But not only with the southeast has Nature connected the Ukraine. Important borderlands of the Ukrainian territory—Central Galicia, the region of Kholm, Podlakhia, Western Volhynia—with their river system, belong to the Baltic slope. At the same time, the transition from the Pontian river system to the Baltic system is very easy, the divides flat and low. The easy transition from the Dniester to the San and Buh, from the Pripet to the Vistula and the Niemen, was of great importance in the past, when western influences could easily penetrate these Ukrainian borderlands, and is of great importance in the present. If, in the near future, the now antiquated canals are improved and new ones built, the Ukraine will have as good connections with the west as it has with the east. Then the Ukraine may, from a hydrographic point of view, gain great importance as a transition country of important waterways. By no means accidental is the remarkable fact that the Ukraine has no hydrographic connection with the northeast, the real Muscovite country. Of the country drained by the Don, only the region of the Donetz (which also flows southeast) and the mouth of the main stream belong to the territory of the Ukraine, and that only since a relatively short time. Outside of the Don region the Ukraine has no hydrographic connections with the Muscovite country, which has always had different directions, different channels of traffic, and different centers of waterways. Modern geography does not consider rivers good natural boundaries, and does not believe in their powers of separation. In the Ukraine, rivers have played almost no part as boundaries. Even the Pripet, surrounded as it is with inaccessible swamps, does not make a good natural boundary between the Ukraine and White Russia. The ethnographic influences on both sides, and even the political [232]boundaries are hardly considered. Nor could the rivers be important lasting obstacles; instead of separating they are more likely to connect individuals, and even whole nations. Only as passing, momentary obstacles, they were of importance to the Ukraine in the innumerable wars which were waged on Ukrainian soil, and much Ukrainian blood was carried by them to the sea. We now come to the relations between climate and people of the Ukraine. The situation of the Ukraine at an equal distance from the equator and the pole, on the southeast border of the European continent, which is so very favored climatically, has given the country one of the finest climates of the temperate zone. The hot summer permits of an extensive exploitation of the ground, the severe winter hardens the body and strengthens the soul, strong winds clear the atmosphere and bring motion into nature. The amount of rainfall is sufficient for the vegetable world, and is as far removed from the superabundance of damp Western Europe, as from the deadly dryness of the Asiatic steppes.