thousand miles of railroad, but what is vastly more important—the most magnificent waterways of Europe. The Russian complains that he has no outlet on the ocean, that all his seas are inland lakes: the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, and Lake Baikal. But he forgets that he possesses the Don, the Dnieper, and the most glorious river of the world—the Volga! Let the tourist take his passage at Tver, where the river becomes navigable, on one of the floating hotels of the Kavkaz and Mercur Steamship Company—Tver is only eight hours' railway journey from Petrograd—and let him drift in an eight days' journey on the "Mother Volga" down to the Caspian Sea, and he will then conceive the unrivalled possibilities of Russian inland commerce.
IV
It is true that a large proportion of the Russian Empire has not yet been assimilated. The alien races—the Catholic Poles, even the Germans and Finns, the Jews and Armenians—have not yet been won over by the conqueror. Still, the Russian element forms the enormous majority of the population. When the Government gives up its stupid methods of com-
