Mr. H. Seebohm on the Ornithology of Siberia. 175 



jangling of the bells/' However rough the road was, I en- 

 joyed a good night's rest; and if an unusually heavy "lee 

 lurch/' or " weather roll/' jolted me against my companion, 

 we only muttered that there was " a heavy sea on/' and 

 dozed off again. Snow, wind, rain, sunshine, day, night, 

 hills, valleys, plains, rivers, good roads, bad roads, it was all 

 the same ; on we went, and nothing stopped us. The scenery 

 through which we passed was very various. The first thou- 

 sand miles was hilly and well wooded. One might imagine 

 one was sledging through an endless Sherwood Forest, with 

 a hundred miles of the Peak of Derbyshire placed in the 

 middle to represent the Urals. The ground was covered 

 with from two to three feet of snow. Sometimes we seemed 

 to be sledging down a " broad drive," sometimes crossing a 

 peak, and occasionally passing through a village. The forests 

 were principally spruce-fir, with a little larch and Scotch fir, 

 and plenty of birches. Sometimes we sledged for miles 

 through avenues of pines. The Ural range is a succession 

 of hills, which it took us some time to get through ; but 

 the loftiest peak can scarcely be dignified with the name of 

 mountain. Between Tyu-main' and Tomsk we had nearly a 

 thousand miles of a totally different class of scenery. The 

 steppes of South-western Siberia might be compared to 

 Salisbury plains. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was 

 visible but snow, sky, and telegraph-lines. Now and then we 

 came upon a few stunted birches ; and every fifteen or twenty 

 miles we passed through a village. About a hundred miles 

 before reaching Tomsk we again found ourselves amongst 

 hills and forests, which continued until the road permanently 

 established itself down the broad river. 



The Yen-e-say' is said to be the third largest river in the 

 world. In Yen-e-saisk' the inhabitants claim that the waters 

 of their river have flowed at least two thousand miles (through 

 Lake By-kal') to their town. In Yen-e-saisk' the river must 

 be more than a mile wide. From Yen-e-saisk' to the Koo- 

 ray'-i-ka is about eight hundred miles. In this distance it has 

 gradually increased to a little more than three miles wide. 

 From the Koo-ray'-i-ka to the limit of forest-growth, where 



