Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/745

Rh in immensity; an endless uniformity of geographical environment, hardly to be equaled in any country inhabited by European peoples. Thus is the geographical environment of the Russian people deter- mined in its first important respect. Their territory offers no obstacle whatever to expansion in any direction; the great rivers, navigable for hundreds of miles, are, in fact, a distinct invitation to such migrations. On the other hand, this plain surface and the great rivers offer the same advantages to the foreigner as to the native; there is a complete absence of those natural barriers behind which a people may seek shelter from the incursions of others. The only natural protection which the region offers is in its dense forests and swamps. These, however, unlike mountains, offer no variety of conditions or natural products; they afford no stimulation to advance in culture; they retard civilization in the act of protecting it; they are better fitted to afford refuge to an exiled people than to en- courage progress in a nascent one.

The second factor in determining a geographical area of char- acterization is its relative fertility. As we have observed before, this invites or discourages the movement of populations, in armies or in peaceful migration, just as much as the configuration of the surface makes this an easy or difficult matter. Judged by this second criterion, the territory of European Russia varies considerably. Leroy-Beaulieu divides it into three strips from north to south. The half lying north of a line from Kiev to Kazan (see map on page 731), constituting the forest zone, is light soiled; it varies from heavy forest on the southern edge to the stunted growth of the arctic plains. South of the forest belt, south of a line, that is, from Kiev to Kazan, lies the prairie country. This is the flattest of all; over a territory several times the size of France, a hill of three hundred and fifty feet elevation is unknown. This prairie or woodless strip is of surpassing fertility — the so-called Black Mold belt, just south of the forests, rivaling the basin of the Mississippi in its natural richness of soil. From this the country gradually becomes less and less fertile, with the decreasing rainfall, as we go south. This brings us at last to the third region, that of the barren steppes, or saline deserts, which center about the Caspian Sea. These are found also less extensively north of the Crimean Peninsula, as far west as the lower Dnieper. Their major part lies south and east of the Don River. As Leroy- Beaulieu observes, the real boundary between Europe and Asia, viewed not cartographically, but in respect of culture and anthro- pology, lies not at the Ural River and Mountains at all, where most of our geographies place it. Sedentary, civilized, racial Europe, roughly speaking, ends at a line, shown on our map, up the Don from its mouth to the knee of the Volga, thence up the latter