In ten other towns, with populations varying from 50,000 to 282,000, the aggregate rose from 780,000 to 1,382,000, or about 77 per cent.
That Russia should have taken so long to assimilate herself in this respect to Western Europe is to be explained by the geographical and political conditions.

Her population was not hemmed in by natural or artificial frontiers strong enough to restrain their expansive tendencies.

To the north, the east, and the southeast there was a boundless expanse of fertile, uncultivated land, offering a tempting field for emigration; and the peasantry have ever shown themselves ready to take advantage of their opportunities.

Instead of improving their primitive system of agriculture, which requires an enormous area and rapidly exhausts the soil, they have always found it easier and more profitable to emigrate and take possession of the virgin land beyond.
Thus the territory--sometimes with the aid of, and sometimes in spite of, the Government--has constantly expanded, and has already reached the Polar Ocean, the Pacific, and the northern offshoots of the Himalayas.
The little district around the sources of the Dnieper has grown into a mighty empire, comprising one-seventh of the land surface of the globe.
Prolific as the Russian race is, its power of reproduction could not keep pace with its territorial expansion, and consequently the country is still very thinly peopled.

According to the latest census (1897) in the whole empire there are under 130 millions of inhabitants, and the average density of population is only about fifteen to the English square mile.