The Event Of His Reign, However, Which Most Completely Changed The Relative Situation Of Russia, And Established Her As A Commercial Nation, Was The Conquest From Sweden Of Livonia, Ingria, And Carelia.

Scarcely were these provinces secured to him, when he built, first Cronstadt, and then St. Petersburgh.

The erection of this city, and the canals he constructed in the interior for the purpose of facilitating the transportation of merchandize from the more southerly and fertile districts of his empire to the new capital, soon drew to it the greater portion of Russian commerce. Archangel, to which there had previously resorted annually upwards of one hundred ships from England, Holland, Hamburgh, &c. declined; and early in the eighteenth century Petersburgh, then scarcely ten years old, beheld itself a commercial city of great importance.

Having now brought the historical sketch of the progress of discovery and of commercial enterprise down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, it will be necessary, as well as proper, to contract the scale on which the remainder of this volume is to be constructed. For, during nearly the whole of the period which intervenes between the commencement of the eighteenth century and the present time, the materials are either so abundant or so minute, that to insert them all without discrimination and selection, would be to give bulk, without corresponding interest and value, to the work.

So far as discovery is concerned, it is evident, from the sketch of it already given, that nearly the entire outline of the globe had been traced before the period at which we are arrived: what remained was to fill up this outline. In Asia, to gain a more complete knowledge of Hither and Farther India, of China, of the countries to the north of Hindostan, of the north and north-east of Asia, and of some of the Asiatic islands. In Africa, little besides the shores were known; but the nature of the interior, with its burning sands and climate, uninhabitable, or inhabited by inhospitable and barbarous tribes, held out little expectation that another century would add much to our knowledge of that quarter of the world; and though the perseverance and enterprise of the eighteenth century, and what has passed of the nineteenth, have done more than might reasonably have been anticipated, yet, comparatively speaking, how little do we yet know of Africa! America held out the most promising as well as extensive views to future discovery; the form and direction of her north-west coast was to be traced. In South America, the Spaniards had already gained a considerable knowledge of the countries lying between the Atlantic and the Pacific, but in North America, the British colonists had penetrated to a very short distance from the shores on which they were first settled; and from their most western habitations to the Pacific, the country was almost entirely unknown.

The immense extent of the Pacific Ocean, which presented to navigators at the beginning of the eighteenth century but few islands, seemed to promise a more abundant harvest to repeated and more minute examination, and this promise has been fulfilled.

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