home growth, the cultivation of an individual and independent national life. In the external features and relative geographical position, then, of these two great nations, we perceive enough of general resemblance to suggest the inquiry whether they are not to be in some manner more closely associated than they have hitherto been-whether, in the new aspect of the world's affairs, now opening around us, they are not to act in concert, and possibly in united self-defense, against the Powers of western Europe. Especially may we suppose that this might occur if England and France should assume, as they now seem disposed to do, the office of regulators of the concerns of nations in both hemispheres, which, being interpreted, means simply that they propose to combine to repress the progress of any Power which, even in its legitimate growth, may overshadow their own. Russia and America have been prepared, as it were, in the wilderness, away from the great theater of European affairs. A little time since they were scarcely thought of, much less consulted, in the movements of nations; they have risen together to the position of great Powers on earth, and henceforth they can scarcely remain indifferent to each other's condition and policy. Unaccountable as it may appear, considering the different character of their political institutions, it is doubtless true that Russia regards America with more friendly feelings than she does any nation of Europe, and indications are not wanting that republican America will ere long strongly reciprocate this friendship of an absolute monarchy. It is believed to be quite impossible to estimate correctly, from any descriptions which have been given, the actual extent of internal navigation supplied by the rivers and lakes of Russia. The country has, as yet, to a great extent, been but imperfectly explored, unless by the government itself. Foreigners are acquainted only with the larger streams of the empire, and thousands of miles of river navigation may probably exist, altogether unknown to any who have visited Russia. The main streams which flow into the Baltic, those which empty into the Black Sea, and the Caspian,

and the great rivers of Siberia, have been described in general terms, and we are informed that they are navigable to certain points. These descriptions have been given mostly by those who know little of river navigation as practised in America. Those who are accustomed to see American. steamboats on our western rivers, carrying on a profitable traffic, with a depth of water from fifteen inches to eighteen inches only, will readily understand, from a map, that the Russian territory will yet be traversed, in all directions, by steamboats of light draught, such as now enliven the rivers of the west, and that such capacities for domestic traffic, and for reaching the seaboard, are ample for the development of the country's resources. A single statement, furnished by Ehrman throws, much light upon this interesting subject.

This author, in describing the mines of the Ural mountains, and the amount of iron annually produced, states the line of river navigation from the mining region to St. Petersburg, to be 3,350 miles. He also mentions that from the upper Volga, from 4000 to 6000 barges descend annually to St. Petersburg, by a canal connecting with the Neva; and when we consider that iron from the Ural, destined to European Russia, requires about 1000 boats annually, carrying each nearly one hundred tons at the commencement of the voyage, the cargo being increased at a certain point below, we may form an idea of the amount of the present internal commerce of Russia. Nor must we forget that this trade is yet almost entirely carried on in such rude boats as a few years since floated on the Mississippi and Ohio, and it is not therefore too much to anticipate that in the future progress of Russia, and in a period not remote, such a change may be wrought by the introduction of steam vessels upon her rivers, as we have already seen from this cause in the Mississippi valley. She has begun, and completed to Moscow, one of her great trunk lines of railway intended to concentrate upon her capital, and it is in progress and nearly finished to Odessa. Let but this be carried from Moscow, eastward to the valley of the Amoor, an

enterprise only equal to our own Pacific Railway, and then a trunk line will connect Moscow with the East Indian seas, and from Moscow one branch will pass westward to St. Petersburg, and the other southward toward Constantinople, striking the Black Sea at Odessa. These lines would cross the whole system of the navigable rivers of the empire, and would be to Russian commerce, both foreign and domestic, what the Pacific road and its branches will be to the United States, passing the Ural and its boundless mineral wealth midway, as the American road will the Rocky mountains. No one doubts that the American railway will be completed at no distant period, and who that considers the past progress and present power of Russia shall say that she will not also construct a Pacific railway, aided by American skill and experience.

This, for Russia, would only be to construct the modern iron road, with steam carriages, along the old highway of her Eastern commerce, and certainly it would be an instructive sight to the boastful powers of western Europe if the two nations who have been the chief object of their ridicule, one as barbarian, and the other as composed of backwoodsmen, should ere long present them with one continuous line of railway and ocean steam navigation, reaching round the globe and turning the commerce of the East through the heart of America and Russia. Such a result is by no means impossible.

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