The old Aryan of the Lithuanians is in vogue principally along the Duna and Niemen rivers as well as around Vilna, where this people are settled in compact masses. In spite of the antiquity of their language, no texts prior to the sixteenth century are known. Emigration in the past decade to large Russian cities, and to America, has decreased their ranks appreciably. Their number is now estimated at 3,500,000.[89] In his native land, the Lithuanian is not on the best of terms with neighboring peoples. He looks upon the Russian as his political oppressor and upon the Pole as his hereditary foe. The Lett is regarded with somewhat less animosity as a rival. The Letts spread inland from the shores of the Gulf of Riga and number about 1,300,000. Owing to Polish influences, many Lithuanians are Catholics, but, in the main, both Letts and Lithuanians are stanch Lutherans.[90] Their land is the home of religious free thought within orthodox Russia. German influence prevails among them on this account, although it is doubtful whether it extends to the point of their preferring German to Russian rule. Evil memories of the attempts of the Teutonic Knights to conquer the immemorial seat of the Lettish and Lithuanian populations survive throughout their forests and marshes. Neither people has forgotten that its ancestors were refugees who sought the shelter of their boglands as a last recourse from Teutonic aggression. Prior to 1876, the Baltic provinces were ruled by a semi-autonomous administration headed by a governor-general whose rôle was more properly that of a viceroy. German was as much an official language as Russian and no restrictions prevented its use in courts. German schools and a German university were widely attended. Since that date, however, the Letto-Lithuanian populations have been deprived of the liberal régime they formerly enjoyed and an official “Russification” has been directed against them. Most of the Lutheran schools were closed by order of the government and the teaching of German in schools restricted or prohibited. But to this day the three Baltic provinces of Kurland, Livland and Estland are considered by German writers as a domain of German culture and Protestant faith controlled by Russian political and ecclesiastical power. In the province of Kurland the Germans boast 51,000 resident kinsmen. As a rule this section of the population is confined to the cities. Riga, Reval, Libau, Dorpat and Mitau contain notable percentages of Germans among their citizens. The first-named city counts 65,332 of these westerners in its population, or over 25 per cent of the total.[91]