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were Russians, a proportion that was increased after theRevolution and the loss of the western fringes.Consider now the social frontiers; the Russian frontierin the sense of nuclei of shifting occupancy, following therivers and the portages, gradually with the increase ofagriculture and much later of mining and industry becomingsolid zones of settlement, marking the slowlygrowing mastery of the Russians over their naturalsurroundings and non-Russian neighbours.As with American so with Russian expansion, in thegreater part of the north and Siberia the outer edge ofthe advancing wave was "the meeting point of savageryand civilization," 1 though this does not hold true to thesame extent of the advance to the south. Russian likeAmerican development exhibits "not merely an advancealong a single line, but a return to primitive conditionson a continually advancing frontier . . . social developmenthas been continually beginning over again on thefrontier.'' In both, the advance of the settlers' frontierwas uneven, with tongues of settlement pushed forwardand indentations in the wilderness, due to varieties ofsoil and forest, the course and character of rivers andlakes, the lie of portages and routes and very latterlyrailways, the presence of salt or minerals, the location ofarmy posts or defence lines, and the varying powers ofresistance of non-Russians or Indians. Above all, boththe Russian and the American advance has been that ofthe agriculturist against the forest nomad and the plainsnomad; the conquest of the grasslands for the first timeby the plough, in North America during the last centuryat a ruinously rapid rate of soil exploitation, with erosionnow a national problem of the first order, in Russia at aserious but less ruinous rate owing to the much slowertempo of her development and the comparativelysmall use of machinery on the land until the last dozenyears.Far away back, before the Russian agriculturist camethe Russian hunter-fisherman-beeman. Fur, game, fish,1 This and the following quotation are from F. J. Turner, TheFrontier in American History. Subsequent quotations, unless otherwisestated, are from sources contemporaneous with that to which they refer.B—R.H. 17