The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

,;290 RUSSIA IX ETTBOEE.names correspond exactly with the regions inhabited by the Malo-Russian race,which, grouped from the first in fluctuating confederacies, never enjoyed politicalunity. Apart altogether from the trans-Carpathian Ruthenians of Hungary, theother branches of the family, since the fourteenth century, remained long dismemberedbetween Poland and Lithuania. Those of the Dnieper had scarcelysucceeded in acquiring a certain autonomy as a Cossack republic in the seventeenthcentury, when they lost it by accepting the protection of Muscovy. The-Little Russian TvrE, Podolia:Peasant of the Village of Panovtzi.WWx:name itself of Little Russia appears for the first time in the Byzantine chroniclesof the thirteenth century in association with Galicia and Volhynia, after which itwas extended to the Middle Dnieper, or Kiyovia. In the same way Ukrania—thatis, "Frontier"—was first applied to Podolia to distinguish it from Galicia, andafterwards to the southern provinces of the Lithuanian state, between the Bugand Dnieper. Under the Polish rule Ukrania became pre-eminently the land ofthe Malo-Russian Cossacks.But Great Russia had also her "Frontiers"— that is,Ukranias—in one of which the Malo-Russian free colonies, or Sfobodi, were formed