thin layer of highly febrile material, overtopping a very thick layer of an inert mass. But however variant may be the progress in the Empire's wide stretch, I see nothing to suggest destruction of the essential unity of that Empire, or any cataclysmic change in its form.
The local irritations in Finland, Poland, and the Caucasus, however justifiable they may be, cannot go to the length of establishing independent governments in an age which demands consolidation. Geographic and ethnical resemblances will tend to hold together all the vast tract from Moscow to Vladivostok—save in the Turkestan region—which we are now traversing. Here, too, there is basis for unity of empire—since all these regions must be administered by the superior race, whose members will never be considerable in these territories. They are a common heritage to the Russian people. When an inheritance is not easily divisible it becomes a force tending to conserve unity or union among its owners. While thus of common interest, yet they give political might chiefly to the new Russia in Siberia. The best administrators for Turkestan—certainly the majority of the forceful ones whom I met, are men who knew not St. Petersburg. The case is analogous to that which would have arisen had not Mexico redeemed herself within the last twenty years. Under pressure from our Western States the Southern territory would have been annexed, and, not being ripe for amalgamation to our forms, would have been ruled by men from Iowa, Colorado, California.
The man from Denver and the man from Omsk
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