The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

184 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.extensive coast-line, its varied contours, and the relative importance of thepeninsulas. The sea everywhere forms large gulfs aud inlets penetrating farinland, and carrying marine breezes towards the uplands of the interior. Theaspect of "Western Europe, broken up into detached masses, shows that it wasdestined to develop independent nationalities full of life and rejuvenescence, andsubject to endless modifications from peninsula to peninsula, from seaboard toseaboard. Eastern Europe—that is to say, Russia—forms, on the contrary, anirregular quadrilateral, with monotonous outlines, more compact than Asia itselfin their general contour. Nor is this contrast confined to the external lines, butextends also to the whole relief of the land. West of Russia the continentpresents an astonishing variety of table-lands, highlands, declivities, valleys, andlowlands. It offers some well-marked main ridge in the central mass and in allthe great peninsulas and islands, with sharply defined water-partings towards allthe inland and outer seas. Compared with these endlessly diversified regions,Russia seems nothing but a vast plain. Yet even here there are plateaux,elevations of some hundreds of yards, scarcely sufficient, however, to break theeternal uniformity of its boundless lowlands. "We may traverse Russia from sea tosea without ever quitting these vast lowland tracts, apparently as unruffled as thesurface of the becalmed ocean.Eastwards and south-eastwards Russia merges in Asia, so that it becomesdifficult to draw any well-defined line of separation. Hence the frontier isvariously determined according to the greater or less importance attributed bygeographers to one or other of the salient features of the land. Doubtless the tracesleft by the old seas supply a natural limit in the depression between the Euxineand Caspian, and the low-lying plains stretching south and east of the Ural,which were formerly filled by the waters of the straits connecting the Caspian andAral with the Ob estuary. But during the recent geological epoch the relief ofthe land has slowly changed, so that nothing beyond a purely ideal or conventionalline of demarcation can now be drawn between the two continents. Hencetowards the east, and especially along the wide tract between the Caspian and thesouthern bluffs of the Ural, Russia is a land without natural frontiers. She isstill to a certain extent what she was in the time of the Greeks, a monotonousregion, blending in the distance with unknown solitudes.So long the evolutions of history were confined to narrow basins, smallislands, or peninsulas— so long, in fact, as civilised ma-nkind was centred round theshores of the great inland sea—the region that has now become Russia necessarilyremained a formless and limitless world. Not until all the seaboards of theeastern hemisphere were brought within the influence of the civilised Europeanpeoples could she assume her proper role, and slowly define her exact outlines.Geological Features.— Glacial Action.The horizontal character of the Russian lands is not merely superficial ; itpenetrates deeply, as is soon perceived by the geologist who studies the borings