184 EUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



extensive coast-line, its varied contours, and tlie relative importance of the 

 peninsulas. The sea everywhere forms large gulfs and inlets penetrating far 

 inland, and carrying marine breezes towards the uplands of the interior. The 

 aspect of "Western Europe, broken up into detached masses, shows that it was 

 destined to develop independent nationalities full of life and rejuvenescence, and 

 subject to endless modifications from peninsula to peninsula, from seaboard to 

 seaboard. Eastern Europe — that is to say, Russia — forms, on the contrary, an 

 irregular quadrilateral, with monotonous outlines, more compact than Asia itself 

 in their general contour. Nor is this contrast confined to the external lines, but 

 extends also to the whole relief of the land. West of Russia the continent 

 presents an astonishing variety of table-lands, highlands, declivities, valleys, and 

 lowlands. It offers some well-marked main ridge in the central mass and in all 

 the great peninsulas and islands, with sharply defined water-partings towards all 

 the inland and outer seas. Compared with these endlessly diversified regions, 

 Russia seems nothing but a vast plain. Yet even here there are plateaux, 

 elevations of some hundreds of yards, scarcely sufficient, however, to break the 

 eternal uniformity of its boundless lowlands. We may traverse Russia from sea to 

 sea without ever quitting these vast lowland tracts, apparently as unruffled as the 

 surface of the becalmed ocean. 



Eastwards and south-eastwards Russia merges in Asia, so that it becomes 

 difficult to draw any well-defined line of separation. Hence the frontier is 

 variously determined according to the greater or less importance attributed by 

 geographers to one or other of the salient features of the land. Doubtless the traces 

 left by the old seas supply a natural limit in the depression between the Euxine 

 and Caspian, and the low-lying plains stretching south and east of the Ural, 

 which were formerly filled by the waters of the straits connecting the Caspian and 

 Aral with the Ob estuary. But during the recent geological epoch the relief of 

 the land has slowly changed, so that nothing beyond a purely ideal or conventional 

 line of demarcation can now be drawn between the two continents. Hence 

 towards the east, and especially along the wide tract between the Caspian and the 

 southern bluffs of the Ural, Russia is a land without natural frontiers. She is 

 still to a certain extent what she was in the time of the Greeks, a monotonous 

 region, blending in the distance with unknown solitudes. 



So long as the evolutions of history were confined to narrow basins, small 

 islands, or peninsulas — so long, in fact, as civilised mankind was centred round the 

 shores of the great inland sea — the region that has now become Russia necessarily 

 remained a formless and limitless world. Not until all the seaboards of the 

 eastern hemisphere were brought within the influence of the civilised European 

 peoples could she assume her proper rôle, and slowly define her exact outlines. 



Geological Features. — Glacial Action. 



The horizontal character of the Russian lands is not merely superficial ; it 

 penetrates deeply, as is soon perceived by the geologist who studies the borings 



