Excerpt from Universal Geography, Vol. 2: Or a Description of All the Parts of the World, on a New Plan, According to the Great Natural Divisions of the Globe; Accompanied With Analytical, Synoptical and Elementary Tables
When we mean to give a description of an extensive country in detail, it presents itself in two different points of view, which have two corresponding modes of subdivision. It may be divided into governments, provinces, and districts. It may also be divided according to the nations which inhabit it. The one of these methods is that of choreography; the other, that of ethnography. We usually begin with the first. In the present instance we shall begin with the last, as an order fitted to impart both greater clearness and greater interest to our descriptions.
The Russians, Cossacks, and other colonists from Europe, inhabit chiefly the towns and military stations of Siberia. Some of them are descended from the soldiers employed in the conquest of the country; other are criminals sent thither in banishment. To these two classes are to be added adventurers, deserters among the peasantry, and ruined merchant who have sought here the means of repairing their fortunes. These different classes of colonists, burying themselves in a vast desert, have joined to their original grossness that which is generated by a savage climate. But, if ignorance, indolence and drunkenness often encroach on their happiness, we find them praised by travellers for their generous hospitality, their frank gaiety, and the good order which prevails among them. Only a century ago the Siberians were considered as so savage a race, that Peter the Great conceived that he could not inflict a severer punishment on his mortal enemies the Swedes than to send them to Siberia. The consequence was, that these honourable exiles introduced into that country the customs and the manufactures of Europe. While employed in ameliorating their own situation, they civilized the people among whom they came. The Swedes founded, in 1713, the first school at Tobolsk; there they taught German, Latin, French, geography, geometry, and drawing. In 1801, Mr. Kotzebue found in that place people who studied the Russian, French, and German literature, and saw his own plays acted on a public theatre. These were symptoms of the extended progress of the Siberians in the cultivation of the mind. At the same time, the governors, and the civil and military officers have introduced into the Siberian towns the manners of Petersburg, with the Russian vanity and ostentation.
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