CHAPTER XIX.

RUSSIA EASILY GOVERNED FROM ONE CENTER.

It has already been remarked that no extent of territorial possession, however fertile its soil, or however dense its population, will afford a foundation for true national greatness, unless it is a contiguous territory, or can in some manner be bound into one whole, so that the remotest extremity will feel the influence of a central life. With such methods of communication only as the ancients possessed, no widely-extended government could long maintain itself united and secure; and with these examples of failure and dissolution before them, the wisest of the early American statesmen felt little inclination to enlarge our national domain; and only a few years since, the idea of retaining a united dominion over our present territory would have been rejected by many, perhaps by most, as absurd. But the steam vessel, the railway, and the telegraph, practically condense a continent into the space of a province, and all are now convinced that the magnitude of our country will never destroy the efficiency or unity of the government. That alone would not now prevent one central power from controlling the two Americas. In examining, therefore, the elements of power possessed by Russia, it is necessary to consider more particularly than we have hitherto done,

the nature of these facilities for intercourse between different parts of her empire, which she now enjoys, or may probably create hereafter, in the regular and natural development of her resources. We shall then understand whether she is likely to remain a firmly-compacted whole, animate with a single life, or whether she must be regarded as a mass of heterogeneous materials loosely cohering even now, and soon to be separated entirely. A glance has been bestowed upon this point, in the brief comparison instituted between the United States and Russia, but the means of internal communication enjoyed by the latter demand a more particular description. This may properly commence with the rivers of the country. These may be separated into five groups, viz.: the Pacific, the Arctic Ocean, the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Baltic. Beginning in the east with the river basins which stretch from the southern base of the Altai mountains, southeastward toward the Pacific, there is an extensive region of whose rivers little is known, except the Amoor, and even in regard to that our information is scanty and unsatisfactory, it having been until quite lately within the guarded Chinese dominions. It must henceforth be regarded as a Russian river, the natural and necessary outlet of the whole eastern portion of the empire. It is described as a "splendid stream,” having a course of twenty-two hundred miles, for a large portion of which it is said to be navigable. Such a river must, of course, drain a territory proportionate to its own magnitude, and the glowing though indefinite accounts of the wide and fertile plains that lie along its banks, together with its actual magnitude and the distance for which it is navigable, remind one of the Mississippi and its valley, below St. Louis. Such a stream must also be sustained by many important affluents of which nothing definite is known to Europeans. Its whole course is through an attractive and productive region, and it requires but a slight effort of the imagination to present a picture of this great valley as it will be, when fleets of steamers shall cover the Amoor and its tributaries, not only bearing the production of the adja

cent countries, but interchanging the commodities of Europe, Asia, and America.

This stream rises in the province of Irkoutsk in southern Siberia, and flowing in a southeasterly direction into the Sea of Japan, seems to have been formed with especial reference to the trade of Asiatic Russia, reaching from the Chinese seas to the head-streams of one of the largest rivers in Siberia that empties into the Arctic Ocean, and is thus prepared to receive the trade of the valley of the Lenawhich reaches to the frozen shores of the Polar sea.

This extreme eastern portion then of Russia, is a vast and fertile river basin, stretching from the Sea of Japan northwesterly to south-eastern Siberia, traversed by a stream navigable for more than a thousand miles, according to estimates of river navigation made before American steamboats on our western rivers had shown how small a stream is capable of floating a profitable commerce. On the headwaters of the Amoor, that vast plain is reached which inclines slightly to the Arctic Sea, and across which flow some of the longest rivers of Asia. The traveler from the Pacific, following up the valley of the Amoor, would strike first in the province of Irkoutsk, the upper waters of the Lena, then passing far westward, he would reach the valley of the Yenisei, and finally at the eastern base of the Ural mountains, he would find a third broad river basin, that of the Obi. Each of these mighty streams is said to have a course of more than two thousand miles. Along these vast valleys, for about one-half their extent, the cereals of Europe come to maturity; and he who knows what success has crowned agricultural labor in Minnesota, and even much further north, where the range of the thermometer is much the same as in southern Siberia, will not hastily conclude that the latter must be regarded only as a frozen, desert waste.

The actual extent of arable land can not be estimated, with our present means of information; but the value of uncultivated lands in high northern latitudes, is almost universally underrated. Immense tracts of natural pasture

spread over these great plains; heavy forests skirt the streams, even within the Arctic circle, furnishing exhaustless supplies of valuable timber, while the fisheries of the rivers, and the furs of the northern districts are of themselves the sources of a very important trade. On the western frontier of Siberia, and along the western edge of the valley of the Obi, rise the Ural mountains, embosoming a mineral wealth without a parallel on the globe, except in the great mountain ranges of America. These rivers and their tributaries are navigable for most of their course for about six months in the year, and considering the resources and extent of the country, it is easy to perceive what it may become with a railway crossing these valleys, from the head of steamboat navigation on the Amoor to the mineral regions in the Ural, from whence there is already a river navigation fitted for small steam vessels to the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Baltic.

Before any one turns away from such statements, as idle and empty speculation, let him calmly consider the progress of the United States within the last twenty years, and the certainty that the whole breadth of our continent will very soon be spanned by a railway having one terminus on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, and then remember that in rapidity of growth and improvement, Russia stands next to America. Siberia then, traversed from north to south by rivers whose magnitude compares with those of North America, requires but a line of communication crossing them from east to west, such as a railway would supply, to develope her great resources, and put her in connection both with Asia and Europe. Her third system of rivers embraces those which fall into the Caspian Sea. Of these the Volga alone requires to be mentioned. This is the largest river of Europe, being two thousand miles in length, one and a quarter miles broad at its mouth, and navigable almost to its very source, or perhaps even, for steamboats like those of our western rivers, through its entire course, as it rises from a lake. It may be compared to the Mississippi, reckoning from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf

of Mexico. It receives numerous important affluents from the east and north-east, which connect the main stream by navigable waters, not only with important agricultural districts, but with the mining regions of the Ural. In the lower part of its course it approaches within about thirty miles of the Don, at a point where the nature of the country offers no impediment to the construction of a ship canal, which has been often projected, and even commenced, but not completed. By this comparatively small work, the whole valley of the Volga and the western slope of the Ural, would be connected directly with the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

One of the tributaries of the Volga, coming from the northeast, has a course of one thousand miles, about equal to the Ohio from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi, and another, the Oka, on a branch of which is Moscow, is seven hundred miles long, and navigable almost to its source. The Volga is united by a canal with the Duna, which empties into the Gulf of Riga, and thus uninterrupted navigation is established between the Caspian Sea and the Baltic. Another canal connects a tributary of the Oka with the Don, and this opens an indirect communication between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Still another canal unites the Volga with the Dwina, which flows into the White Sea, and thus another navigable line is formed from the southern extremity of the empire, through its very heart, to Archangel and the Frozen Ocean. Yet another work opens a connection between the Volga and the Lake Onega, and St. Petersburg, and this city is also united with Moscow both by canal and railway. There are thus three main lines of water communication across the entire breadth of European Russia. One from the mineral region of the Ural to St. Petersburg and the Baltic; one from the Caspian northward to the Arctic Ocean, and one from the Caspian, and also from the Ural, through to the Duna, to the Baltic; and even yet another, by the way of the Oka and Moscow, to St. Petersburg by the canal. This is quite independent of that great number of smaller streams and shorter con