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table manner, and did everything to honor and please us. Chimneys are rarely, and glass windows nearly never found in that country. Everybody, in cold weather, is wrapt in his " (blanket) or capa " (cloak), even in his room. The poor people who have not sufficient covering, suffer exceedingly during the cold season. As soon as the sun rises in the morning, they are seen to stand about in the streets and lean against the walls of the houses, for the purpose of thawing their stiffened limbs in its rays. Happily these rays are very warm, even in winter, while a piercing cold may prevail in the shade.

From the Ranchitos to Coyáchic we took a route different from that by which we had come. We passed west of the Laguna de Cerro Prieto, at the very foot of the Sierra Madre, which, however, near as we were, we could not see, the atmosphere being entirely obscured by falling snow. We passed a night at Cerro Prieto, where the direct road from Chihuahua to the mines of Jesus Maria enters the Sierra. We then came to the village of Los Llanos (the plains), situated at the lake of that same name, and, travelling along its northeastern shore, arrived at the Bajio del Chato. As already observed, we had the good fortune of seeing no Apaches at that ill-reputed place. We did not pass it, however, without having, at least, some little excitement. Just at the most dangerous spot, where a little ravine runs down from the southern extremity of the Sierra de las Casas Coloradas against the lake, a cloud of cranes, geese, and ducks, suddenly rose more than a thousand steps before us. As we saw no traveller on the road-who could have scared these birds but some Apaches?signs like this are always regarded as warnings in an Indian country. Jesus Dominguez rode up to our carriage and calmly observed that, "Los Indios " might be in the "arroyo." And here again he showed his courage. Handing his hat over to us, he bound a handker

chief round his head to keep his long hair from falling over his eyes, he put fresh caps upon his rifle and pistols, and fearlessly galloped ahead straight to the We very place of supposed danger. armed each of the two men who formed our infantry, placed our revolvers and rifles at hand, and followed him. No enemy, however, could be discovered. A little farther on a new alarm was given. Dominguez had advanced so much that he was covered to our view by a little elevation of the savanna. Suddenly we saw a traveller at a distance to our right, who made signs to us to hasten on, pointing in the direction of Dominguez. We could only suppose that he was attacked by the savages. I grasped the rifle, Don Guillermo drove the horses into gallop; Natividad and Gaudalupe kept pace with them, and thus we raced up the little hill, where we saw our servant standing quietly in the road with a peaceable traveller, whom the other one to our right hand had seen approaching, and believed to be an Apache. Trifling as these little incidents are, they show the degree of fear and excitement in which the inhabitants of this country are constantly kept while travelling.

The rest of our voyage passed without any accident, and we safely arrived at Chihuahua after an absence of seventeen days.

If the kind reader should ask how it happened that, travelling through a country reported to be the most dangerous part of the State of Chihuahua, I have not even seen those terrible Apaches, of whom I have spoken so much, I have to answer that these savages are rarely to be seen except when they attack, and that they never attack except when they believe themselves sure of success without risking too much. If, therefore, I had seen them on this journey, it is very likely I should be unable to give a description of the interview.

SUCH is the

UCH is the title which we give to the following article. In our next number, it is our purpose to follow it up with a second, to be called: "RUSSIA, PRESENT AND FUTURE." Within the compass of these two articles, of moderate length, it is our desire and intention to treat of those things in the History, Present Condition and Prospects of that great empire, which may be interesting to our readers at this momentous period, and especially of such events as may throw soine light on the causes and probable results of the present war between Russia and Turkey, in which England and France are taking so remarkable a part, and to which Austria, Prussia, and Sweden hold relations so interesting and important.

It is with good reason that well-informed men, men of a philosophical spirit, who have read history not simply to know the Past, but also to foreknow the Future, are beginning to contemplate the position, great extent, immense resources, and vast military strength of the Russian empire with very serious apprehension. The portion of that empire which lies in Europe is greater by more than a quarter of a million of square miles than all the rest of that continent. The Asiatic is far more than double the European part in geographical extentthe former having nearly 4,500,000 square miles, and the latter 2,025,000— and if we add Russia in America, and the Island of Nova Zembla, we shall find that the Russian empire contains more than seven millions of square miles, and

little less than one-seventh part of the land-surface of the earth! It is the largest empire of which history has ever spoken. That of Rome was not so extensive; nor will those of Alexander, Tamerlane and Charlemagne compare with it.

On the other hand, formidable as Russia really is, her power is far from corresponding to her geographical dimensions. In this respect, the Roman empire in its palmiest days,-those of Trajan, when it had one hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants,-far exceeded anything which Russia has yet reached; for it included all Middle and Southern Europe, Northern Africa and Western Asia, to the confines of India;

and the Mediterranean Sea was nothing but a Roman lake. Never did an empire possess advantages of climate, soil, productions and facilities for intercommunication, comparable to that of which the "Seven Hilled City on the Tiber" was the capital. In these respects, the empire of the Czars is far from being equal to that of the Cæsars. On the contrary, from its very northern position, and the sterility of the soil in immense portions of it, the Russian empire labors under very great disadvantages. With the exception of the trans-Caucasian province of Georgia, no portion of the Russian empire lies south of 42° 50′; whilst its extreme northern line is in latitude 79. We may safely say that nearly all of it that is of much account for agriculture, lies between latitudes of 440 and 60°. This zone, 16 degrees (or 1112 miles) in width, includes the southern part of the entire empire, with the exception of Georgia. This zone, we may may add, includes, it is probable, four-fifths, if not more, of the entire population. Even in the southern portion of the empire, there is scarcely a river which is not frozen up during four months every winter; whilst those in the northern are rendered unnavigable, for the same cause, from six to eight. All the seaports are closed for months by the ice; and commerce entirely ceases during that season of the year.

As to the population of the Russian empire, very different estimates are made by different authors-from 57 up to 70,000,000! It is evident that many writers. are deceived by not looking at the Russian authorities with sufficient care; for these seldom include either modern Poland or Finland in what they call Russia. The consequence is, that when they speak of population of the country, number of Roman Catholics, Jews, &c., it is absolutely necessary to know whether they mean to include the whole empire, as it now stands, or not; for want of precision in this respect, the authors of the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica have committed several errors of a serious nature in their notices of Russia. The same thing was done by the Hon. Wm. H. Seward, in a speech which he delivered in the Senate of the United States, a few years ago, in which he said

that the population of Russia was 54,000,000. If he had added the population of Poland and Finland he would not have been much aside from the truth, so far as Europe is concerned.

When we were in St. Petersburg in 1846, Count Kisseleff, the minister of the Public Domains, was kind enough to give us from the books in the Department of the Interior, as well as from his own, many statistics relating to the empire. At that time, he assured us the population of the entire empire might be safely put down at 66,500,000. It is now probably not far from 69 or 70,000,000; of which about 63,000,000 are in European Russia, including modern Poland (a country about as large as Pennsylvania, and having a population of 4,500,000 or 5,000,000), the Baltic provinces (Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia, which once belonged to the Counts of Prussia and to Sweden), and Finland, most of which has been annexed to Russia within the present century.

It will be seen, from this statement, that the Asiatic and American portions of the Russian empire must be very thinly populated. In fact they are but little worth, excepting for their vast mineral resources, their fisheries, and their furs and skins. Siberia, as the entire of Asiatic-Russia (with the exception of Georgia), is commonly called, is a vast extent of mountains and sterile plains or steppes, with a very small proportion of ground fit for cultivation. We have known personally several gentlemen, Russians and others, who resided or travelled there for years, and they have given us but one testimony in regard to that vast and dreary region. It is only in the western and southern portions of it, where its gold, platina, and other nines-in the Oural Altai mountainsare found, that there is any permanent population worth speaking of. It is to those portions of Siberia that the " convicts"

are sent from seven to eight thousand every year-not to work in the mines, save in the case of great criminals, but to become serfs of the crown, and cultivate the public lands.

But although the Asiatic and American portions of the Russian empire will never have a great population, and are chiefly valuable for their mineral resources, their fisheries, and the abundance of skins and furs which they yield, it is far otherwise with the European part of it. That vast country, whose population is now nearly equal to that of France,

Great Britain and Ireland combined, is capable of sustaining, with ease, two hundred millions. Even although a large portion of the zone north of latitude 600 may be poor, marshy, abounding in lakes, and in many places abounding, too, in rocks, and much of the southern part sandy and sterile, and containing, in the southeast, large steppes, on which nothing grows save buffalo grass, the stinted cactus, and small shrubs and bushes; yet there is a vast extent of excellent land in the central, western, and southwestern parts, which is even now populous, and is destined to become far more so. It is precisely this part of Russia which is so steadily and even rapidly advancing in population, manufactures, education, and everything else that belongs to true civilization. The climate, though cold in the winter, is not excessively rigorous, as it is in the north. It is the land of wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, flax, hemp, of the apple, the pear, the peach, the plum; and in it rise the Wolga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, which flow down into the Caspian, the Asoph, and the Black seas. In it, too, rise the Lima and the Dwina (or Duna, as the Russians call it), which fall into the Arctic Ocean, and the Neva (which is the outlet of lakes Onega and Ladoga), another Duna, the Niemen, and the Vistula, which fall into the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic. These ten rivers are navigable in the six or seven warm months for boats of various sizes. On their lower courses steamboats are now to be seen ploughing their way; and on some of them, a considerable number.

ΟΙ

Large portions of this vast countrylarger, as we have already said, than all the rest of Europe--are covered with primeval forests. This is especially true of the northern, eastern (towards and along the Oural Mountains), the western, and southwestern "governments provinces. We have often travelled ten and even twenty miles at a stretch, in Western Russia, without seeing a house or a field-nothing but the forest far and wide. This is quite remarkable in the western confines of Russia proper, and the eastern side of old Poland, in its most powerful day, about the longitude of Smolensk, and even further west.

But enough of geographical description. Let us advance to more interesting, though scarcely less important subjects. We say scarcely less important, for God has with His own finger, as it

were, written the destinies of the nations on the very surface itself of the earth. Its great features have determined, and will long determine, the history of mankind. Mountains, and seas, and straits, and to some extent even rivers, have contributed to separate the human family, and create numerous states and kingdoms, for the most part small-in the former case bold, brave, hardy, and warlike; in the latter, adventurous, and addicted to commerce and colonization. Widely different have been the conditions and pursuits of men when congregated on large plains. There it has not been found difficult to bring large masses under the government of an ambitious and powerful military chief, which his descendants, if possessed of similar character and talent, may continue to hold. Where there is but little civilization, military power is the only force which is sufficient to maintain the adhesion, or agglomeration rather, of mankind in masses. The plains of the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Ganges, the Yangtse-Kiang, and many others of greater or less extent, illustrate this position. When civilization has become sufficiently advanced, it makes it possible to bind men together in large nationalities by suitable political institutions, and still more by strong and reciprocal interests. Civilization, too, can bring under one government neighboring and even distant portions of the human race, which have been sundered by mountains, by rivers, by straits, and even by seas and oceans; for it can furnish the means of overcoming, and, as it were, of removing such barriers. The good common-road, the railroad, the ship, the steamboat, the diffusion of a common language and a common religion, the planting of colonies-all these are means which civilization can employ (as we see illustrated in our own great country and some others at the present day, and as will be illustrated all over the world in some future era), to give political governments vast extent and influence over large portions of mankind, even where there is considerable diversity of language and religion.

But the history of Russia does not seem to confirm some of these positions; for, although it is a plain, ages upon ages passed away before it was brought under one government. In fact, that consummation has been reached only within comparatively modern times. Let us look at this subject for a moment. It is

fundamental to all correct knowledge of the history of the Russian empire. It is true that Russia in Europe may be said to be one vast plain; the greatest, probably, on the earth. The northern and southern portions of it, for hundreds of miles inward from the Arctic Ocean and Black Sea, are almost perfectly level. and the central parts are scarcely more than undulating, or at most hilly. Wẹ have several times passed over the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and have seen nothing approaching to a mountain in point of height, even on the table-land on which rise the great rivers of the country-some flowing off to the southeast, and others to the northwest. Moscow stands in what may be called a vast plain. With the exception of a ridge of some elevation on the west, which the Russians dignify by calling it the "Sparrow Mountains," but which we should hardly consider respectable hills, there is nothing but a boundless plain in all directions.

Russia is not only very level, but it is low; so much so, if it were made a perfect plain, it has been calculated that it would have an altitude of only 350 feet above the ocean. Whereas, if Europe were reduced to a dead level, it would be 630 feet above the sea. Russia is the lowest country of large extent in Europe; Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Greece are the highest.

How, then, if Russia be a plain, as it were, of such great extent, has it happened that it was not sooner brought under one government? We will explain this, by calling the attention of the reader to the important fact, that from very early times, until within a few centuries, emigration from Asia greatly affected the interests and destinies of the countries on the eastern and contiguous side of Europe. This emigration was en masse, for the reason that it was made by whole tribes of people, headed by bold chieftains, who fought their way, sword in hand, into regions better, as they supposed, than those which they had quit. Our old historians used to say that these great emigrations came from "about" or "beyond the Black Sea,"-sometimes from about or beyond the Caspian Sea; and there the matter ended. But it is now settled that these emigrations came from the high tablelands of what is now called Independent Tartary and Bokara, where the soil is far from being fertile, or the climate genial, and whence the inhabitants, nomadic in