First Sentence

"A BROAD, open plain, with scarcely a hill, but everywhere intersected by navigable rivers, with its three zones of arid, saline steppe, of rich and fertile arable land, of forest and frozen moor, fitted in every respect to be the home of a united and homogeneous people, we find Russia a thousand years ago sparsely inhabited by disunited Slavonic tribes, frequently at war with each other, and unable to cope with their neighbours of Finnish and Turkish race."