Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — Proposed Connection of the Caspian and Black Seas. [ARTICLE]

Proposed Connection of the Caspian and Black Seas.

An American engineer of eminence, Mr. Spalding, has submitted to the Geograph, ical Commission of Russia a remarkable report upon the Caspian and Black Sfeas. Mr. Spalding maintains that the Caspian is drying np, and will slowly become a desert, while the diminution of rainfall will destroy the surrounding territories. This, he says, has already occurred in historic times, whole countries having been desolated by the shrinkage of the Caspian. He recommends that a deep and brpad cutting should be made from the Caspian westward, to a point where it would be five meters below the level ot Black Sea, and a smaller cutting from that'point to the Black Sea. The water of the latter, which is fifteen meters higher than that of the Caspian, would then cut a deep and broad channel for itself, and nbfill the Caspian to'its ora level, giving, in fifty years, straight ocean communication between the-Mediterranean and Persia." The distance between the Black . Sea and the Caspian is 100 miles, . The period required lor refilling might be reduced one-half by a cut connecting the Don and the Volga, sb that the waters of both rivers, instead of those of the Volga only, might fall into the Caspian. Mr. Spalding calculates that the two cuttings might

be finished in six years, but says nothing of the expense, which might, however, be reduced by the employment of convicts and the penal regiments in the army.— London Saturday Revima.