Mr. Bell on the growing power of Russia. 259 
easus, Nature’s grand bulwark between Europe and Asia, all more 
or less reduced to the sway of the yellow czar? It would require a 
large vocabulary merely to give their names. In the vicinity of 
the Kabardians, according to a Russian journal collected from the 
account of General Debou, between the years 1816 and 1821, more 
than 100 tribes of different names dwelt amidst the rocks, and val- 
lies, and glens, of this sovereign of mountains, independent of the 
numerous tribes of the Lesgians. Thus from the four powers of 
Sweden, Poland, Turkey, and Persia, Russia has acquired, since 
the time of Peter the Great, 730,000 square miles of territory, and 
nigh 13,000,000 of subjects, exclusive of the population of all Per- 
sian Armenia, and Schirwan, and Talish, and Daghistan, and a 
host of rude, warlike, and ferscious tribes, who inhabit the wilds 
of the range of Elboors, and the banks of the innumerable streams, 
which, in various directions, form the large streams of the Terek, 
the Kuma, the Kooban, the Phasis, the Kur, the Aragwi, the Ibe- 
rus or the Ior, and the Alayan, and the Samura, and the Araxes. 
Of these vast acquisitions of territory and population, more than 
4-5ths have been made within little more than half a century. 
_ Let us now take a short view of the vast importance of these ac- 
quisitions. In the first place, By her Swedish and Polish acquisi- 
tions, she is complete mistress of the Baltic, and its various exten- 
sive gulphs, by means of which she can export the surplus produce 
of her northern provinces to the south of Europe. Denmark and 
Sweden are at her beck, and exist as independent states merely by 
sufferance, or durante placito, and with Prussia, which possesses 
500 miles of maritime coast in the Baltic, she is closely connected 
by marriage and alliance. 
In the second place, Russia is now complete mistress of the na- 
vigation and commerce of the Euxine, round about from the mouth 
ef the Danube to that of the Apsarus. The whole coast of the 
Huxine is hers; and at no distant period, the whole southern coast 
from that river to the city of Constantine, and from thence to the 
mouths of the Ister, will own the Russian sway. The gates of the 
Bosphorus and the Hellespont are now permanently open to her 
ships. The Euxine will no longer, but to the barbarous subjects 
of a barbarous prince, be a Mare Clausum; as for ages past, and 
the shores of that inhospitable sea will enjoy the benefits of reci- 
procal commercial intercourse with the enlightened nations of the 
west. The humiliated descendant of Osman will no longer have 
it in his power to shut or open the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus 
as erst at his pleasure ; or if, in a moment of infatuation, he should 
presume to exercise his wented power, his expulsion from the City 
of the Seven Hills will be the inevitable consequence. Placed as he 
now is, between renovated Greece on the south, and the Russians 
en the north, he must prepare himself for his final removal from 
the palace of the Caisars, and the throne of Byzantium, and 
his fight across the Bosphorus, to the desolated plains and ruined 
cities of the Asiatic peninsula ; and, like another Marius amidst the 
