One cannot travel for four months through the two largest empires in the world, without reflecting on the analogies and contrasts which they mutually present, and trying to figure out the causes which have been working such different results in each, since they first became acquainted with one another. Analogies in the manners, customs, and modes of thought of the two races are constantly turning up; and their resemblance to the Chinese has become a proverb among the Russians themselves. Both empires were subjugated in the thirteenth century by the Mongol-Tartar hordes under the descendants of Genghis; and both succeeded in expelling the invaders from their respective territories. From that time the histories of Russia and China have been closely interwoven; their frontiers have been gradually approaching each other, as Russia extended her conquests eastward, and China westward; and for the last two hundred years the advancing wave of Russian aggression has impinged on the whole northern line of the outlying deserts and wildernesses which own the sway of China. The triumphal advance of the Russians over the aboriginal tribes of Siberia was checked when it came in contact with the superior civilisation and higher military organisation of the Chinese; and, after a five years' war, China was in a position to impose conditions on Russia, which was done by the treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689. But the Russian schemes have never been abandoned. With the patience of the Asiatic, combined with the determination of the European, Russia has contested the frontiers of China with slow and fluctuating, but ultimately certain, success. Sometimes by force of arms, sometimes by diplomatic craft, by every device that cunning could suggest, Russia has made good her progress in Chinese territory from point to point, until the last grand _coup_ of General Ignatieff in 1860 crowned all her endeavours with success. By making dexterous use of the victory of the Anglo-French troops at Peking, he, with a stroke of the pen, transferred to Russia the whole coast of Manchu-Tartary, from the mouth of the Amur river to the frontier of Corea. When China first encountered Russia in the debates about the frontier, every advantage was on the side of the former. China was in the position of a powerful, wealthy, populous, and civilised nation, dealing with barbarians. If men were wanted, the warlike Manchus were ready at call. If money was wanted, the resources of China, with her vast producing population, were immeasurably superior to those of Russia, and perhaps to any country in the world at that time. The Chinese were acting on the defensive, and near home. The government was vigorous and intelligent, and naturally confident of its own superiority. The Russian people were, on the other hand, ignorant, servile, and degraded. Their government was not much better; and their military resources could only be drawn from vast, thinly peopled, unproductive steppes.