_Black Lands_ and the _Arable Steppes_, or prairies.
The former zone, which is of immense extent, is covered with a deep bed
of black mold of inexhaustible fertility, which without manure produces
the richest harvests, and has done so since the time of Herodotus, at
which period it was the granary of Athens and of Eastern Europe.

The companion zone, running parallel with this, known as the Arable
Steppes, which nearly resembles the American prairies, is almost as
remarkable as the Black Lands. Its soil, although fertile, has to be
renewed. But an amazing vegetation covers this great area in summer
with an ocean of verdure six or eight feet high, in which men and
cattle may hide as in a forest. It is these two zones in the heart of
Russia that have fed millions of people for centuries, which make her
now one of the greatest competitors in the markets of the world.

It is easy to see the interdependence created by this specialization in
production, and the economic necessity it has imposed for an undivided
empire. The forest zone could not exist without the corn of the Black
Lands and the Prairies, nor without the cattle of the Steppes. Nor
could those treeless regions exist without the wood of the forests. So
it is obvious that when Nature girdled this eastern half of Europe, she
marked it for one vast empire; and when she covered those monotonous
plateaus with a black mantle of extraordinary fertility, she decreed
that the Russians should be an agricultural people. And when she
created natural conditions unmitigated and unparalleled in severity,
she ordained that this race of toilers should be patient and submissive
under austerities; that their pulse should be set to a slow, even
rhythm, in harmony with the low key in which Nature spoke to them.

It is impossible to say when an Asiatic stream began to pour into
Europe over the arid steppes north of the Caspian. But we know that as
early as the fifth century B. C. the Greeks had established trading
stations on the northern shores of the Black Sea, and that these in the
fourth century had become flourishing colonies through their trade with
the motley races of barbarians that swarmed about that region, who by
the Greeks were indiscriminately designated by the common name of
Scythians.

The Greek colonists, who always carried with them their religion, their
Homer, their love of beauty, and the arts of their mother cities,
established themselves on and about th