Excerpt from Lithuania and White Ruthenia Geographically, the continent of Europe is a large peninsula with three smaller peninsulas in the South. The chief body of the European peninsula has been in history the field of the growth of the German Empire, which is separated from the plateau of Great Russia by a very characteristic isthmus, containing the basins of seven great rivers the Oder, the Vistula, the Niemen, the Duna, the Dniester, the Bob and the Dnieper. This isthmus between Western and Eastern Europe is one geographical whole, very different in every respect from the country farther east. There is a smaller difference in climate between Breslau and Kieff, than between Kieff and Moscow, and also in every other respect the country west of the Dnieper has belonged for centuries to Western Europe, while beyond the Dnieper began already Asia with its despotic political formations, where the subject populations have no active participation ln the decisions of their rulers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.