SIBERIAN SCENERY. 43 



shudder as you hear the bones crack and grind between 

 the powerful teeth, and gladly shrink away from the 

 repulsive vicinity. 



The home of the great Siberian stag is among the most 

 magnificent scenery in the world. Search for him 

 amidst the bold precipices of the Altaian chain, where 

 enormous mountains of primeval formation are split and 

 cleft into the wildest ravines, and where cascades fall in 

 snowy foam down the terrible gorges bounded by sheer 

 cliffs that almost meet far overhead, and shut out the light 

 of heaven. Here is a little dell, embosomed in the moun- 

 tains, as full of flowers as an English garden, — irises and 

 columbines, primroses and peonies, of many rich hues 

 and of kinds unfamiliar to us, and of a luxuriant growth 

 which reaches up to a man's shoulders ; — then a tiny 

 basin of clear water, intensely black from its unruffled 

 stillness and its fathomless depth. Now the traveller 

 crosses a sharp ridge, crowned with colossal needles of 

 naked granite, where the furious gale, shrieking and howl- 

 ing through the crevices, threatens to hurl horse and 

 man a thousand fathoms down ; — then he passes into a 

 forest where not a breath waves the tops of the ancient 

 cedars. 



It is a region where animal life is not very abundant, 

 but where the framework of the solid earth itself stands 

 revealed in unrivalled gorgeousness. The cliffs are here 

 of crimson or purple porphyry, as brilliant as the dyed 

 products of the loom, there of dark-red granite seamed 

 with thick veins of pure rose-coloui^ed quartz, transparent 



