion of a high forest-covered chain of hills. On climbing it, however, we see in the south only an unbounded lightly undulating elevated plain, with flat valleys filling the entire view.

Toward the southwest, too, Podolia declines with a similar steep border, but this one is neither so uniform nor so high and picturesque. These steep borders owe their origin to a recent uprising, which has affected the Podolian Plateau, especially in the west, since the glacial period. To the same cause the picturesque, beautifully wooded, eroded hill-country of the Opilye owes its origin, a section which extends southeast from Lemberg in the regions of Rohatin and Berezani to the Dniester, and which, with its peaks, reaches a height of 440 m. Most remarkable, however, is the long chain of rocky hills which extends from Brody to the southeast toward Kamenetz Podilski. This chain of hills, which bears the name of Toutri, is marked on all maps by the wilfully chosen name of Medobori. The limestone rock, which contains a great amount of fossils, forms fantastic crags on the more than 400 m. peaks of the hill-chain, which look down upon the land like old fortresses. The entire chain of hills is a new-tertiary coral and briozone reef which, after the withdrawal of the sea, remained behind as a long rock dyke.

Beyond this hilly region the entire Podolian Plateau has a flat, undulating surface. Beginning as far back as the upper Sereth and Sbruch we find typical steppe-plains. The farther southwest, the more flat, undulating and steppe-like sections do we meet, until finally the Podolian elevation gradually merges in the Pontian steppe-plain.

Much variety and beauty is given to the appearance of the Podolian landscape by the valleys of the Dniester tributaries on the left. In their upper parts they are wide and have flat, swampy ground, many ponds and bogs and gentle valley declines. In its further course the river begins to cut in more and more deeply, the valley becomes constantly narrower and deeper and winds on in regular bends, the valley-sides become higher and steeper, bare walls of rock take the place of the soft green slopes. We are in a Podolian “yar,” in a miniature cañon.

In the sides of the yars the geologic history of the Podolia is engraved in imperishable letters. The river has sawed the plateau thru as tho with a gigantic saw, and has exposed the various layers of stone. As a rule they lie nearly horizontally above one another.

The oldest rock species of Podolia are the granite-gneisses, which were folded and disturbed in pre-cambrian times. The lines of the folds and breaks stretch principally north to south. Granite composes the rocks of the Dniester rapids near Yampol and the numerous rapids of the Boh River, in whose rocky vale this primitive rock formation appears distinctively. On the granite base, almost horizontally, slightly turned toward the southwest, lie dark slate and limestone, upper silurian at first in West Podolia, then the devonic layers, of which the old red sandstone attracts the eye most of all, because of the dark red coloring which it gives to the steep walls of the Podolian cañons. These are followed by chalk layers, and, last of all, by recent tertiary formation whose gypsums form picturesque groups of rocks on the heights of the Yari walls. In the mighty gypsum stores of Podolia may be found many a large, beautiful cave, with wonderful alabaster stalactites.

All tributaries on the left side of the Dniester, beginning at the Zolota Lipa, flow into yari-cañons of this sort. The most beautiful and magnificent is the cañon of the Dniester, whose walls often exceed a height of 200 m. It cuts thru the high plateau in adventurous windings, every curve revealing new, beautiful prospects over the high, concave, steep edge, torn by ravines, and the gently rising convex banks. In deep gorges the yari of the tributaries open into the yar of the main stream. Between the defiles stretches the flat, hardly undulating plain. In the summer only endless waving grain-steppes present themselves to the view of the traveler, only here and there a little wood appears on the horizon, or a lone farm. Suddenly the wood seems to end, the traveler is confronted by a deep, steppe-walled valley, down the sides of which climbs the road. And below, on the silvery river, amid the green of the orchards, lies village after village.

The further to the east, the more frequent do the yari become, and the balkas (gorges) similar to them but smaller; yet these are not so deep and picturesque. In the regions of Tiraspol Ananiv the entire plateau surface is very profusely cut by these defiles. In the district of Ananiv the balkas take up one-seventh of the entire surface. The plateau is cut up by these water crevasses into innumerable narrow fens.

The balka, like the yar, owes its existence to the erosive activity of flowing waters. On the Dniester we see, on both sides of its deep yars, great masses of old river boulders, which lie on the summit of the plateau beneath the thick cover of loam. They are boulder deposits of the pre-glacial Dniester. Later, when the recent raising of the Ukrainian plateau group began, and it occurred with particular force in the Podolian Plateau, the rivers cut in, and in the course of thousands of years formed their present picturesque defiles.

The entire surface of the Podolian Plateau is covered with a thick mantle of loess, which was formed in the desert and steppe period following the glacial age. In the manner in which the loess is heaped up, in the symmetry of the river valleys, whose western declivities are regularly steeper, in the general arrangement and formation of the valleys of Podolia, the great influence of winds may be distinctly recognized.

The uppermost loess layer has been transformed thruout Podolia into the famous black earth (Chornozem). Hence Podolia has for ages been famous for its fertility. “In Podolia,” says an old Ukrainian proverb, “bread grows on the hedgeposts and the hedges are of plashed sausages.” On the other hand, Podolia suffers greatly from lack of forests. The large areas of forest which still existed in the 16th and 17th Centuries have now divided to small woods. The effects of forest destruction were not slow. Many springs and brooks have dried up, the rivers have languished, so that in particularly dry summers there is often a dearth of water. On the other hand, after the cutting down of the forests, began the destructive activity of the gorges, which extend after every strong rain and are able in a short time to transform a rich agricultural district into a maze of ravines.

Between the Podolian Plateau and the hilly sub-Carpathian country lies the Pocutian-Bessarabian Plateau.