rouble.

Russia's chief source of revenue is the liquor traffic. Her chief
exports are spirits, tallow, wool, tow, bristles, timber, hides and
skins, grain, raw and dressed flax, linseed and hemp. Her principal
imports are tea, cotton and other colonial produce, iron, machinery,
wool, wine, fruits, vegetables and oil.

Russia is the second largest European grower of wheat. Hemp, flax,
potatoes and tobacco are also raised in large quantities. Barley,
buckwheat, oats, millet and rye form the staple food of the inhabitants.

Mines of great value exist in the Ural, Obdorsk and Altai mountains,
which produce gold, copper, iron, silver, platinum, rock-salt,
marble and kaolin or china clay. Rich naphtha springs exist on
the Caspian and an immense bed of coal has been discovered between
the Donetz and Dnieper rivers.

The Grand Duchy of Finland, which Russia conquered from Sweden
and finally annexed in 1808, had a population in 1898 of about
2,595,000 (2,230,000 Finns; 350,000 Swedes; 12,000 Russians; 2,000
Germans; and 1,000 Laps). The chief religion is the Lutheran. The
capital is Helsingfors with a population of 111,000, including the
Russian garrison. The Tsar of Russia is the Grand Duke; Lieut.-Gen.
N. Bobrikov, the governor-general; and V. von Plehwe, Secretary of
State. The Diet, convoked triennially, consists of nobles, clergy,
burgesses and peasants, but the country is chiefly governed by the
Imperial Finnish Senate of twenty-two members. The army consists
of nine battalions of Finnish Rifles (5,600 men), and one regiment
of dragoons (900 men, with a reserve of 30,000). The chief export
is timber and the chief industry iron mines. In 1898, the marine
comprised 2,298 vessels of 324,344 tons.

Bokhara and Khiva in Central Asia are vassal states of Russia.
Bokhara, bounded on the north by Russian Turkestan, was once the
most famous state of Central Asia. Genghis Khan took it from the
Arabs in the Thirteenth Century, and it was taken by the Uzbegs,
fanatical Sunni Mahommedans of Turkish extraction, in 1505. After
the Russian capture of Tashkend in 1865, the Amir Muzeffared-din
proclaimed a holy war against the Russians, who invaded his province
and captured Samarkand in 1868. By a treaty of 1873, no foreigner may
be admitted into Bokhara without a Russian passport. The population
is estimated at 2,000,000. The Amir Syed Abdul Ahad succeeded in
1885. The Uzbegs are still the dominant race. The religion is
Mahommedan