Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [6]
Between these two river systems therefore, the Dniepr and the Don, and from the steppe above the Black Sea shore all the way up into the northern forests, lies the huge, ancient Russian heartland.
Russia the borderland.
For still the great plain continues, ever eastwards. At its southern border, east of the Black Sea, the huge range of Caucasus Mountains stretches for another six hundred miles. Famous for their wines and fighting men – Georgians, Armenians, and many others – their shining peaks reach several thousand feet higher than any in the Alps or Rocky Mountains.
They end at a remarkable phenomenon, the second of the two seas inside the mountain crescent of the south. It is huge, running north to south – roughly the same shape as the Florida peninsula but twice as long – and the great crescent of mountain ranges makes a downward loop to accommodate it. This is the Caspian Sea.
Technically, it is the world’s largest lake for it has no outlet. It is surrounded by steppe, mountain and desert, and loses its water by evaporation into the desert air. And it is fed, on its northern shore, by Russia’s best-known river.
Mother Volga.
The Volga starts her great journey far away in the central forests of the Russian heartland. From there she makes a huge loop, up through the distant forests of the north, before turning southwards; then, having embraced the northern heartland, she turns away and flows across the Eurasian plain eastwards and then southwards until at last she makes her way slowly down, out of the forest, across the windblown steppe to the distant desert shores of the Caspian Sea.
And still, beyond the Volga, the mighty plain sweeps on, becoming less and less hospitable. In the south there are terrible deserts. In the north, dark taiga and permafrost spread down and finally conquer all the plain. To this day, these vast regions are scarcely inhabited. Past the Volga, across the Urals, across the frozen wastes of Siberia to the distant Pacific Ocean: still there are three and a half thousand miles to go.
And where was the village, with its river and forest?
It is easy for us to say. It lay at the edge of the south Russian steppe: a few dozen miles east of the great River Dniepr, and roughly three hundred miles above that huge stream’s estuary in the north-west corner of the warm Black Sea.
Yet, strange though it may seem, had a traveller from some other land asked, at that date, how to reach the place, there was scarcely a person living who could have told him.
For the state of Russia did not yet exist. The ancient civilizations of the east – China, India, Persia – all lay far away, below the huge crescent of mountains that was the southern border of the plain. To them, the empty plain was wasteland. In the west, the mighty empire of Rome spread all around the Mediterranean’s shores and even as far north as Britain. But Rome had never penetrated beyond the outer fringes of the forests of the great Eurasian plain.
For what did Rome know of the forest? Only that east of the River Rhine were warlike German tribes, and that north, by the Baltic, lay primitive peoples – Baits, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians – they had vaguely heard of. But that was all. Of the Slav lands beyond the Germans they knew little; of the Finno-Ugrians in the forests that stretched beyond the Volga, nothing at all. Of the Turkish and Mongol tribes that lay in the huge Siberian hinterland, there was, as yet, not a sound over the forest, scarcely a whisper across the steppe.
And what did Rome know of the steppe? True, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, Rome had expanded as far as Armenia, below the Caucasus Mountains; and she had for centuries known the little ports on the Black Sea’s northern shore, where mariners came to buy furs or slaves from the interior, or to meet the caravans that had journeyed across the desert