The gentle southerly flowing Dnieper, Don, and Volga,
radiating from the same central region, and connected by way of the
Kama with the headwaters of the Dwina, which empties into the White Sea
in the extreme north, became chief channels of trade and migration, and
contributed much more to the elaboration of national unity than any
political institutions. Boats could be conveyed over flat and easy
portages from one river-basin to another, and these portages with a
relatively small amount of labor were gradually changed into navigable
channels, so that even now the canals are more important than many of
the railways as arteries of commerce.
[Sidenote: The Cossacks]
As the emigrants threaded their way along the river courses and over
the broad plains they had to be constantly on the alert against attacks
of troublesome natives, and they accordingly organized themselves in
semi-military fashion. Those in the vanguard of territorial expansion
constituted a peculiar class known as Cossacks, who, like frontiersmen
of other times and places, for example, like those that gained for the
United States its vast western domain, lived a wild life in which
agricultural and pastoral pursuits were intermingled with hunting and
fighting.
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