Geographical Notes

Abstract

M. DE WOGAN, who has been searching in a small canoe for the true source of the Danube, communicates the result in a recent Bulletin of the Paris Geographical Society (Nos. 19 and 20). The story that it takes its rise in the gardens of the Prince of Fbrstenburg at Donaueschingen, where a monument recording the fact is erected, is, he says, a fable. The Danube, he has found, is formed by the union of two small streams, the Brig, or Brigach, which takes its rise at Saint-Georges, to the north of the Mountain Tryberg, at about a mile from the source of the Neckar, and the Breg, or Bregach, which rises at St. Martin, to the west of Tryberg, and twenty miles from Donau-eschigen, where both streams unite. M. Wogan, who has explored these streams and their tributaries, criticises and corrects statements of MM. Réclus and Saint-Martin in their geographical works on this subject. M. Charles Rabot, in the same Bulletin describes a journey made during the last autumn in the peninsula of Kola, in Russian Lapland, a region which is largely a blank on our maps. In August M. Rabot traversed the peninsula twice, from north to south, from the Arctic Ocean to the White Sea. He describes it as excessively monotonous, covered by forests, with many large lakes, or rather marshes. On the eastern shore of Lake Imandra there is a range of mountains, called Umbdek, which reaches an altitude of a thousand metres, and which is the highest elevation in European Russia, except the Caucasus. These are a picture of savage desolation. He has come to the conclusion that the western part of Russian Lapland is far from being flat, as generally represented on the maps. Between the White Sea and the ocean there are three ranges of mountains separated by large depressions covered with forests, marshes, and lakes. M. Rabot concludes with some observations on the inhabitants—Russian Lapps and Samoyedes.