PAGE
The Ancient Scythians[5]
Oleg the Varangian[14]
The Vengeance of Queen Olga[21]
Vladimir the Great[29]
The Lawgiver of Russia[41]
The Yoke of the Tartars[49]
The Victory of the Don[55]
Ivan, the First of the Czars[60]
The Fall of Novgorod the Great[64]
Ivan the Terrible[74]
The Conquest of Siberia[80]
The Macbeth of Russia[85]
The Era of the Impostors[101]
The Books of Ancestry[110]
Boyhood of Peter the Great[114]
Carpenter Peter of Zaandam[123]
The Fall of the Strelitz[132]
The Crusade against Beards and Cloaks[142]
Mazeppa, the Cossack Chief[149]
A Window open to Europe[155]
From the Hovel to the Throne[165]
Buffooneries of the Russian Court[174]
How a Woman dethroned a Man[184]
A Struggle for a Throne[195]
The Flight of the Kalmucks[202]
A Magical Transformation Scene[220]
Kosciusko and the Fall of Poland[226]
Suwarrow the Unconquerable[231]
The Retreat of Napoleon's Grand Army[241]
The Death-Struggle of Poland[248]
Schamyl, the Hero of Circassia[258]
The Charge of the Light Brigade[267]
The Fall of Sebastopol[276]
At the Gates of Constantinople[284]
The Nihilists and their Work[293]
The Advance of Russia in Asia[300]
The Railroad in Turkestan[311]
An Escape from the Mines of Siberia[319]
The Sea Fight in the Waters of Japan[329]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

RUSSIAN.

PAGE
The Kremlin[Frontispiece.]
Cathedral at Ostankino, near Moscow[40]
General View of Moscow[55]
Church and Tower of Ivan the Great[78]
Kiakhta, Siberia[84]
Church of the Assumption, Moscow, in which the Czar is Crowned[109]
Alexander III., Czar of Russia[122]
Dining-room in the Palace of Peter the Great, Moscow[136]
Peter the Great[142]
St. Petersburg Harbor, Neva River[156]
Sleighing in Russia[160]
A Russian Drosky[189]
The City of Kasan[199]
Scene on a Russian Farm[223]
Russian Peasants[249]
Mount St. Peter, Crimea[267]
The Walls of Constantinople[290]
The Arrest of a Nihilist[297]
Dowager Czarina of Russia[300]
Group of Siberians[320]

THE ANCIENT SCYTHIANS.

Far over the eastern half of Europe extends a vast and mighty plain, spreading thousands of miles to the north and south, to the east and west, in the north a land of forests, in the south and east a region of treeless levels. Here stretches the Black Land, whose deep dark soil is fit for endless harvests; here are the arable steppes, a vast fertile prairie land, and here again the barren steppes, fit only for wandering herds and the tents of nomad shepherds. Across this great plain, in all directions, flow myriads of meandering streams, many of them swelling into noble rivers, whose waters find their outlet in great seas. Over it blow the biting winds of the Arctic zone, chaining its waters in fetters of ice for half the year. On it in summer shine warm suns, in whose enlivening rays life flows full again.