I. The Russian Empire
The Russian empire stretches over a vast territory in E. Europe and N. Asia, with an area exceeding 8,660,000 sq. m., or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe (one twenty-third of its whole superficies). It is, however, but thinly peopled on the average, including only one-twelfth of the inhabitants of the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the cold and temperate zones. In Novaya Zemlya and the Taimyr peninsula, it projects within the Arctic Circle as far as 77° 6′ and 77° 40′ N. respectively; while its S. extremities reach 38° 50′ in Armenia, 35° on the Afghan frontier, and 42° 30′ on the coasts of the Pacific. To the W. it advances as far as 20° 40′ E. in Lapland, 17° in Poland, and 29° 42′ on the Black Sea; and its E. limit—East Cape on the Bering Strait—is in 191° E.
The White, Barents and Kara Seas of the Arctic bound it on the N., and the northern Pacific—that is, the Seas of Boundaries. Bering, Okhotsk and Japan—bounds it on the E. The Baltic, with the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limits it on the N.W.; and two sinuous lines of land frontier separate it respectively from Sweden and Norway on the N.W. and from Prussia, Austria and Rumania on the W. On the S. and E. the frontier has changed frequently according to the expansion and contraction of the empire under the pressure of political exigency and expedience. The Black Sea is the principal demarcating feature on the S. of European Russia. On the W. side of that sea the S. frontier touches the Danube for some 120 m.; on the E. side of the same sea it zigzags from the Black Sea to the Caspian, utilizing the river Aras (Araxes) for part of the distance. As the Caspian is virtually a Russian sea, Persia may be said to form the next link in the S. boundary of the Russian empire, followed by Afghanistan. On the Pamirs Russia has since 1885 been conterminous with British India (Kashmir), but the boundary then swings away N. round Chinese Turkestan and the N. side of Mongolia, and, since 1904-5, it has skirted the N. of Manchuria, being separated from it by the river Amur. As thus traced, the boundary in Central Asia includes the two khanates of Bokhara and Khiva, which, though nominally protected states, are to all intents and purposes integral parts of the Russian empire. But it excludes Manchuria, with the Liao-tung peninsula and Port Arthur, upon which Russia only placed her grasp in 1898-99, a grasp which she was compelled by Japan to release after the war of 1904-5. The total length of the frontier line of the Russian empire by land is 2800 m. in Europe, and nearly 10,000 m. in Asia, and by sea over 11,000 m. in Europe and between 19,000 and 20,000 m. in Asia.
Russia has no oceanic possessions; her islands are all appendages of the mainland to which they belong. Such Islands. are Karlo, East Kvarken, the Åland archipelago, Dagö, and Ösel or Oesel in the Baltic Sea; Novaya Zemlya, with Kolguyev and Vaigach, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetski Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian archipelago, Wrangel Land and Bear Islands, off the Siberian coast; the Commander Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar Islands and the N. of Sakhalin in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Aleutian archipelago was sold to the United States in 1867, together with Alaska, and in 1875 the Kurile Islands were ceded to Japan.
If the border regions, that is, two narrow belts, on the N. and S., be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physical Leading physical features. feature prevails throughout the whole vast extent of the Russian empire. High plateaus like that of Pamir (the “Roof of the World”) and Armenia, and lofty mountain chains like the snow-clad Caucasus, the Alai, the Tian-shan, the Sayan Mountains, exist only on the outskirts of the empire.
Viewed broadly, the Russian empire may be said to occupy the territories to the N.W. of the great plateau formation Plateau formation of Asia. of the old continent—the backbone of Asia—which formation stretches with decreasing altitude and width from the high tableland of Tibet and Pamir to the lower plateaus of Mongolia, and thence N.E. through the Vitim region to the farthest extremity of Asia. Thus it consists of the immense plains and flat lands which extend between the plateau formation and the Arctic Ocean, including the series of parallel chains and hilly spurs which skirt the former region on the N.W. And it is only to the E. of Lake Baikal that it climbs up on to the plateau, from which it descends again before it reaches the Pacific.
This plateau formation—the oldest geological continent of Asia—being unfit for agriculture and for the most part unsuited for permanent settlement, while its oceanic slopes have from the dawn of history been occupied by a relatively dense population, long prevented Slav colonization from reaching the Pacific. The Russians chanced to cross it in the 17th century at its narrowest and most N. part, and thus struck the Pacific on the foggy and frozen shores of the Sea of Okhotsk; but two centuries elapsed ere, after colonizing the depressions around Lake Baikal, they crossed over the plateau in a more genial zone and descended to the Pacific by the Amur. After that they spread rapidly S., up to the nearly uninhabited valley of the Usuri, to what is now the Gulf of Peter the Great. In the S.W. higher portions of the plateau formation the empire has only comparatively recently planted its foot on the Pamir, and it was only a few years earlier that it established itself firmly on the highlands of Armenia.
A broad belt of hilly tracts—in every respect alpine in character, and displaying the same variety of climate and organic life as alpine The alpine belt. tracts usually do—skirts the plateau formation throughout its entire length on the N. and N.W., forming an intermediate region between the plateau and the plains. The Caucasus, the Elburz, the Kopet-dagh and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains W. of the Pamir, the Tian-shan and the Ala-tau mountain regions, and farther N.E. the Altai, the still unnamed complex of the Minusinsk Mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim and Aldan all arranged en échelon—the former from N.W. to S.E., and the others from S.W. to N.E.—all these belong to the same alpine belt that borders the plateau from end to end of the series.
The flat lands which extend from the base of the Alpine foothills to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, assume the character either of The flat lands. dry deserts, as in the Aral-Caspian depression, or of low tablelands, as in central Russia and E. Siberia, of lacustrine regions in N.W. Russia and Finland, or of marshy prairies in W. Siberia, and of tundras in the far N. Throughout the whole of this vast area, their monotonous surfaces are diversified by only a few, and, for the most part, low, hilly tracts. Recently emerged from the Post-Pliocene sea, or freed from their mantle of ice, they persistently maintain the self-same features over immense areas; and the few portions that rise above the general elevation have more the character of broad and gentle swellings than of mountain-chains. Of this class are the swampy plateaus of the Kola peninsula, sloping gently S. to the lacustrine region of Finland and N.W. Russia; the Valdai tablelands, where all the great rivers of Russia take their rise; the broad and gently sloping meridional belt of the Ural Mountains; and lastly the Taimyr, Tunguzka and Verkhoyansk ranges in Siberia, which, notwithstanding their sub-Arctic position, do not reach the snow-line. The picturesque Bureya Mountains above the Amur, the forest-clad Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of Kamchatka belong, however, to quite another orographical construction, being the border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau formation descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
It is owing to these leading orographical features—divined by Carl Ritter, but only recently ascertained and established as fact Rivers. by geographical research—that so many of the great rivers of the old continent are comprised within the limits of the Russian empire. Taking their rise on the plateau formation, or in its outskirts, they flow first along lofty longitudinal valleys formerly filled with great lakes, next they cleave their way through the rocky barriers, and finally they enter the lowlands, where they become navigable, and, describing wide curves to avoid here and there the minor plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into water-communication with one another places thousands of miles apart. The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Ob and Irtysh, the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, and the Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances. These were the obvious channels of Russian colonization.
A broad depression—the Aral-Caspian desert—has arisen where the plateau formation reaches its greatest altitude, and at the same time suddenly changes its direction from N.W. to N.E. This desert is now filled to only a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian, Aral and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin. There the Volga, the Ural, the Syr-darya and the Amu-darya discharge their waters without reaching the ocean, but they bring life to the rapidly desiccating Transcaspian steppes, and link together the most remote parts of Russia.
Geology.—The most striking feature in the geology of Russia is its
