Machinery, coal, bar and sheet iron, and articles of clothing form the bulk of the imports. In general terms, the work of the commission has consisted in the construction of groynes and revetments, straightening the river-banks, shortening the channel by cuttings, and dredging the shallow places. The whole delta has been surveyed, and accurate maps made. A great part of the Sulina arm has been canalized, and the channel deepened from 8 feet at extreme low-water to over 16 feet, or to 20½ feet at average low-water. Under the direction of Sir Charles A. Hartley, the consulting engineer of the commission, and the able supervision of Mr. Charles Kühl, since 1872 the resident engineer, the improvements are carried on with constant regularity and great energy, and every year the navigation of the Sulina branch becomes less difficult and dangerous. Vessels of 2000 tons may now steam up as far as Braila with perfect safety. The longest cutting yet undertaken, which will shorten the channel by four and a quarter miles, is now in active progress, and the operation of cutting through the marsh is extremely interesting. Far out of sight of any human habitation the black funnel and grimy framework of an immense dredger are seen rising high above the waving mass of reeds which stretches away on every side as far as the eye can reach. A chain of steel-shod iron buckets working on a movable arm which projects in front of the dredger cuts its way through the spongy mass of which the marsh is composed, and the mixture of roots, mud, and shells is shot out upon the bank of the cutting through a long adjustable iron trough. There the material is worked by hand into a dike, strengthened by the ingenious use of reeds and roots, and finally protected by a revetment of broken stone. This cutting will be five miles and a quarter in length, and 6,500,000 cubic yards will have to be dredged before the work is completed in 1895. [Illustration: DREDGING IN THE DELTA] The headquarters of the commission are at Sulina, on the Black Sea. As early as the time of the Irish famine in 1847-48 hundreds of English sailing-vessels came to the Black Sea for grain. Most of them anchored in the mouth of the Sulina branch, discharged ballast there, and loaded with corn to supply the urgent demand for bread-stuffs at home. A squalid little settlement rapidly sprang up among the heaps of gravel deposited on the marshy banks, and as years went on the constantly accumulating ballast was spread farther and farther up along the stream, and inland over the morass, and streets and houses followed the [Illustration: TURKISH SAILING LOTKA, SULINA]