10 
JiUSSIA IX EUROPE 
member of the Hanseatic league. It lost its independence and 
was overthrown hy Ivan the Terrible in 1570, and Novgorod as 
an independent State ceased to exist and is now a town of little 
importance. 
In the thirteenth century the ^Mongol Tartars entered eastern 
Russia and for over 200 years, from 1238 to 1462, ruled, mingling 
their blood with the Russians. They in turn were conquered 
by the Russians and driven from central Russia into the valley 
of the Volga and the Crimea, where their descendants still live. 
In the seventeentli century Poland, then one of the largest 
countries of Europe, undertook the conquest of Russia, and for 
some years there was a life-and-death struggle between the two 
nations. Moscow was captured and the king of Poland reigned 
there for thirteen years. The people of Nijni Novgorod the 
Great arose, selling their wives and daughters to buy arms, took 
Moscow, burning a large part of it, and finally expelled the 
Poles, but not until they had mingled their blood with the Rus- 
sian. This was the last invasion of Russia that left its impress 
on the country. 
The Great Russians, the inhabitants of the black zone in north- 
ern and central Russia, are the most numerous of the poioulation 
of Russia, In the northwest they intermarried and mingled with 
the Finns ; in the east with the Mongol Tartars. In southern 
Russia the inhabitants called Little Russians intermarried with 
the Cossacks and Crimean Tartars and are next in number to 
the Great Russians. The Cossacks are Russians who preferred 
the nomadic to the agricultural life, and therefore wandered into 
the steppes away from civilization and formed bands of horse- 
men, called often by the country in which they lived, as the Don 
Cossacks. They resemble in some respects the cowboys of 
America. They occupied the Crimea and the country north 
of the Black sea, with Tartar tribes from Turania, Kalmucks, 
and Bashkirs. 
Besides the races named, there are Turanians, Armenians, 
Poles, Semites, Georgians, and Turks — in all, thirty different 
races — with Greek, Catholic, Shumanistic, Buddhist, Jewish, 
Mohammedans, Dissenters and pagan religions of all kinds. 
These various races formerly intermarried, but the introduction 
of the ^Mohammedan religion among the Tartar trilies has pre- 
vented further mingling of these various races and has proved 
a great obstacle to their elev'^ation and civilization. I was struck 
