Huns, Cossacks, Bears, Ermines, and Mammoths, in various thickness of hide, frost of brain, and woe of abode—or of unabiding. Nobody's history worth making out, has anything to do with them; for the force of Scandinavia never came round by Finland at all, but always sailed or paddled itself across the Baltic, or down the rocky west coast; and the Siberian and Russian ice-pressure merely drives the really memorable races into greater concentration, and kneads them up in fiercer and more necessitous exploring masses. But by those exploring masses, of true European birth, our own history was fashioned for ever; and, therefore, these two truncating and guarding rivers are to be marked on your map of Europe with supreme clearness: the Vistula, with Warsaw astride of it half way down, and embouchure in Baltic,—the Dniester, in Euxine, flowing each of them, measured arrow-straight, as far as from Edinburgh to London,—with windings,[1] the Vistula six hundred miles, and the Dniester five—count them together for a thousand miles of moat, between Europe and the Desert, reaching from Dantzic to Odessa.
- ↑ Note, however, generally that the strength of a river, cæteris paribus, is to be estimated by its straight course, windings being almost always caused by flats in which it can receive no tributaries.
