and lakes occupy only about 1 percent of the surface
area. The largest lakes are along the Danube River and the Black Sea
coast. Some of those along the coast are open to the sea and contain
salt sea water. These and a few of the fresh water lakes are
commercially important for their fish. The many smaller ones scattered
throughout the mountains are usually glacial in origin and add much to
the beauty of the resort areas.

The Danube drains a basin of 315,000 square miles that extends eastward
from the Black Forest in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)
and includes a portion of the southwestern Soviet Union. It is about
1,775 miles long, including the 900 miles in or adjacent to Romania, and
is fed by more than 300 tributaries, from which it collects an average
of about 285,000 cubic feet per minute to discharge into the Black Sea.
Much of the Danube delta and a band of up to twenty miles wide along
most of the length of the river from the delta to the so-called Iron
Gate--where it has cut a deep gorge through the mountains along the
Yugoslav border--is marshland.

For descriptive purposes the river is customarily divided into three
sections; most of the portion in Romania--from the Iron Gate to the
Black Sea--is its lower course. The northern bank of this course, on the
Romanian side, is low, flat marshland and, as it approaches its delta,
it divides into a number of channels. It also forms several lakes, some
of them quite large. At its delta it divides into three major and
several minor branches. The delta has an area of about 1,000 square
miles and grows steadily as the river deposits some 2 billion cubic feet
of sediment into the sea annually.

Climate

The climate is continental and is characterized by hot summers and cold
winters. Typical weather and precipitation result from the high pressure
systems that predominate over European Soviet Union and north-central
Asia. Southern Europe's Mediterranean weather and western European
maritime systems occasionally extend into the area but not frequently,
and they prevail only for short periods. Winters are long, and the
months from November through March tend to be cold and cloudy, with
frequent fog and snow. Although summers may be hot, they are sunny, and
the humidity is usually at comfortable levels.

Precipitation ranges from fifteen to fifty inches; the countrywide
average is about twenty-eight inches. Dobruja, along the lower Danube
River and a