Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/91

Rh workmen and artisans in the cities who are more alert than the supine peasantry and who are the source of the present discontent and uprising.

The whole fabric of society, it must also be borne in mind, rests upon the church which is the very foundation of the state and to which in its ritual and observances all, from the Czar to the humblest moujik, are supremely devoted. The first need of the people is economic improvement and their re- lease from the harsh conditions of their restricted communal life. The report of Witte on the elevation of the peasant contemplates some reconstruction of the mir and the opening of broader callings and opportunities to those who are prac- tically bound to the soil. It is urged with force that real social emancipation cannot come without political enfran- chisement. The one will undoubtedly promote the other, and under the quicker impulse of these later days the nation is moving forward to both.

Russia is passing through the dark valley of deep trials. She is paying the appalling cost of grievous mistakes ; but enormous as that cost is, it will still be cheap if, through these bitter experi- ences and this new awakening, the great empire shall be put upon the higher pathway of wiser counsels and liberal advancement. The history of Russia is a varied story. It is illuminated with the progressive measures of the great Emancipator. It is darkened with the shadows of Kishinev and the Finnish oppression. The far-reaching reforms which are now dawning on the nation give promise of a new and more hopeful era. Russia has prodigious recupera- tive power. She was prostrate after the Crimean war, but soon recovered her strength. She was humiliated and straitened after the Turkish war, but started again upon a new career. She is patient, tenacious, and persistent ; she has the traditions and the indomitable faith which have come down from Peter the Great ; she has the vast though dor- mant resources of imperial domain and power ; and if through the disasters she is now suffering she shall throw off the shackles of the bureaucracy that have weighed her down and come to share the progressive spirit of the age, she will through present tribulations and final regeneration enter, as we hope she may, on a new and brighter epoch.

THE accumulated stock of marine hydrographic knowledge in its availability for the construction of navigational charts of the coasts of the world is divided into four classes for the purposes of this communication. Upon the accompanying world chart the extent of coast line comprised within each of these four classes is indicated by appropriate symbols depicting the coasts that are completely surveyed, those that are incompletely but serviceably surveyed for purposes of navigation, those that are explored for purposes of navi- gation, and those that are unexplored for purposes of navigation.

It should be made clear with reference to those coasts which are classed as being completely surveyed that, excepting in rare instances, no greater completeness