The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

192 RUSSIA IN EUEOl'E.for fifty-four years in the present century on the 8th of the same month. Suchclimatic changes as have taken place since the settlement of the land are due notto nature, hut to man, who, by clearing so many forests, drained the soil, dried upthe springs, gave more play to the action of the winds, and rendered the extremesof heat and cold more difficult to endure.Ethnical Elements.Brought into direct contact with Asia by the disappearance of the ancient seas,and partaking of its continental climate, Russia in Europe is in many other respectsAsiatic, just as Siberia is partly European. Thus Severtzov finds that the limitof European vegetation is marked, not by the TTral, nor yet by the Ob valley, butrather by that of the Yenisei. The domains of the various animal species in thesame way overlap the natural limits of the two continents. Lastly, the populationsare intermingled, penetrating reciprocally beyond their natural frontiers. Whatevermay have been their origin and their earliest home, the Aryan Slavs ofdiverse speech occupying in compact masses most of Russia now represent theEuropean element there.But how many races, Asiatic in their aspect, habits, andspeech, still dwell in Russian territory, either isolated or scattered in groups andcommunities amidst the surrounding Slavs ! While the latter, resting on thewest between the Baltic and the Carpathians, were fused together as the rulingpeople in Central Russia, the Asiatic tribes penetrated chiefly through the northerngaps in the Ural, and through the wide spaces lying between this range and theshores of the Caspian. In the north the Samoyeds, Siryanians, and Lapps,following the lowland plains round the Frozen Ocean, spread over vast solitudes,the last-named penetrating even to the heart of Scandinavia. In the south theAsiatic hordes found easy access by the steppes of the Caspian and Black Sea, andwere often numerous and powerful enough to sever the Slavs altogether from theMediterranean.In those days Russia threatened to become a simple ethnologicaldependency of Asia. Twice she disappeared from history ; first after the fall of theRoman Empire in the West, and again after the irruption of the Tatars. TheseAsiatic peoples, bursting on Europe, had broken the line of communication betweenthe Dnieper and Volga plains and the western regions of the continent. Eachtime Russia had, as it were, to be rediscovered. First the Genoese came uponthe old routes to the Euxine, and rebuilt the ancient Greek towns in the Crimea,on the shores of the Sea of Azov, and along the Don valley ; and then, in the farnorth, the English navigators, Chancellor, Burrough, Jenkinson, established directrelations between Muscovy and Western Europe through the AVhite Sea and theNorwegian waters.The ethnographic chart of Russia, especially in its eastern sections, retainsnumerous traces of the revolutions brought about in the distribution of the conflictingelements up to the time when the Great Russians succeeded in definitelyestablishing their supremacy.Almost immediately east of the junction of the Volgaand Oka, non-Slav populations are scattered in more or less numerous isolated