1814.] Population of Russia. 267 



tlie other countries of Europe, and by the means of instruction 

 furnished by the Government to the inhabitants of Russia ; aud, 

 finally, in consequence of the removal of several obstacles which 

 opposed the progress of industry, as the abolition of the douanes of 

 the interior under the reigns of the Empresses Elizabeth and 

 Catharine II., the improvement of the roads, and the multiplication 

 of canals. 



What a dismal picture does Russia present to us in the 15th, 

 ICth, and 17th centuries Josafa Barharo, in IA36, reports that 

 from Moscow to the frontiers of Poland the whole country was a 

 desert, the villages, burnt and abandoned, oiTered no other accom- 

 modation to strangers but a place to kindle a fire. Contaiiui con- 

 firms this statement in 1483, Meyerberg, in 1661, found between 

 Waesma and Mosaisk, a distance of 130 wersts,* only a single 

 village. The road between Smolensk and Moscow was dangerous, 

 according to Lyseck, in 1675, on account of the wolves tliat 

 attacked travellers. Llfeld, the Danish Ambassador, in 1625, 

 found the countiy between Moscow, and Novgorod, and ric'covv, 

 quite laid waste by the civil wars under I wan Wasilc witch II. 

 Posscvin, in 1581 and 1582, travelled whole days in the imeiior of 

 Russia without meeting with a single individual. The whole country 

 between Kasan and Astracan was a desert. Even the cities had 

 suffered a good deal. Possevin estimates the population of Moscovr 

 at 30,000 ; that of Novgorod was diminished by the plague to 

 3000 : and Kiew, in the lime of Herberstein (1516) was almost in 

 ruins. Besides the devastations committed by the civil wars and by 

 foreigners, tlie number of imposts, and the severity of the com- 

 misaioners who levied them, depopulated the northern provinces 

 which had not suffered from these disasters. In the year 15S8 there 

 were, according to Fletcher, 50 villages abandoned betw-een Wo- 

 logda and Jaroslaw. Bread was almost unknown at Ustiug, and on 

 the Dwina, in the time of Herberstein. Famine and pestilence 

 often ravaged the melanclioly remnants of this unfortunate popula- 

 tion, as in 1525, in IGOl, and in 1(115, The city of No\gorod 

 lost in one winter 18,000 individuals, constituting almost the 

 whole of its papulation, f 



It is not to the mildness of the climate, nor to the fertility of the 

 soil, that we are to ascribe the rapid increase of population during 

 the eighteenth c-entury ; but to a better organized administration, 

 and the security which resulted from it. An infant state, supposing 

 it tolerably well governed, and connected with states long civiliaed, 

 ought to make prodigious progress in improvement and popu- 

 lation. 



That period of the glorious reign of the Empress Catharine II. 

 ill which she occupied herself with the amelioration of the govem- 



• A wfr»l is about (wo-Hiirds of an Englisd mile. — T. 



•f M«riD(r'» C'lnaiiar^isoD Uc I4 Kosoic Aiicieunc tl Nouvclle, I19if, b. I. ch. I. 



