CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE AND EARLY HISTORY
EXTENT, CONFIGURATION, AND CLIMATE
[To 1054 A.D.]
To arrive at a just appreciation of Russia’s genius we must have a knowledge of the soil that nourishes her, the peoples that inhabit her, and the history through which she has passed. Let us begin with nature, soil, and climate.
The first fact that strikes us in regard to the Russian empire is its vastness.[2] Its colossal dimensions are so out of proportion to the smallness of the greatest among European states, that, to bring them within the sphere of human imagination, Alexander von Humboldt, one of the greatest scientists of his century, makes the statement that the portion of the globe under Russia’s dominion is greater than the entire surface of the moon at its full.
The territories of that vast empire acknowledge no limits; its vast plains stretch toward the heart of the old continent, as far as the huge peaks of central Asia; they are stopped between the Black and the Caspian seas by the great wall of the Caucasus, whose foot is planted below the sea-level, and the height of whose summits exceeds by eight hundred feet that of Mont Blanc.
In lakes Ladoga and Onega, in the northwest, Russia possesses the greatest lakes in Europe; in Lake Baikal, in Siberia, the greatest in Asia; in the Caspian and Aral seas, the greatest in the world. Her rivers equal her plains in proportion: the Obi, the Yenisei, the Amur, in Asia; the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, in Europe. The central artery of Russia is the Volga—a river that, in its winding course of nearly twenty-four hundred miles, is not altogether European. Nine tenths of the Russian territory are as yet nearly empty of inhabitants, and nevertheless the population, according to the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland, numbered 129,000,000; and the annual increase is very nearly two million.