ation. "In one everything seemed thoroughly
Finnish; the inhabitants had a reddish-olive skin, very high cheek
bones, obliquely set eyes, and a peculiar costume; none of the women and
very few of the men could understand Russian and any Russian who visited
the place was regarded as a foreigner. In the second, there were already
some Russian inhabitants; the others had lost something of their purely
Finnish type, many of the men had discarded the old costume and spoke
Russian fluently, and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a
third, the Finnish type was still further weakened; all the men spoke
Russian, and nearly all the women understood it; the old male costume
had entirely disappeared and the old female was rapidly following it;
and intermarriage with the Russian population was no longer rare. In a
fourth, intermarriage had almost completely done its work, and the old
Finnish element could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of
physiognomy and accent." This amalgamation extends to their
religions--prayers wholly pagan devoutly uttered under the shadow of a
strange cross, next the Finnish god Yumak sharing honors equally with
the Virgin, finally a Christianity pure in doctrine and outward forms
except for the survival of old pagan ceremonies in connection with the
dead.[374]

At the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, this boundary zone of
Russians and Finns meets the borderland of the Asiatic Mongols; and here
is found an intermingling of races, languages, religions, and customs
scarcely to be equalled elsewhere. Finns are infused with Tartar as well
as Russian blood, and Russians show Tartar as well as Finnish traits.
The Bashkirs, who constitute an ethnic peninsula running from the solid
Mongolian mass of Asia, show every type of the mongrel.[375] [See map
page 225.]

[Sidenote: Boundary zones of assimilation in Asia.]

If we turn to Asia and examine the western race boundary of the
expanding Chinese, we find that a wide belt of mingled ethnic elements,
hybrid languages, and antagonistic civilizations marks the transition
from Chinese to Mongolian and Tibetan areas. The eastern and southern
frontiers of Mongolia, formerly marked by the Great Wall, are now
difficult to define, owing to the steady encroachment of the
agricultural Chinese on the fertile edges of the plateau, where they
have converted the best-watered pastures of the Mongols into millet
fields and vegetable gardens, leaving for