TUE WHITE EUSSIANS. 283 



possessions torn from the Muscovites, it was afterwards used in a more restricted 

 sense. Catherine II. gave the name of White Russia to the present provinces of 

 V^itebsk and Mog-hilov, and Nicholas abolished the expression altogether, since 

 when it has lost all its political significance, while preserving its ethnical value. 

 Distinct in speech from the Poles, Little and Great Russians, the White Russians 

 still betray striking analogies with all, and amongst them may possibly yet be 

 discovered the fundamental features by which the degrees of kinship between the 

 various branches of the Eastern Slav family may be definitely determined. The 

 term " White " is generally supposed to refer to the colour of their dress in 

 contradistinction to the " Black Russians," between the Pripet and Niémen, who 

 form the ethnical transition from the Little to the White Russians. 



The White Russians. 



Although occupying a highly advantageous geographical position, the domain 

 of the White Russians was not otherwise favourable for the development of a 

 great Slav state. Largely covered with swamps, lakes, and half-submerged 

 forests, this region, described as a land in which mud formed " the fifth element," 

 was probably uninhabited when the great waves of migration passed to the 

 right and left, on the one hand by the Lovat and the Vistula, on the other 

 by the Bug and Dniester. The ethnical frontier is even now in many places 

 determined by the marsh lands, although in the south the Malo Russians have 

 penetrated far into these swampy wastes. 



Barrows and camping grounds {gorodishfcha) are very numerous in White 

 Russia, along the Dnieper, and the natural highways leading to the Baltic. As 

 many as 3,931 small tumuli have been reckoned in the Bobruisk district alone of 

 the government of Minsk, and in the whole province 15,000 mounds and over 

 200 fortified camps. In the south-west of Smolensk a barrow, partly destroyed 

 for its stone, consisting entirely of erratic boulders, was surmounted by a larger 

 block, on which enthusiastic antiquaries fancied they had discovered a Phœnician 

 inscription in honour of Baal. Nevertheless the contents of many imply a con- 

 siderable antiquity, although the camps are said to have been still occupied down 

 to the seventeenth century, and only abandoned during the terrible wars between 

 the Poles and Muscovites, by which the land was then wasted. 



But whatever be the date of these burial-places, most of this region was too 

 inaccessible to have been very early peopled. The geographical names seem to show 

 that the Slav colonisation spread grad,ually northwards along the Dnieper and its 

 afiluents. Thus the Desna, although joining the main stream on the left bank, 

 received the name of " Right," because it lay on the right of their migratory 

 movement, and others joining on the right, for the same reason, received the name 

 of Shuya, or Shuika ; that is, " Left." The close resemblance of the White Russians 

 to the Poles shows that there must also have been a migration from the west ; but 

 there are no Finnish names, as there are farther north and east. Hence White 



