The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

194 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.Latin transcriptions, Ruthenians, a name now specially restricted to the LittleRussians of Austrian Galicia. The term Muscovite itself, frequently used, especiallyin a hostile sense, both west of the Niemen and south of the Balkans, is purelyconventional, and is historically incorrect even when applied to the Great Russians,already forming a compact nation before the foundation of Moscow in 1147, andespecially before the political influence of the Great Russian rulers had brought toWestern Europe a knowledge of the " kingdom of Muscovy."On the other hand, the Great Russians wiU vainly lay claim to absolute purityof blood, or to the hegemony on the ground of a pretended right of primogeniturein the Slav family. The serious aspect of the question raised by the Polishpatriots arises from the fact that the Great Russian nationality has been formedby the fusion of Slav colonists from the west and south-west with various Finnish,Mongol, and Turki tribes. The tradition preserved by Nestor mentions theRadimichi and Vatichi amongst the Slav settlers of the region which afterwardsbecame Muscovy, and, by a strange coincidence, these colonists would seem to havecome from Poland itself.Then followed the Novgorod settlers, Nestor's Sloveni,those of the Dvina, Dnieper, and Dniester ; that is to say, of White and LittleRussia. The chronicles speak of this colonisation, which is also proved by thenames of old towns in Central Muscovy, mere repetitions of Ukranian or Galiciannomenclature.However, the Muscovite ethnologists have never denied the mixedorigin of the dominant race, which to this very circumstance may be indebted forits greater vital energies.During the long struggles of which their history consists, the Slav populations,who have become the Russians of our days, absorbed many foreign elementsprecisely on account of their preponderance. They gained inch by inch on theindigenous peoples, but in doing so became mingled with them, partly assimilatingthemselves to their physical features and usages, and adopting a few of theirwords into the national speech. It is certain that the Russian type, especially inthe neighbourhood of the Finnish tribes, is distinct from that of the other Slavs,differing in a marked manner from that of the Danubian and Ulyrian branches,speaking languages of like origin. Russians are often met with the flat featuresand high cheek bones of the Finns, and the women especially have retainedtraces of miscigenation.theseIn the south other crossings have developed other types. Here the Slavscame in contact with Asiatic tribes arriving at the period of the general migrations,and then with the Mongolians and the Turki peoples commonly known asTatars. A large number of Russian noble families have sprung from Tatarand Mongol chiefs, whc accepted baptism to retain their power. The ZaporogCossacks, as well as those of the Don, the Volga, and the Ural, were in the habit ofcarrying off Tatar women in their expeditions, and so it happened that throughtheir very victories the Slavs lost the purity of their blood. In those days theyoccupied little more than one-fifth of the actual Russian territory, all the rest ofthe land belonging to the Lithuanians, to the Finns, and to vai'ious nomadand settled tribes, immigrants from the Asiatic steppes. Now they people four-