The porohi are not real waterfalls or cataracts; the incline of the river in this section is 35 meters for a stretch of 75 km., and is, therefore, too slight for regular falls. The greatest incline attained within this stretch of river is [77]6%. Therefore, only the individual branches of water between boulders form small falls, while the main channel only shoots along down-stream in a long, foam-covered streak, over the inclined surface of the ledges. In summer, the depth above the rock ledges is barely 1½ meters, while in the spring even the highest reefs of the rapids disappear beneath the masses of the high-water. Still, the rapids of the Dnieper are even now a great hindrance to navigation. Within the porohi section, steamboat navigation is altogether impossible, and the smaller rowboats or sailboats can risk it only during the spring floods, and then only the down-trip. Only the rafts can pass thru the porohi at low-water time, altho with great danger. The up-stream trip is almost impossible, even in the smallest vessel, altho, at one time, everyone who desired to join the Zaporog Cossacks was required to undertake this daring enterprise. The Russian government has attempted, indeed, to make the rapids of the river navigable, and has caused a navigable canal to be formed at each fall, thru blasting of the rock ledges. But these canals have been planned in so impractical and even faulty a manner that the river pilots (lotzmani) still use the old “Cossack paths” to a great extent (the Cosachi khody) to bring river boats and rafts thru the porohi. The width of the river in the rapids section remains unchanged—1 to 1¾ kilometers. Only at its exit from the porohi, at the so-called Wolf’s Throat (Vovche horlo), the river narrows down to 160 meters. The quiet sections between separate rapids are usually very wide and as much as 30 meters deep.