The Portland daily press., 1881-08-18
Russia's Enormous Territory.

lLOnuon 11meS.l
1t would hardly seem possible to a sentiment
tai traveller-supposing a person answering
that description to exist in our day-to arrive
for the first time at st. Petersburg at this mo-
ment without mixture of feelings in which
sadness predominated. He is aware that he
has crossed the frontier of a large state, the
largest of all compact states, and, perhaps, on
ly second to the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, with all its colonies and
possessions; SO big a state that from the from
tier station at Vierzbolow, or Wirballen, to
the ST. Petersburg terminus there is distance
of $50 miles, far exceeding that between Lon
don and Edinburgh, and yet this first journey
OF two nights and two days only brings one to
the capital, which lies in corner of the EN-.
pire. A glance at the map will satisfy us that
The smaller half of this empire European
Russia-is considerably larger than that of all
the other states of Europe put together; while
the other half-Siberia, with the rest of the
Asiatic Provinces-is not far from covering
one third of the Asiatic continent: and that a
recent traveller, the Rev. Henry Lansdell, in
his five months journey from London to the
mouth of the Amoor, all across the Czar's do
minions, went over 2600 miles by rail, 800
VI.
gether, IL 800 miles almost In a straight line
So far then, as man may take pride in the
mere bigness of his country, Russian has am
pie reason to be proud But state, like a man,
may be none the happier for all that. A lofty
stature, to be sure, enables man to look over
the heads of a crowd, an unquestonable ad-
vantage, and mere height imparts an air of
dignity and command which the underszed
fully appreciate But six foot six giant,
doubling himself up and drawing up his legs
to get into lady's brougham is a Iudicrous
sight; very tall men are seldom well proper
toned or robust, and in war they offer too easy
target to the wicked breech-loaders of modern
construction. In the same manner Russia is
made unwieldy by her very bulk. She has to
struggle with her prodigious length and width,
and to do 1t at greater disadvantage than
other large states. In the western continent,
Tor instance, in the United States, Brazil, and
the republics OF South America, man was pow
erfully aided by nature in his fight against
enormous distances by the length of navigable
water courses, the. Mississippi and Missouri,
the st. Lawrence, the Platte, Parana and Uru-
quay, the Amazon, the San Francisco, &c.
even before he could help himself by his rail-
ways; whereas in Russia the northern streams
both of Europe and Asia, the Niemen, the
Dwina, the Obi. the Yenesei, the Lena, &c.,
empty themselves either in the White and
Arctic seas. choked with ice for six or eight
months in the year, or in the Baltic, also froz-
en- in the winter months, and for long time
placed beyond reach of the czar's sway; and
the southern streams, the Volga, the Don, sc
ended either in the Caspian or the sea of Azoff
and the Euxine, both closed for centuries
against Russian enterprise and expansion.
With respect to railways it was Russa's
misfortune to go late to work about their con-
struction, and even what she has achieved be-
tween the Crimean and Turkish war-1854-
1o76-scarcely amounts now to IA 900 miles, to
which, after the peace of Berlin, she is barely
adding 700 yearly-a striking contrast to other
large countries-as to the United States of
North America, for instance, which boast of
net OF railway lines of 5000 miles, with an
average annual addition of 10000 miles, This
backwardness Of Russia in her endeavors to
annihilate space by rapid and easy means OF
locomotion cannot be without grave conse-
quences for her commercial and social, as well
as financial and political, interests. 1t is lost
ground for her in her battle of life; in the in
cessant struggle against that geographical posi-
tion which from the beginning doomed her to
seclusion from the civilized world-a struggle
the evidence of which may be read in every
page of the country's history and may be fol-
lowed in every sniff of its governments policy.