202 EUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



involved difFerences of habits, culture, policy, and alliances, building up a barrier 

 on the east which Poland was unable to overcome. 



When to all these causes of intestine strife were added the revolts and wars of 

 the Cossacks and Russian peasantry and the Polish nobles, the fate of Poland was 

 inevitable. But even geographically the empire had never been consolidated. 

 Harassed by the Germans of the Baltic, the Poles had never been able to effect 

 more than a temporary footing on a seaboard which seemed to belong to them 

 by right, while the Mohammedan conquests deprived them of an outlet towards 

 the Euxine. 



Rise and Growth of the Muscovite Power. 



While Poland was being wasted with wars and civil strife, Muscovy, allied in 

 the fifteenth century to the southern Mussulmans, was growing in strength. 

 Throuo-h the Volga and its affluents, through the portages and rivers of the north 

 and west, the Moscow princes were able to reach the flirthest limits of the vast 

 central plains, and easily established a consolidated state. As soon as the lands of 

 the Muscovite Empire were washed by the four seas, north, west, south, and south- 

 east, modern Russia was founded. 



Its amazing growth in recent times is a familiar topic. The Russia of to-day 

 comprises a territory at least ten times larger than that of the state which was 

 formed after the overthrow of the Tatars, and which had an area estimated at 

 about 800,000 square miles. The vast domain since acquired is measured by the 

 meridians and parallels of latitude rather than by versts or square miles. In 1872 

 the great international triangulation was completed, which had for its object the 

 measurement of the parallel arc between the island of Yalentia, on the south-west 

 coast of Ireland, and the city of Orsk, in the government of Orenburg. This 

 arc of 3,310 miles, embracing 69° of longitude, or about one-fifth of the 

 circumference of the globe, crosses Russian territory for a space of 40°, to which 

 must be added an arc of 100°, nearly all comprised within the empire or its waters, 

 and embracing the whole of Siberia to the Pacific Ocean and the extremity of 

 Kambhatka. 



The growth of the empire has occasionally been arrested, and certain lands 

 have even been ceded, as, for instance, Astrabad and Mazanderan to Persia in 

 1732, Alaska to the United States in 1867, for the sum of £1,600,000, and in 

 1856 a part of Bessarabia to Rumania — this last, however, resumed in virtue of 

 the Congress of Berlin in 1878. But each momentary retreat has almost 

 invariably been followed by a fresh advance, resulting altogether in an increase 

 of territory exceeding 2,400,000 square miles since the accession of Peter the 

 Great. 



Russia is still in her period of expansion, the fascination of her power and 

 influence attracting numerous Asiatic tribes, and even states, which gradually 

 become absorbed in her political system. In the west her limits are fixed by 

 other empires, or by petty states maintained by the rivalries of the great powers ; 

 but half of Turkey still remains to be shared, and may not Austria-Hungary 



