The navigation of the Danube from Galatz to the mouth is controlled and regulated by an international commission, which was called into existence by the importance of the commerce with the corn-producing countries along the lower river. Forty-five miles below Galatz the river divides into two branches, the left-hand one, the Kilia arm, taking a general north-easterly course, with many turns and subdivisions, past the Russian towns of Ismail and Kilia, and, a short distance beyond the fishing-village of Vilkoff, flows into the Black Sea through seven narrow channels. The right-hand branch, actually the main stream, divides again ten miles below the first fork, the former running in a general easterly direction to the port of Sulina, on the Black Sea, and the latter arm winding sluggishly on towards the south-east under the extreme eastern spurs of the great range of Dobrudscha hills. Each side of the irregular equilateral triangle bounded by the Kilia and Saint George’s arms and the sea-coast measures about fifty miles in a straight line, and the larger part of the tract thus enclosed is marsh and swamp-land, covered with a dense growth of tall reeds, interspersed with numerous lakes and cut up into countless islands by narrow lagoons. In the whole of this great delta there are only a few square miles of ground higher than the general level of the marsh, and these are two broad ranges of sand-dunes running north-east and south-west several miles inland, marking the line of [Illustration: GALATZ]