Had there been no Mississippi coursing for three thousand miles through
the North American Continent, no Ohio and Missouri bisecting it from
east to west, no great inland seas indenting and watering it, no
fertile prairies stretching across its vast areas, how different would
have been the history of our own land.

Russia is the strange product of strange physical conditions. Nature
was not in impetuous mood when she created this greater half of Europe,
nor was she generous, except in the matter of space. She was slow,
sluggish, but inexorable. No volcanic energies threw up rocky ridges
and ramparts in Titanic rage, and then repentantly clothed them with
lovely verdure as in Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. No hungry sea rushed
in and tore her coast into fragments. It would seem to have been just
a cold-blooded experiment in subjecting a vast region to the most
rigorous and least generous conditions possible, leaving it unshielded
alike from Polar winds in winter or scorching heat in summer, divesting
it of beauty and of charm, and then casting this arid, frigid, torpid
land to a branch of the human family as unique as its own habitation;
separating it by natural and almost impassable barriers from civilizing
influences, and in strange isolation leaving it to work out its own
problem of development.

We have only to look on the map at the ragged coast-lines of Greece,
Italy, and the British Isles to realize how powerful a factor the sea
has been in great civilizations. Russia, like a thirsty giant, has for
centuries been struggling to get to the tides which so generously wash
the rest of Europe. During the earlier periods of her history she had
not a foot of seaboard; and even now she possesses only a meager
portion of coast-line for such an extent of territory; one-half of this
being, except for three months in the year, sealed up with ice.