Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/262

Rh 242 S A M S A M power in his own hand, and to induce even his nominal master to reject Mahmud's application for a continuance of his governorship in Khorasdn. Mahmud refrained for the moment from vindicating his right ; but, as soon as, through court intrigues, Mansur II. had been dethroned, he took possession of Khorasan, deposed Mansur's suc- cessor 'Abd al-Malik II., and assumed as an independent monarch for the first time in Asiatic history the title of "sultan." The last descendant of the house of Saman, Prince Muntasir, a bold warrior and a poet of no mean talent, carried on for some years a kind of guerilla warfare against both Mahmud and Ilekkhan, who had occupied Transoxiana, till he was assassinated in 1005 (395 A.H.). Transoxiana itself was annexed to the Ghaznawid realm eleven years later, 1016 (407 A.H.). . SAMAR. See PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, vol. xviii. p. 752. SAMARA, a government of south-eastern Russia, on the left bank of the lower Volga, bounded on the north by Kazan, on the west by Simbirsk and Saratoff, on the east by Ufa and Orenburg, and on the south by Astrakhan, the Kirghiz Steppes, and the territory of the Ural Cossacks. The area is 58,320 square miles, and the population in 1882 was 2,224,093. A line drawn eastwards from the great bend of the Volga the Samarskaya Luka would divide the province into two parts, differing in orographical character. In the north flat hills and plateaus, deeply intersected by rivers, cover the surface. Some of these are spurs of the Urals ; the others are continuations of the flat swelling which traverses middle Russia from the Carpathians to the Urals and compels the Volga to make its characteristic bend before entering the Aral-Caspian lowlands. The Samara Hills, on the right bank of the river Samara ; the Kinel Hills ; the Falcon (Sokolii) Hills, to the north of the Buzutuk; the Sok Hills, with the Tsareff Kurgan at the junction of the Sok with the Volga ; and the Zheguleff " Mountains " on the Volga opposite Samara are so many names given to separate elevations or parts of plateaus between the deep-cut river valleys. In their highest parts they rise about 1000 feet above the sea, while the level of the Volga at Samara is but 43 feet, and the broad valleys of the Volga affluents sink to a cor- respondingly low level. South of the Samarskaya Luka the country assumes the characters of a low and flat steppe, recently emerged from the great Post-Pliocene Aral-Caspian basin. Only two ranges of gentle swellings, spurs of the Obshchiy Syrt, enter the south-east corner of the province. The geology of Samara is not yet fully known. Carboniferous limestones (Upper ?) occupy large tracts in the north-east and east. When approaching the Volga the zechstein appears in wide islands surrounded by the (probably Triassic) variegated marls and sands. Some Jurassic deposits are mentioned about the Samarsk- aya Luka. Cretaceous deposits, which cover large tracts on the nght bank of the Volga, appear on the left bank only in the south-east of Samara. Older Tertiary deposits appear also in the very south of Samara ; while Pliocene limestones and sandy clays, which cover the Obshchiy Syrt and' Ust-Urt,protrude north as a narrow strip, reaching the bend of the Volga. The Glacial boulder-clay of middle Russia does not extend as far south-east as Samara, and the Post-Glacial deposits, not yet fully investigated, are represented by loess, black earth, and lacustrine formations. It is now established that during Post- Glacial times the Aral- Caspian sea extended in a wide gulf occupying the broad depression of the Volga as far north as the Samarskaya Luka, Caspian mussels having been traced as far as Samara. The soil is on the whole very fertile. All the northern part of the government is covered with a thick sheet of black earth ; this becomes thinner towards the south, clays mostly fertile appearing from beneath ; salt clays appear in the south-east. Samara is inadequately watered, especially in the south. The Volga flows for 550 miles along its western border. Its tributaries the Great Tcheremshan (220 miles), the Sok (195 miles), the Samara (340 miles), with its sub-tributaries, and the smaller tributaries the Motcha, Elan-Irghiz or Tchagra, and Little Irghiz are not navigable, partly on account of their shallowness, and partly because of water-mills. When the water is high, boats can inter some of them to a distance of 15 to 30 miles. The Great Irghiz alone, which has an exceedingly winding course of 335 miles, is navigated to Kutchum, and rafts are floated from Nikolaevsk. The banks of both Karamans are densely peopled. The Great and Little Uzefl water south-eastern Samara and lose themselves in the Kamysh sands before reaching the Caspian. A few lakes and marshes occur in the river-valleys, and salt marshes in the south-east. The whole of the region is rapidly drying up. The forests, which are disappearing, are extensive only in the north. Altogether they still cover an area of 3,043,000 acres, or 8 per cent, of the whole surface ; prairie and grazing land occupies 11,495,000 acres, and only 4,193,000 acres are uncultivable. The climate is one of extremes, especially in the steppes, where the depressing heat and drought of summer are followed in the winter by severe frosts, often accompanied by snow-storms. The average temperature at Samara (53 11' N. lat. ) is only 39 '2 (January, 9'3 ; July, 70'4). The population, which was only 1,388,500 in 1853, has almost doubled since then, mostly in consequence of immigration ; it reached 2,224, 093 in 1882, and must now (1886) be about 2, 250, 000. Only 139,300 of these live in towns, the remainder being distri- buted over 4,470 villages, which are often very large, no fewer thau 150 ranging in population from 2000 to 6000. The Great Russians, who have immigrated in compact masses, now constitute 65 per cent, of the population ; the Little Russians, who were settled by the Government about the salt lakes, number about 30,000 ; and the White Russians, also sent to Samara from West Russia, may number about 15,000. A special feature of Samara is its popula- tion of German colonists, from Wiirtemberg, Baden, Switzerland, and partly also from Holland and the Palatinate, whose immigration dates from the invitation of Catherine II. in 1762. Protected as they were by free and extensive grants of land, by exemption from military service, and by self-government, they have developed rich coloniesof Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, Anabaptists, Moravians, and Mennonites, most of which have adopted the Russian village- community system, slowly modified by the existence of a special capital reserved for the purchase of land for the increasing popula- tion. l They now constitute 40 per cent, of the population of the district of Novo-Uzefi, and 9 per cent, of that of Nikolaevsk, their aggregate number reaching 150,000. The Moksha and Erzya Mord- vinians, now nearly quite Russified, gathered in Samara during the reign of Peter I., when they abandoned in great numbers the left bank of the Volga ; they constitute about 10 per cent, of the popu- lation. Some 70,000 Tchuvashes and 1500 Votyaks may be added to the above. The Turkish stem is represented by some 100,000 Tartars, 70,000 Bashkirs, and a few Kirghizes. Some baptized Kal- mucks were settled in 1730 at Stavropol ; and about 600 Adyghe Circassians, settled at Novo-Uzefi, may still be found there. All these varied elements, living in close juxtaposition, nevertheless continue to maintain their own ethnographical features ; the Mord- vinians alone have lost their ethnological individuality and rapidly undergo a modification of type as they adopt the life of Russian peasants. As regards religion, the great bulk of the population are Orthodox Greeks ; the Nonconformists, who still retain their numerous and widely celebrated communities and monasteries on- both the rivers Uzefi, number several hundred thousands (officially 100,000); next come Mohammedans, 12 per cent; a variety of Protestant sects, 5 per cent. ; Roman Catholics, about 2 per cent. ; and, lastly, some 4000 pagans. The chief occupation is agriculture, summer wheat, rye, oats, millet, oil-yielding plants, and tobacco being the principal crops. Owing to its great fertility, Samara usually has a surplus of grain for export, varying from l to 4 million quarters (exclusive of oats) annually. In 1883, which was an average year for summer wheat, but under the average for winter rye, the total crops were wheat, 3,219, 600 quarters; rye, 717,800; oats, 1,800,000; barley, 127,300; and other grains, 1,310,000. Notwithstanding this production, varying from 5,000,000 to 9,000,000 quarters of grain (exclusive of oats) for a population of only 2$ millions, Samara is periodi- cally liable to famine to such an extent that men die by thousands of hunger-typhus, are compelled to send (as in 1879) to adjoining provinces to purchase orach as food, or are forced to go by hundreds of thousands in search of employment on the Volga, while millions of quarters of corn are nevertheless exported. The population have no store of corn, or reserve capital for years of scarcity (there were in 1882 only 245,100 quarters of corn in the public granaries, and 503,022 roubles of capital for that purpose), and some 210,000 males have in all only 845,000 acres of arable and pasture land. But even this soil, although all taxed as arable, is often of such quality that only 50 to 55 per cent, of it is under crops, while the peasants are compelled to rent from two to two and a half million acres for tillage from large proprietors. At present 8,549,000 acres, or about one-quarter of the total area of 1 See the interesting work of M. Clauss on "Our Colonies" (Russian).