The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

202 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.involved differences of habits, culture, policy, and alliances, building up a barrieron the east which Poland was unable to overcome.When to all these causes of intestine strife were added the revolts and wars ofthe Cossacks and Russian peasantry and the Polish nobles, the fate of Poland wasinevitable. But even geographically the empire had never been consolidated.Harassed by the Germans of the Baltic, the Poles had never been able to effectmore than a temporary footing on a seaboard which seemed to belong to themby right, while the Mohammedan conquests deprived them of an outlet towardsthe Euxine.Rise axd Growth of the Muscovite Power.While Poland was being wasted with wars and civil strife, Muscovy, allied inthe fifteenth century to the southern Mussulmans, was growing in strength.Through the Yolga and its affiuents, through the portages and rivers of the northand west, the Moscow princes were able to reach the farthest limits of the vastcentral plains, and easily established a consolidated state. As soon as the lands ofthe Muscovite Empire were washed by the four seas, north, west, south, and southeast,modern Russia was founded.Its amazing growth in recent times is a familiar topic.The Russia of to-daycomprises a territory at least ten times larger than that of the state which wasformed after the overthrow of the Tatars, and which had an area estimated atabout 800,000 square miles. The vast domain since acquired is measured by themeridians and parallels of latitude rather than by versts or square miles. In 1872the great international triangulation was completed, which had for its object themeasurement of the parallel arc between the island of Valentia, on the south-westcoast of Ireland, and the city of Orsk, in the government of Orenburg. Thisarc of 3,310 miles, embracing 69° of longitude, or about one-fifth of thecircumference of the globe, crosses Russian territory for a space of 40°, to whichmust be added an arc of 100°, nearly all comprised within the empire or its waters,and embracing the whole of Siberia to the Pacific Ocean and the extremity ofKamchatka.The growth of the empire has occasionally been arrested, and certain landshave even been ceded, as, for instance, Astrabad and Mazanderan to Persia in1732, Alaska to the United States in 1867, for the sum of £1,600,000, and in1856 a part of Bessarabia to Rumania—this last, however, resumed in virtue ofthe Congress of Berlin in 1878. But each momentary retreat has almostinvariably been followed by a fresh advance, resulting altogether in an increaseof territory exceeding 2,400,000 square miles since the accession of Peter theGreat.Russia is still in her period of expansion, the fascination of her power andinfluence attracting numerous Asiatic tribes, and even states, which graduallybecome absorbed in her political system. In the west her limits are fixed byother empires, or by petty states maintained by the rivalries of the great powersbut half of Turkey still remains to be shared, and may not Austria-Hungary