th, is the story this book will try to
tell.

[1] In the Tatar language the word Ural signifies "girdle."

CHAPTER II

SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS

In speaking of this eastern half of Europe as _Russia_, we have been
borrowing from the future. At the time we have been considering there
was no Russia. The world into which Christ came contained no Russia.
The Roman Empire rose and fell, and still there was no Russia. Spain,
Italy, France, and England were taking on a new form of life through
the infusion of Teuton strength, and modern Europe was coming into
being, and still the very name of Russia did not exist. The great
expanse of plains, with its medley of Oriental barbarism, was to Europe
the obscure region through which had come the Hunnish invasion from
Asia.

This catastrophe was the only experience that this land had in common
with the rest of Europe. The Goths had established an empire where the
ancient Graeco-Scythians had once been. The overthrowing of this
Gothic Empire was the beginning of Attila's European conquests; and the
passage of the Hunnish horde, precisely as in the rest of Europe,
produced a complete overturning. A torrent of Oriental races, Finns,
Bulgarians, Magyars, and others, rushed in upon the track of the Huns,
and filled up the spaces deserted by the Goths. Here as elsewhere the
Hun completed his appointed task of a rearrangement of races; thus
fundamentally changing the whole course of future events. Perhaps
there would be no Magyar race in Hungary, and certainly a different
history to write of Russia, had there been no Hunnish invasion in 375
A. D.

The old Roman Empire, which in its decay had divided into an Eastern
and a Western Empire (in the fourth century), had by the fifth century
succumbed to the new forces which assailed it, leaving only a
glittering remnant at Byzantium.

The Eastern or Byzantine Empire, rich in pride and pretension, but poor
in power, was destined to stand for one thousand years more, the
shining conservator of the Christian religion (although in a form quite
different from the Church of Rome) and of Greek culture. It is
impossible to imagine what our civilization would be to-day if this
splendid fragment of the Roman Empire had not stood in shining
petrifaction during the ages of darkness, guarding the treasures of a
dead past.

While these tremendous changes were occurring in the West, unconscious
as toiling insects th