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. [Contents] 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 [38]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.