the efforts of the authorities to retain the population
in the localities actually occupied, the wave of colonisation moved
steadily onwards.

The vast territory which lay open to the colonists consisted of two
contiguous regions, separated from each other by no mountains or
rivers, but widely differing from each other in many respects. The one,
comprising all the northern part of Eastern Europe and of Asia,
even unto Kamchatka, may be roughly described as a land of forests,
intersected by many rivers, and containing numerous lakes and marshes;
the other, stretching southwards to the Black Sea, and eastwards far
away into Central Asia, is for the most part what Russians call "the
Steppe," and Americans would call the prairies.

Each of these two regions presented peculiar inducements and peculiar
obstacles to colonisation. So far as the facility of raising grain was
concerned, the southern region was decidedly preferable. In the north
the soil had little natural fertility, and was covered with dense
forests, so that much time and labour had to be expended in making a
clearing before the seed could be sown.* In the south, on the contrary,
the squatter had no trees to fell, and no clearing to make. Nature had
cleared the land for him, and supplied him with a rich black soil of
marvellous fertility, which has not yet been exhausted by centuries
of cultivation. Why, then, did the peasant often prefer the northern
forests to the fertile Steppe where the land was already prepared for
him?

* The modus operandi has been already described; vide supra,
pp. 104 et seq.

For this apparent inconsistency there was a good and valid reason. The
muzhik had not, even in those good old times, any passionate love of
labour for its own sake, nor was he by any means insensible to the
facilities for agriculture afforded by the Steppe. But he could not
regard the subject exclusively from the agricultural point of view. He
had to take into consideration the fauna as well as the flora of the
two regions. At the head of the fauna in the northern forests stood
the peace-loving, laborious Finnish tribes, little disposed to molest
settlers who did not make themselves obnoxiously aggressive; on the
Steppe lived the predatory, nomadic hordes, ever ready to attack,
plunder, and carry off as slaves the peaceful agricultural population.
These facts, as well as the agricultural conditions, were known to
intending colonists, and influenced