INTRODUCTION. XXI 



regions; it is, over the greater part of its surface, not suited to the profitable culti- 

 vation of grain, and therefore, notwithstanding its immense extent, about 1.240,000 

 square versts, or 25, COS square geographical miles, is most thinly populated, coun- 

 ting but two million inhabitants. This region then, althougli it has an abundance of 

 wood fuel, is very unproductive in respect to manufactories; but the country deals 

 in timber and in the products of its dry distillation. It is occupied, moreover, in its 

 southern parts with agriculture, grain and flax, cattle raising and also fisheries. Only 

 in the Olonets government, where iron and copper ores have been known from 

 ancient times, are metallurgical operations at all developed, and there feebly. In the 

 course of time, in consequence of the convenient water communication with St. Pe- 

 tersburg, it may be possible to bring to life again this region inhabited by a people 

 which retain to this day their ancient Russian customs and a completely patriarchal 

 mode of life. 



V. The Eastern Region of European Russia. 



It borders on the Ural and the Volga and is composed of the governments of 

 Viatka, Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg, Perm and Samara. This immense district which has 

 been Russian territory only since the sixteenth century, but has become completely 

 I'ussified by emigrations begun already by the inhabitants of Novgorod in the most 

 ancient times, contains 891,000 square versts, or 18,404 square geographical miles, 

 and about 15 million inhabitants. The latter have settled here on account of the 

 favourable local conditions. Part of this country consists of fertile black-lands passing 

 in the south-east into steppes and in the north, into a forest region. On the east it 

 borders on the ore-bearing Urals, on the west it is bounded by the Volga which 

 opens, with the aid of the Kama and its tributaries, an easy communication to the 

 whole region with the remaining parts of Russia. This eastern district is twice as 

 scantily populated as the central region, but much more fertile than the latter and 

 containing various kinds of mineral wealth, such as gold, salt, coal, iron and copper, 

 and is acquiring an ever-increasing importance from an economical point of view, 

 although in consequence of the felling of the forests which existed in the neighbour- 

 hood of the iron works of the Urals, the former importance of these works, as the 

 furnisher of the most excellent iron for all Russia and for foreign export, especially 

 in the form of very soft sheet iron, has considerably lessened in the last few decades. 

 The cause of this fact must be sought, first of all, in the unsatisfactory condition of 

 the forest economy upon those vast areas which are ascribed to the private and 

 Government works of the Urals, and to the absence of such laws in reference to the 

 right of using minerals which would secure the possibility of a sufficiently wide 

 competition in the treatment of the ores of the given locality. 



With the construction of the great Siberian Railway, with the increased wor- 

 king of the Ural coal mines, already long ago begun, and with the division of the 

 ore-bearing estates into smaller parcels than at present, a rapid development may be 

 again expected for the mining industry, the more so as there are here many persons 

 well acquainted with its details. All the preceding districts import grain, but this 

 produces an abundance of cereals in its southern and Chernoziom regions, so that 

 in good years, namely those free from drought, it not only furnishes the less pro- 



