Russia | Page 3

north,--their monotonous surfaces are diversified by only a few, and
these for the most part low, hilly tracts.
As to the picturesque Bureya mountains on the Amur, the
forest-clothed Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of
Kamchatka, they belong to quite another orographical world; they are
the border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau-belt
descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It is owing to these leading
orographical features--divined by Carl Ritter, but only within the
present day revealed by geographical research--that so many of the
great rivers of the old continent are comprised within the limits of the
Russian empire. Taking rise on the plateau-belt, or in its Alpine
outskirts, they flow first, like the upper Rhone and Rhine, along high
longitudinal valleys formerly filled up with great lakes; next they find
their way through the rocky walls; and finally they enter the lowlands,
where they become navigable, and, describing great curves to avoid
here and there the minor plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into
water-communication with one another places thousands of miles apart.
The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Obi and Irtish,
the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, the
Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances. They were the
true channels of Russian colonization.
A broad depression--the Aral-Caspian desert--has arisen where the
plateau-belt has reached its greatest height and suddenly changes its
direction from a north-western into a north-eastern one; this desert is
now filled only to a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian, Aral
and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces of having
been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin. There the
Volga, the Ural, the Sir Daria, and the Oxus discharge their waters
without reaching the ocean, but continue to bring life to the rapidly
drying Transcaspian Steppes, or connect by their river network, as the

Volga does, the most remote parts of European Russia.
The above-described features of the physical geography of the empire
explain the relative uniformity of this wide territory, in conjunction
with the variety of physical features on the outskirts. They explain also
the rapidity of the expansion of Sclavonic colonization over these
thinly-peopled regions; and they also throw light upon the internal
cohesion of the empire, which cannot fail to strike the traveller as he
crosses this immense territory, and finds everywhere the same
dominating race, the same features of life. In fact, as their advance from
the basins of the Volkhoff and Dnieper to the foot of the Altai and
Sayan mountains, that is, along nearly a quarter of the earth's
circumference, the Russian colonizers could always find the same
physical conditions, the same forest and prairies as they had left at
home, the same facilities for agriculture, only modified somewhat by
minor topographical features. New conditions of climate and soil, and
consequently new cultures and civilizations, the Russians met with, in
their expansion towards the south and east, only beyond the Caucasus
in the Aral-Caspian region, and in the basin of the Usuri on the Pacific
coast. Favoured by these conditions, the Russians not only conquered
northern Asia--they colonized it.
The Russian Empire falls into two great subdivisions, the European and
the Asiatic, the latter of which, representing an aggregate of nearly
6,500,000 square miles, with a population of only sixteen million
inhabitants may be considered as held by colonies. The European
dominions comprise European Russia, Finland, which is, in fact, a
separate nationality treated to some extent as an allied state, and Poland,
whose very name has been erased from official documents, but which
nevertheless continues to pursue its own development. The Asiatic
dominions comprise the following great subdivisions:--Caucasia, under
a separate governor-general; the Transcaspian region, which is under
the governor-general of Caucasus; the Kirghiz Steppes; Turkestan
under separate governors-general, Western Siberia and Eastern Siberia;
and the Amur region, which last comprises also the Pacific coast region
and Kamchatka.

Climate of Russia in Europe.--Notwithstanding the fact that Russia
extends from north to south through twenty-six degrees of latitude, the
climate of its different portions, apart from the Crimea and the
Caucasus, presents a striking uniformity. The aerial currents--cyclones,
anti-cyclones and dry south-east winds--extend over wide surfaces and
cross the flat plains freely. Everywhere we find a cold winter and a hot
summer, both varying in their duration, but differing little in the
extremes of temperature recorded.
Throughout Russia the winter is of long continuance. The last days of
frost are experienced for the most part in April, but also in May to the
north of fifty-five degrees. The spring is exceptionally beautiful in
central Russia; late as it usually is, it sets in with vigour and develops
with a rapidity which gives to this season in Russia