To

nections known only to the inhabitants of a country. gether, they present a perfect network of veins and arteries, along which the tides of internal commerce flow. Next are the rivers which flow into the Black Sea. Among these are: the Dnieper, which is twelve hundred miles long, a broad and deep stream, navigable for a large portion of its course; the Bog, or Boug, which is more than four hundred miles long, and navigable; and the Don, which is also a navigable stream, is about five hundred miles in length. The lower portion of this stream will be the channel of an immense trade so soon as the canal is finished between it and the Volga, a distance of about thirty miles; and, finally, the Kouban, a shallow stream coming from the Caucasus, and navigable only for boats of a light draught. Its length is about four hundred miles.

In addition to the rivers already mentioned, the Danube, having sixty navigable tributaries, falls into the Black Sea. Russia has obtained the control of the mouths of this important European stream, and her fortress of Ismail commands the commerce which passes by the northern or Kilia branch. If, as is said, the bar across the mouth of the Sulinah, or middle branch, is yearly increasing, the whole trade of the Danube may be thrown into the northern channel, and must pass under the guns of a Russian fortification. Russia owns the north shore of the Danube as far as Galatz, near which town it receives the Pruth, which, in a course of more than five hundred miles, flows along the province of Bessarabia. The fifth system of Russian rivers is connected with the Baltic. Its streams are smaller than those already described, but their commercial importance is, nevertheless, great. The Neva, on which St. Petersburgh is built, has its source in the Lake Ladoga, which is one hundred and thirty miles long, while it averages seventy-five miles in breadth. The shores of the Ladoga, and the commerce of the streams which empty into this lake, some of which bring the productions of the Ural, make the Neva the channel of a very extensive trade. The Duna discharges itself into the Gulf of Riga, and being

connected by a canal with the Volga, as has already been stated, it floats an extensive commerce. The Vistula is the chief river of Poland, and at Warsaw it is about seven hundred feet broad.

This completes a general, but by no means a full, survey of the facilities afforded by the Russian rivers for internal trade and travel. The government has already begun the establishment of lines of river steamers of the American build, and they are now running almost to the very base of the Ural mountains. No long time will elapse before these almost countless streams will present the aspect of our American rivers, and business and towns will spring up along their banks, as they have already done, by the use of similar means, in the Mississippi valley. The flat boat and the horse barges will disappear from Russian waters, as the broad-horns have from the Ohio and the Mississippi, and steam, both on the water and on the land, will convey the traffic of the empire.

As already stated, the country of the Czar can boast of no such connected chain of great lakes as are found in America. Still it is a land of lakes, and gulfs, and inland seas, which afford great facility for its commerce. On the west and northwest, almost countless gulfs and bays shoot inland from the Atlantic, giving long lines of interior seacoast, and communicating with her navigable rivers. Lake Baikal, in Southern Siberia, is about the size of Lake Erie, and its valuable fisheries form the basis of an important commerce. The Caspian Sea is but an immense salt-lake, about eight hundred miles long; and the Black Sea, and the Baltic, may also be regarded as merely interior seas, of which Russia will ultimately retain the chief control, in spite of the combined efforts of western Europe. The lakes Ladoga and Onega are by no means inconsiderable bodies of water, the first having an area of more than six thousand square miles, and the latter being one hundred and thirty miles long and fifty miles in breadth. Smaller lakes, many of them large enough to become channels of trade, are scattered through both European and Asiatic

Russia. The largest of these are united either naturally or by canals, with the navigable rivers, and thus, when the progress of the country has covered these countless channels with steamboats, and when that system of railways, already begun on an enlightened scale, shall be completed, Russia will posssess more abundant means for intercourse and exchange, for the diffusion of one national life, and the preservation of national unity than any other country on earth enjoys unless it be our own. With a Pacific railway crossing Siberia, in addition to her natural advantages, and her system of roads in Europe already projected and partly finished she may extend her limits almost indefinitely, and yet not peril the unity of her government on account of her magnitude. Her position will be widely different from that of England, with possessions in the four quarters of the globe, that admit of no union; she will be one compact and living national body, growing and sustained by the power of one central life.

CHAPTER XX.

RUSSIA HAS FEW VULNERABLE POINTS.

Before entering upon this subject, it is well to remind the American reader of the utter worthlessness of many of the most popular accounts which have been given of the resources of Russia, and the character of her military defenses. The statements which travelers have made concerning the Empire of the Czars are only to be matched in absurdity or wanton misrepresentation by those which have emanated from similar quarters concerning the United States. Either a vitiated public sentiment, or a settled design to injure, has given rise to a systematic course of ridicule and misrepresentations, forming a distorted literary medium through which both countries have been seen only in caricature. Through this, western Europe has sneered at America and the Yankees, and through this also Americans have been greatly deluded in regard to Russia. Oliphant, whose opininions are quoted as reliable authority in this country, and whose statements were transfered to an elaborate American work, and sent forth to mold public opinion concerning Russia, with the remark that they are valuable because the result of recent observation, writes thus concerning Sebastopol, from personal survey, no longer

ago than 1853, but a few months before the landing of the Allied army:

"Nothing can be more formidable than the appearance of Sebastopol from the seaward. Upon a future occasion we visited it in a steamer, and found that at one point we were commanded by twelve hundred pieces of artillery; fortunately for a hostile fleet, we afterwards heard, that they could not be discharged without bringing down the rotten batteries upon which they were placed, and which are so badly constructed that they look as if they had been done by contract. Four of these forts consist of three tiers of batteries. We were of course unable to do more than take a very general survey of these celebrated fortifications, and therefore can not vouch for the truth of the assertion, that the rooms in which the guns are worked are so narrow and ill-ventilated, that the artillerymen would be inevitably stifled in the attempt to discharge their guns and their duty; but of one fact there was no doubt, that however well fortified may be the approaches to Sebastopol by sea, there is nothing whatever to prevent any number of troops landing a few miles to the south of the town, in one of the six convenient bays with which the coast, as far as Cape Kherson, is indented, and marching down the main street, (provided they were strong enough to defeat any military force that might be opposed to them in the open field,) sack the town and burn the fleet."

Such absurdities as these are gravely sent forth from the English press, as the foundation of reliable opinions concerning Russia. Oliphant's work has gone through several London editions; it was republished in America, and its opinions were extracted and scattered abroad in American books. The siege of this fortification is a sufficient commentary upon the value of the book, and when the strength of a place that for months successfully resisted the most formidable attack which has been made in modern times is thus flippantly misrepresented, and when we remember that