The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

302 RUSSIA IN EUROPEthe advantage of lying in a vast carboniferous basin, which increases in value inproportion as tbe forests threaten to disappear. Of tbc 113 pits surveyed in thisbasin, 4 were being worked in 1867, yielding 25,000 tons yearly, though300,000 might easily be extracted. The Tula beds have a mean thickness of16 feet, rising in some places to 2G feet, and the coal generally lies in horizontalstrata near the surface.Between Tula and Moscow the chief railway station is Serpukhov, with a largeriver traffic, and some important tanneries and calico works. North of it isPodolsk, already in the Moscow circuit.Moscow.The second capital of Russia, which takes the first position, if not in population,trade, and industry, at least in point of precedence, occupies almost exactly theFig. 206.—Tula.Scale 1 : 210)000E.ofP.5b°IOFarriers Sub^i„.«"CoachmenS SubtVogeographicalcentre of the state. It stands on no large river, the Moskva beingnavigable only for small boats ; but the slight undulations of the surroundingplains offer no obstacles to its direct communications with the Volga, Oka, Don,and Dnieper. It thus stands at a point where may easily converge all the mainroutes from the extremities of the empire—the White and Black Seas, the Balticand Caspian, the ports of West Europe and of Siberia. The commercial and thestrategical interests of the country also required that all the main lines of railwayshould here converge, for if Moscow lies open to attack from the direction of