The country occupies the southernmost of the great belts of land that stretch across Europe and Asia on the great plains of the east. That is the belt of the steppes, wide expanses of level rolling country, with the celebrated and enormously fertile black earth regions which have been cultivated more or less continuously for over three thousand years. To the north in the Great Russian area is found a broad belt of forest land that covers the greater part of the old Russian Empire but Ukraine itself is ideally fitted by soil and climate to be a prosperous agricultural area which will offer an abundant living to hardy and rugged people who are not afraid of physical labor. The greatest extension of the country is from east to west, for it is far narrower from north to south, but despite all this Ukraine is a large country with an area of some 200,000 square miles and under favorable conditions it could easily support its population of some forty million people, most of whom speak the Ukrainian language, live according to the Ukrainian mode of life and are conscious of their national character. Across it from north to south flow most of the great rivers that empty into the Black Sea. There are the Dnyester, the Dnyeper and the Don, three great highways between central and northern Europe and the Black Sea. Ukraine lies squarely across their path and hence it comes about that the country controls all the arteries that lead into the Black Sea and from there through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. It gives the land a tremendous economic position which its own people and their conquerors have never undervalued. That favorable position contains within itself the source of danger. Unfortunately at no time in their history have the Ukrainian people moved sufficiently to the north to occupy the head waters of these streams and to take control of the rivers that flow to the north into the Baltic. The people there have always looked with envy at Ukraine; they have always tried to descend these rivers, usually broad and sluggish, and to take possession of the fertile plains which they saw stretching in all directions. Ukraine is the natural highway between the east and west. For centuries before recorded history begins, the nomad tribes pushing westward from central Asia found these same plains the most accessible and convenient road to Europe. Long before there came a national consciousness in the area, long before any existing European country even dreamed of coming into being, warriors mounted on small fast horses poured across this region, carrying their culture into Europe and making their way eastward again with the spoils of the west. Likewise invaders from the west sought access to the territory for the purposes of carrying their raids into the east and of returning home with the riches of the Orient.