eap, fall or rapids, or break of any
kind--a fine, broad, almost unrippled sheet of water, with an even,
steady, and grandly monotonous flow, like that of the stanzas of
Tasso.

Its width, so far as eye can judge, does not greatly exceed that
of the Thames at Gravesend, but it is always the same from the
bridge at Twer above Moscow to the only other bridge, one mile
in length, between Syzran and Samara; everywhere the same "full
bumper" for a run of 2,000 English miles.

Though the Volga is numbered among the European rivers, and has
its sources on the Valdai hills between the European cities, St.
Petersburg and Moscow, it is a frontier stream, and seemed intended
to form the natural line of demarcation between two parts of the
world--between two worlds.

Up to the middle of the Sixteenth Century, Kasan was the advanced
guard of the Tartar hordes. These wandering tribes, which, profiting
by dissensions among the Russian princes, overcame and overran
all Russia, weakened in their turn by division, fell back from
the main part of the invaded territory, but still held for some
time their own on the Volga, from Kasan to Astrakhan, till they
were utterly routed and brought under Russian sway by Ivan the
Terrible.

Even then, however, though their strength was broken, their spirit
was untamed. The men of high warrior caste who survived their defeat
sought a refuge among their kindred tribes further east, at Samarkand,
Bokhara, and Khiva, where the Russians have now overtaken them; but
a large part of the mere multitude laid aside without giving up
their arms, passively accepted without formally acknowledging the
Tsar's sway, and abided in their tents,--swallowed at once, but
very leisurely digested, by the all-absorbing Russian civilization.

Large bodies of the nation, however, migrated _en masse_ from time
to time, the lands they left vacant being rapidly filled up by
bands of Cossacks, and by foreign (chiefly German), colonists.

For more than three centuries, though already mistress of Siberia
and victorious in remote Asia, Russia proper might be considered as
ending at the Volga; so that most of the older and most important
towns south of Kasan and north of Astrakhan, such as Simbirsk,
Syzran, Volsk, Saratof, Kamyshin, and Tsaritzin, lie on the right,
or Russo-European bank of the stream.

Tsaritzin is at the head of the Delta of the Volga, and it lies 580
versts above Astrakhan, which is said to be at the rive