1829.] Politics and Prospects of Russia. 597 



mand of a new route for the commerce of India and China with- Europe. 

 Erzeroum, which is in the Russian hands, de facto, and which will soon 

 follow the fate of Bucharest, has been for a long period the centre of the 

 principal traffic of northern Persia, the cities of the Caucasus, and Arabia, 

 with Constantinople. The Indian traffic of Russia has hitherto been 

 trifling, from the dangers of the Desert, from the distance and the 

 expense of land-carriage. But the possession of Trebizond, even with- 

 out that of Erzeroum, which, however, must be a dependent on the 

 former, in Russian hands, would instantly lay open a route from India, 

 requiring but the trivial land-carriage of 400 miles ; from Moosul, on the 

 Tigris, to Erzeroum being but 250 miles, and from Erzeroum to Tre- 

 bizond being but 150. In a commercial point of view, those positions 

 would be of an importance totally beyond calculation. They would be, 

 in fact, the keys to the whole trade of India with Europe ; in other 

 words, the keys to the wealth of the world. But they would also be the 

 keys to the territorial possession of the finest regions of the world — 

 Avestern and central Asia. A military force touching with its flanks the 

 positions of the Tigris at IVIoosul, and of the Euxine at Trebizond, and 

 sustained by the supplies so easily furnished by the Russian possession 

 of the Euxine, would be irresistible by any force from the Caucasus 

 to the Himmaleh. Persia, Caubul, and the AfFghaun territory, would 

 be as easy a prey as Georgia ; and the true spirit in which Russia 

 must be viewed, is that of a power essentially miUtary, and if adopting 

 commerce with extraordinary avidity, yet adopting it only as a means 

 of conquest. 



The founder of this measureless empire saw that, without a fleet, his 

 conquests must be limited to the north, and that centuries might pass 

 before Russia became European. He instantly made the grand experi- 

 ment of a navy. He had but one sea — the Baltic. His ports were shal- 

 low, hazardous, and what was still more disheartening to his hope of 

 success, a mass of ice for six months in the year. ' But his nature was 

 the true one for erecting such an empire. It was alike remarkable for 

 daring enthusiasm and sullen obstinacy. He fixed on a spot in the 

 north of his dominions, where the climate and the ground seemed 

 equally to forbid the habitation of man. But he persevered. He turned 

 the course of rivers — -he drove piles into the mighty swamp — he levelled 

 forests — he tore up rocks — and on heaps of treasure that might have pur- 

 chased a new kingdom, and the more fearful expenditure of a mass 

 of human life that might have won it by arms, he founded his new 

 capital. 



The price was enormous, and it would have been contemplated by 

 no other mind than the remorseless and barbarian grandeur of Peter's. 

 But it laid tlie foundation of an empire, wliich already exceeds, in mag- 

 nitude, all that the earth has ever seen of dominion. The Roman em- 

 pire, in the days of Trajan, its most palmy hour, extended but 3,000 

 miles from east to west, and 2,000 from north to south. The Russian, 

 at this hour of its comparative infancy, extends 10,000 miles from east 

 to west, and 3,000 from north to south. The Roman Avas the growth 

 of eight centuries, the Russian of one. A vast portion of its Asiatic 

 territory is wilderness. But even this is all capable of supporting 

 life, and is interspersed with tracts of great fertility — is intersected with 

 chains of metallic mountains, and is filled with rivers teeming with fish, 

 and capable of forming the finest inland navigation in tlie world. 



