are generally still full of fishes. Bear-tracks abound along them, where they catch 

 fish for food, and look at unexpected human visitors Avith curious eyes, without 

 running away at the first sight. 



We now turn our eyes into the interior of the mountain-lands on both sides of 

 the Median Depression. Mountains are almost everywhere covered with dense 

 forests, and valleys and plains are grown with tall grasses. Not only this, but the 

 abundance of fallen trees is found after heavy storms and forest fires, the latter of 

 which are peculiarly frequent and long-lasting in Sakhalin. Trees have usually short 

 roots and easily fall down by the pressure of wind, and this makes great obstacles to 

 explorers pushing deep into the mountains. There are however frequently found 

 good tracks of bears, which may easily be mistaken for those of natives. The 

 growth of bamboos and several tendril plants, which embarass observers in Hok- 

 kaido, is less luxuriant in Sakhalin. What makes a great impression to travellers 

 even from Hokkaido, which in several respects closely resemble Sakhalin, is the 

 great extent of forests of straightly growing larches, and a generally less variegated 

 appearence of vegetation, when compared v.'ith that of Hokkaido. There are 

 many plant-forms, which we do not see in Hokkaido, among which the medicinal 

 plant of the family Conipositae, known by Russians as " Remashka " and every 

 where found in Russian settlements, may be counted. 



The clouds of mosquitoes and at least four other obnoxious insects cause much 

 suffering to poor explorers. The land is by no means actually free from poisonous 

 snakes. I met with four or five of them in a single day, when I was going up the 

 Akhmametieff riv^er on August iSth. 



June, July, and August are the driest months in Sakhalin. The great heat of 

 summer is felt only during a few hours, and in night and morning it becomes so cool 

 that mosquitoes retreat from their daily work of persecution. But on the bank of 

 the lower course of the Poronai and similar rivers, we find an unfortunate exception 

 to this rule. Snow falls first toward the end of September in the mountains, and 

 much later on the sea-coast and low regions. Snow disappears from the ground at 

 the end of April in warmer places. 



My own observations across the mountainous lands are limited to the region of 

 the boundary line of the 50th. Parallel, and only a few other places as along the 

 Japanese part of the Poronai river, from Korsakoff to Tunn.aicha and Ochopokka, 

 along some rivers on the western flank of the Crystalline Schist region of the Susuya 

 mountains, and on a part of the path leading from Vladimirof ka toward Mauka on 

 the west coast. But about the typical geological profiles of different regions we have 



