The Finnish race includes the Finns and the Karelians (two million four hundred thousand in Finland and three hundred and fifty thousand in European Russia); the Esthonians, the people of Livonia, and other Western Finns in the Baltic Provinces (about one million); the Lapps and the Samoyedes in the far north; and the Volga Finns and the Ugrians (one million seven hundred and fifty thousand in European Russia and fifty thousand in Siberia). The Eastern Finns are being rapidly absorbed by the Russians; but the Western Finns warmly cherish their nationality.
[7]Poland.—In the west, next Germany. Chief town: Warsaw.
[7] Russian Poland was created into an independent kingdom by a joint edict of Germany and Austria-Hungary promulgated at Warsaw November 5, 1916. What its future status may be when the map of Europe is re-adjusted after the close of the European War is uncertain. For the present it is given a place among the independent nations.
Surface Features.—In general these embody the plains of European Russia and the lowlands and plains that extend to the north of the two great plateaus of Asia—the high plateau of East Asia and the western plateau of Persia and Armenia.
In European Russia, apart from the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Crimea, the only districts rising above one thousand feet are the Valdai hills at head of the Volga, the Timan range (over three thousand feet) in the Pechora basin, several heights in Russian Lapland (over one thousand five hundred), and some in Ukraine (over one thousand). The main divisions of its landscape are the treeless northern tundras, frozen in winter, grassy in summer; the rock and lake plateau of Finland; the immense central forest region, the cultivated parts of which supply Europe with grain; and the treeless steppes, which lie across the south of the plain from the saline borders of the northern Caspian toward Roumania on the west.
In Western Asia, the Caucasus is a single chain, so narrow that the same summits may be seen from the steppes which reach out from its northern base, and from the deep valleys which separate it from the heights of Armenia on the south. It has thus no great valleys in the direction of its length. The spurs descending from the main chain have deep gorges or troughs between. The culminating points are the Elbruz peak and Koshtan Tau, towards the western end of the chain; and Mount Kazbek, near the middle of it—all rising grandly from deep valleys.
The two most important passes over it were called in ancient times the Caucasian and Albanian gates. The former, now called the Dariel Pass, lies close to the eastern base of the Kazbek, and is a narrow cleft eight thousand two hundred and fifteen feet above the sea, available for carriages in the summer. The latter skirts the eastern termination of the range on the shores of the Caspian.
Over the whole chain vegetation is vigorous, but more luxuriant on the warmer southern slopes. The valleys opening in that direction are highly fertile, producing rice and cotton and silk, indigo, tobacco, and vines, and luxuriant woods. The northern slopes, exposed to the keen winds of the steppes, are characterized by bare pasture-lands and scattered firwoods.
All Western Siberia, nearest the Ural belt and European Russia, is a vast plain rising almost imperceptibly from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the Kirghiz steppes and the base of the Altai mountains, which spring up from it like a [540] wall, forming the northern buttress of the great tableland of Central Asia. The northern border of this plain is occupied by the marshy frozen tundras; the broad central belt is covered with forest, in the cleared spaces of which the soil is fertile and well suited to agriculture; all the southern portion of it is occupied by treeless steppes which reach away south towards the Caspian and Aral Seas.
The chief elevation in eastern Siberia is a chain of volcanic mountains running down the center of the peninsula of Kamchatka, some of whose peaks reach an elevation of seventeen thousand feet.