The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

406 RUSSIA IN EUEOPE.munities in the neighbouring provinces of Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg,and Perm, with a total population variously estimated at from 500,000 to 700,000.They are probably the Burtasses of the Arab geographers, whom many suppose tohave been Mordvinians driven northwards by the Mongolian invasion in thethirteenth century. Their appearance, about one thousand words of their language,and several of their customs have caused them to be grouped with the Finns ; buta great many now speak Turki, and in their songs the Tatars give them the nameof " Brothers." The national speech is still current in some districts, and eventaught in the schools since 1839, and an extensive religious literature had alreadybeen composed and printed in it before that year. They wear the Russian dress, aregood husbandmen, and for over one hundred and fifty years all but a few hundredhave been Christians, though, like the Cheremissians, retaining some pagan andMoslem practices. They hold pork in abhorrence, and till recently sacrificed to theirgod Tora, not live horses, but simply clay images of the animal. Of smaller staturethan the Tatars, and mostly a puny, half-starved race, they retire before theRussians to the remotest villages and woodlands. Their songs are soft andplaintive, like those of a people doomed to extinction. Till quite recently aChuvash, wishing to be revenged on an enemy, would often hang himself at hisdoor, in order to draw upon him what they call " dry misfortune ;" that is, a visitfrom the Russian authorities. They are also said to cheat the Russians, notthrough greed, but in order to injure the hereditary foe.The Kazan Tatars,Votyaks, and Bashkirs.Of all tne non-Slav peoples of the Middle Volga the Tatars have best preservedtheir distinct nationality. They reside in the large towns side by side with theRussians, and in many villages form with them peaceful communities, with thesame staroste and council, although otherwise separated from them by theinsuperable barrier of religion. Were the Christian and Moslem worships treatedwith equal justice by the Government, it is probable that the Finnish peopleswould mostly become Mohammedans, as the Chuvashes formerly did. Tatarvillages, forcibly converted in the eighteenth century, have been known to leavethe churches in a body, or refuse to receive the priests, and their religiousinstruction, at least on a level with that of the Orthodox missionaries, enables themsuccessfully to resist all proselytizing efforts by simply keeping on the defensive,and teaching their children the precepts of the Koran. Till recently theirmedresseh, or colleges, always adjoining the mosques, had an almost exclusivelyreligious character ; but since 1872 elementary books, composed in the currentTatar dialect by M. Radlov, have been introduced into the Kazan schools.The " Kazan Tatars," who arrived with the Mongolian Khans in the beginningof the thirteenth century, descend from the Kipchaks of the Golden Horde.Since then they have certainly increased in numbers, and are now estimated atabout 1,200,000, of whom nearly one-half are in the government of Kazan. Amongstthem are some of the old Bulgarians, and they often even call themselves