The last great river of the Ukraine is the Kuban, 800 km. long. It rises in the glaciers of the Elbus and flows, a roaring mountain stream, in a narrow and deep rocky defile. A great number of the mountain streams of the northern Caucasus slope empty into the Kuban and make it a stream of considerable volume. In the Stavropol hill country the Kuban turns in a widely-drawn curve toward the west. Its valley becomes broad and flat, covered with bogs, swampy forests and wildernesses of reeds. From the left side it receives a number of tributaries from the Caucasus, the most important being the Laba and the Bila. In the midst of immense plavni, lakes and limans, the Kuban forms its many-armed delta, which carries its waters partly to the Black Sea, partly to the Sea of Azof, and embraces the peninsula of Taman.
The Kuban always has a large volume, the floods coming in the early summer, when the snow blanket of the Caucasus melts. Navigation is greatly injured because of banks of sand and rubble, brush and tree-stumps, but is, nevertheless, possible for a distance of over 350 km.
The Ukrainian Climate
The great uniformity of Eastern Europe, in respect to its morphology, we find repeated in its climatic conditions. But, to the same extent that the attentive investigator, upon close observation, finds several independent morphological individualities within the Eastern European low country, he will also observe important climatic differences in this great half-continent.
The Central European climatic zone stops at the western borders of the Ukraine. Similarly, the cool Eastern European continental climate, which rules over all of White and Great Russia, embraces only insignificant borderlands in the north of Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian climate assumes an entirely independent position. It is more continental than that of Central Europe and differs from that of Great Russia in its greater mildness. The Ukraine shares with France the advantage that in its territory the direct transition from the temperate climate of Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean climate of Southern Europe takes place.
The thermal conditions of the Ukraine, despite its great size, are very uniform. The yearly averages fluctuate between +6° and +9° C. Ternopil, in Podolia, and Vovchansk, in the Kharkov country, have the same yearly temperature of +6.3°, Pinsk +6.7°, Kiev and Kharkiv +6.8°, Lviv (Lemberg) and Poltava +6.9°. The differences are confined within a space of 1° C. Chernivtzi (Czernowitz) in the Bukowina, Yelisavet in the Kherson region, and
Luhan in the Donetz region have an annual temperature of 7.6° or 7.7°, Katerinoslav on the Dnieper, Tahanroh on the Sea of Azof, and Stavropil in the sub-Caucasus country 8.3° or 8.2°. This great coincidence of yearly averages in so widely separated places is all the more surprising, since the mean temperature falls considerably directly behind the borders of the Ukraine. Thus, Kursk has only +5.2°, Voroniz +5.4°.
Not until we reach the southern borders of the Ukraine does the mean temperature rise considerably. Odessa and Kishinivhave +13.4° mean annual temperature. The last-named place actually lies in the narrow belt of the Mediterranean climate, on the southern slope of the Yaila Mountains.
Comparing the annual averages of the Ukraine with those of different places in Western and Central Europe, the latter appear relatively much higher. London, situated in the same geographical latitude as Kursk has an annual temperature almost twice as high (+10.3°). London is on the average even a little warmer than Simferopil, which actually lies 650 km. nearer the equator. Brussels lies a little more north than Kiev, yet it is in the mean warmer than Odessa.
The cause of this unfavorable relation is the severe winter of the Ukraine. The mean temperature of January is +1.2° in Frankfort a m., — 1.2° in Prague, — 3.3° in Cracow. In the Ukraine the January means are much lower. Lemberg has — 4.6°, Kiev has —6.2°, Kharkiv —8.3°, Luhan —8°, Vovchansk — 7.7°, Katerinoslav — 7.4°, etc. To be sure this is not remarkable when compared with the January temperatures of even the south of Great Russia, where the winter suggests polar conditions, but the antithesis to the winter climate of Western and Central Europe is striking. Hammerfest,
the northernmost city of the. earth, is one degree warmer than Kiev in January and even a little warmer than Lemberg.
On the other hand, the summer of the Ukraine is even warmer than that of Western and Central Europe. The July mean of London is +17.9° C.,of Brussels 18°, Lemberg the same, but Kiev has as much as 19.2°, Kharkiv 20.9°. The differences in the summer temperatures are much smaller, however, than the differences in the winter temperatures— hence the comparatively low annual mean in the Ukraine.