192 EUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



for fifty-four years in the present century on the 8th of the same month. Such 

 climatic changes as have taken place since the settlement of the land are due not 

 to nature, but to man, who, by clearing so many forests, drained the soil, dried up 

 the springs, gave more play to the action of the winds, and rendered the extremes 

 of heat and cold more difficult to endure. 



Ethnical Elements. 



Brought into direct contact with Asia by the disappearance of the ancient seas, 

 and partaking of its continental climate, Russia in Europe is in many other respects 

 Asiatic, just as Siberia is partly European. Thus Severtzov finds that the limit 

 of European vegetation is marked, not by the Ural, nor yet by the Ob valley, but 

 rather by that of the Yenisei. The domains of the various animal species in the 

 same way overlap the natural limits of the two continents. Lastly, the populations 

 are intermingled, penetrating reciprocally beyond their natural frontiers. What- 

 ever may have been their origin and their earliest home, the Aryan Slavs of 

 diverse speech occupying in compact masses most of Russia now represent the 

 European element there. But how many races, Asiatic in their aspect, habits, and 

 speech, still dwell in Russian territory, either isolated or scattered in groups and 

 communities amidst the surrounding Slavs ! While the latter, resting on the 

 west between the Baltic and the Carpathians, were fused together as the ruling 

 people in Central Russia, the Asiatic tribes penetrated chiefly through the northern 

 gaps in the Ural, and through the wide spaces lying between this range and the 

 shores of the Caspian. In the north the Samoyeds, Siryanians, and Lapps, 

 following the lowland plains round the Frozen Ocean, spread over vast solitudes, 

 the last-named penetrating even to the heart of Scandinavia. In the south the 

 Asiatic hordes found easy access by the steppes of the Caspian and Black Sea, and 

 were often numerous and powerful enough to sever the Slavs altogether from the 

 Mediterranean. In those days Russia threatened to become a simple ethnological 

 dependency of Asia. Twice she disappeared from history ; first after the fall of the 

 Roman Empire in the West, and again after the irruption of the Tatars. These 

 Asiatic peoples, bursting on Europe, had broken the line of communication between 

 the Dnieper and Yolga plains aiîd the western regions of the continent. Each 

 time Russia had, as it were, to be rediscovered. First the Genoese came upon 

 the old routes to the Euxine, and rebuilt the ancient Greek towns in the Crimea, 

 on the shores of the Sea of Azov, and along the Don valley ; and then, in the far 

 north, the English navigators. Chancellor, Burrough, Jenkinson, established direct 

 relations between Muscovy and Western Europe through the'White Sea and the 

 Norwegian waters. 



The ethnographic chart of Russia, especially in its eastern sections, retains 

 numerous traces of the revolutions brought about in the distribution of the con- 

 flicting elements up to the time when the Great Russians succeeded in definitely 

 establishing their supremacy. Almost immediately east of the junction of the Volga 

 and Oka, non-Slav populations are scattered in more or less numerous isolated 



