Alfred Nicolas Rambaud

“ It was for long the Russia of heroes, the property of nomad horsemen, the country of the Cossack. The Black Land and the prairie, which is nearly as fertile, have a superficies of 750,000 miles square, or 300,000,000 of acres of excellent earth, a surface equal to that of France and Austrian Hungary united. The fourth zone, that of the barren steppes, steppes which are sandy at the mouth of the Dnieper, clay to the north of the Crimea, saline to the north of the Caspian, only contains 1,500,000 inhabitants in its whole extent of 250,000 miles. ”

“ Two hundred thousand workmen flock from all parts of Russia to its banks. Fifteen thousand ships and 500 steamboats plough its waters. Kostroma, Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof, Astrakhan, are filled with noise and movement. The whole life of Russia seems concentrated on the Volga. ”

“ Western Europe, so jagged in its contour, is no less broken in its surface. Without speaking of the vast central mass of the Alps, there is not one European land which does not possess, either in its length or breadth, a great mountain system forming the scaffolding or the backbone of the country. ”

“ From this point of view, Russia may be defined as the Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains.
Uniformity of surface is never quite complete, and Russia does present inequalities of soil, though these are far less notable than the depressions and elevations of the West. In the faintly-marked soil of Russia, we must notice, in the centre of the country, a kind of square table-land, called the central plateau, or the plateau of Alaoune, from the name of its northern part. The north-eastern angle is formed by the heights of the Valdaï plateau, where the hills are 300 feet high ”

“ The second consequence of the continental climate of Russia is that the winds do not reach the country till they have lost on the way part of their humidity. Russia suffers generally from dryness. At Kazan the rainfall is only half that of Paris; it is for this reason that Russia contains so many barren and unwooded plains, while this absence of forests all through the south is, in its turn, an obstacle to the formation of hills and springs and to the development of a healthy moisture. ”

“ The people were obliged to build with other materials than in the West. The public buildings were everywhere of oak and pine, or of brick; the old churches, the palaces of the Tzars, the ramparts of the towns, were of wood; of wood are the present houses of the citizens, and the isbas of the peasants. Russian villages, and most of the towns, are a collection of combustible materials: hence the fires which break out periodically, and justify the saying that Russia, as a rule, was burned every seven years. ”

“ From this alone twenty-five millions are fed, and the population increases daily. From time immemorial this soil has been the granary of Eastern Europe. It was here Herodotus placed his agricultural Scythians, and hence Athens drew her grain. The zone of arable steppes lies parallel to the Black Land; to the south it descends nearly to the sea: the country is fertile, though it cannot do without manure. ”

“ From the fact, again, that Russia is only washed by seas, small in proportion to the extent of the land, it results that the temperature is modified neither by sea-breezes, which in the West warm in winter and refresh in summer, nor by the aërial and marine current of the Gulf Stream, which finally expires on the coasts and on the mountains of Scandinavia, without being able to influence the shores of the Baltic. ”

“ This strongly-marked outline of the western lands is the characteristic feature of European geography, while the immense spaces of which Russia is composed seem the continuation of the plains and plateaux of Northern and Central Asia. No doubt Russia is washed by many seas: in the north by the Icy Ocean, which bites deep into the country through the great fissure of the White Sea; in the south by the Caspian, the Sea of Azof, and the Black Sea; in the north-west by the Baltic and the gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Livonia ”

“ The Aurora Borealis is frequent in the north of Russia, while the mirage is often seen in the steppes of the south.
Russia being a country of plains, the geological beds of which the soil is formed are nearly always horizontal; no raising of the soil has broken them, rent the beds of stone, and driven the fragments through the layers of mould or sand. It follows that, except in the neighborhood of mountains, stone is very scarce in Russia. ”

“ From the fact that Russia, taken as a whole, is only a vast plain, it follows that her surface is swept by Polar winds, which no mountain barrier keeps out, for the Oural chain runs in a direction parallel to their course. ”

“ Petersburg, situated on the 60th parallel of northern latitude, is the most northern capital of the whole world. The longest day in this city lasts 18 hours 45 minutes; the sun rises on that day at 20 minutes to three, and sets at 25 minutes past 9, but the twilight is prolonged to the moment of dawn. ”