he 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 Sir Daria, and the Oxus discharge
their waters without reaching the ocean, but continue to bring
life to the rapidly drying Transcaspian Steppes, or connect by
their river network, as the Volga does, the most remote parts of
European Russia.

The above-described features of the physical geography of the empire
explain the relative uniformity of this wide territory, in conjunction
with the variety of physical features on the outskirts. They explain
also the rapidity of the expansion of Sclavonic colonization over
these thinly-peopled regions; and they also throw light upon the
internal cohesion of the empire, which cannot fail to strike the
traveller as he crosses this immense territory, and finds everywhere
the same dominating race, the same features of life. In fact, as
their advance from the basins of the Volkhoff and Dnieper to the foot
of the Altai and Sayan mountains, that is, along nearly a quarter
of the earth's circumference, the Russian colonizers could always
find the same physical conditions, the same forest and prairies as
they had left at home, the same facilities for agriculture, only
modified somewhat by minor topographical features. New conditions of
climate and soil, and consequently new cultures and civilizations,
the Russians met with, in their expansion towards the south and
east, only beyond the Caucasus in the Aral-Caspian region, and
in the basin of the Usuri on the Pacific coast. Favoured by these
conditions, the Russians not only conquered northern Asia--they
colonized it.

The Russian Empire falls into two great subdivisions, the European
and the Asiatic, the latter of which, representing an aggregate of
nearly 6,500,000 square miles, with a population of only sixteen
million inhabitants may be considered as held by colonies. The
European dominions comprise European Russia, Finland, which is, in
fact, a separate nationality treated to some extent as an allied
state, and Poland, whose very name has been erased from official
documents, but which nevertheless continues to pursue its own
development. The Asiatic dominions comprise the following great
subdivisions:--Caucasia, under a separate governor-general; the
Transcaspian region, which is under the governor-general of Caucasus;
the Kirghiz Steppes; Turkestan under separat