counted upon is to turn the Tartars into Christians and Muscovites, in order that they may become much more easily engulfed into the already gigantic body of Muscovitism.

Of a similar nature will be our observations in viewing the condition of the Bashkirs, a likewise numerous fraction of the Turko-Tartar race, living in the Ural Mountains, who have inhabited this country from immemorial times, and who, in spite of having come nearly two centuries ago under Russian rule, are from a moral and material point of view still worse off than their brethren on the Volga. Povertystricken, neglected and derided by the fanatical orthodox Russian, their number has decreased nearly onehalf from what it formerly has been. We might go on with observations of a like character, as far as Tobolsk in the north-east, and as far as the Altai Mountains in the south. We shall meet everywhere with the fact, that at the appearance of the Russian coloniser the natives quickly disappear, and that the Government, instead of taking care of the cruelly oppressed subject, rather encourages the destructive work of the Russian Cossack, popa, and merchant.

In corroboration of our former statements, we shall let a Russian traveller speak for himself, by quoting the following passage from a paper published

by M. Yadrintzeff, in the Russische Revue:—“ The territory of the nomads is every day growing smaller, the Altais are being crowded out by Russiandom from their mountains, valleys, and forests, and the plain nomads and dwellers in the forest are being exploited in the most unscrupulous manner by the Russians, who employ for that purpose every species of cunning, cheating and violence. The Altai obtains for his native products, such as cedar-nuts, squirrel, and sable skins, cattle, etc., prices fixed for him by the Russian merchant himself, whilst he must pay for the products of Russian factories enormous prices, as for instance, for Arshin ladies' cloth, costing 60-70 kopeks, three roubles, and for chintzes, costing eighteen kopeks, forty kopeks. He is in addition, shamelessly taken advantage of by means of usury, and utterly ruined in health by the use of the deadly poison of vodki, so that the time is not very distant when the Turkish inhabitants of Siberia, totally impoverished and decimated by disease, will cease to have existed except in name."

In view of this strong but truthful indictment, the charge of the famous General Soboleff: that England lays a heavy hand upon her peoples; that she reduces them to a state of slavery, only that English trade may profit and Englishmen grow rich, sounds rather curious, and the reader will find that I

have been more than generous in calling the Russian efforts at civilisation in Asia a blessing to humanity.

Well; I am aware that the dear friends of Russia will always find one reason or another to exculpate the Muscovite civiliser. In this case, they will say that the failure cannot be ascribed to the want of ability of the ruler, but rather to the stubborn resistance Mohammedan society is offering almost everywhere to the civilising attempts of European conquerors; and they will quote amongst other things the Mohammedan of Algeria, and particularly the Moslem subjects of the Queen-Empress of India. As to the latter part of the comparison, we shall speak of it hereafter; but to prove the utter inefficiency of the civilising efforts of Russia, we must remark that she was as unsuccessful with those foreign national elements also under her rule, which have become Christians long ago, and who, belonging to the Greek orthodox faith, were entirely accessible to the civilising influence of the Russian Church and State. Let us take, as an example, the Tchuvashians, who live on the right bank of the Volga, and also on the left in a south-easterly direction as far as Orenburg, and have been since 1524 subjects of the Czar. This Turkish people, numbering nearly 600,000 souls, had embraced Christianity in 1743; they are continually and exclusively in the iron hands of the Russian

administration, and have, in spite of being preeminently peaceful labourers of the soil, profited nothing by the advent of their new masters. The Tchuvashian is as ignorant and superstitious as before; he is only nominally a Christian, and secretly worships all the gods of his ancient pagan religion; a fact which may be useful to the ethnographer, but which is a standing shame to the success of the Russian civilisation which the friends of this northern power have lately trumpeted so much about in the world.

The state of the Ugrian population, such as the Tcheremissians, Votyaks, Ziryans, and Voguls, may be called a still more wretched one. Their daily life, their mode of thinking, and their social existence does not show the slightest influence of western civilisation; they have undergone little or no change since they came under the fatherly care of the Czar, whose Government, content to produce peaceful and willing taxpayers, thinks least of ameliorating the condition of the life of the people entrusted to its care. The result of this wanton neglect is quite naturally the gradual decrease of the conquered foreign elements, who are swallowed up by the bulk of Muscovitism, as we see in comparing statistical data of only half a century ago with those now extant. The Yakuts in the distant north, on the banks of the Lena, have dwindled down to nearly one-half of their

former number. The Voguls are almost on the point of dying out altogether. The Krim-Tartars, a famous conquering race, nearly half a million of souls up to the beginning of the last century, have sunk to the number of 80,000. The same appalling decrease in numbers may be noticed in the Nogai-Tartars; the renowned and independent mountaineers in the western Caucasus have almost entirely disappeared; and it is no exaggeration when we state that the ethnographer, bent upon the description of the foreign races subjected to Russia, must intone a dirge, and look about for the spot where the people he makes the object of his investigations have formerly existed.

And how can it be otherwise, and how can we expect from the Russian agency of civilisation any better results? In accordance with the saying, that the river cannot rise higher than the source, it would be preposterous to expect from the Russian Government any degree of culture higher than she was able to confer on her own subjects. A society where the main principles of administration are wanting; where bribery, embezzlement, and corruption are the order of the day; and where every official, either civil or military, is looking after his own personal interest, and has not the faintest idea of duty, honesty, and patriotism; there it is almost an impossible thing to