XXII INTRODUCTION. 



dnctive north-eastern parts of the immense district with grain, but sends its cereals 

 also up the Volga. 



Taking into consideration the total amount of its mining and manufacturing 

 industry the eastern district must be reckoned among the most impoi-tant in Eussia. 

 The getting of gold, iron, copper and coal is concentrated in the eastern parts of 

 the district, adjacent to the Urals. Many woi'ks are situated upon the Kama and its 

 affluents, even to Kazan. Specially deserving of attention are the metal works, and 

 those engaged in casting cannon and in the manufacture of arms, as well as those 

 occupied in transforming pyrites and salt into various chemicals. 



The southern part of the region, passing into steppe, is little wooded, in the 

 Orenburg government onh' 15 per cent, in Samara only 8 per cent is covered with 

 forest, and consequently suffers from a lack of fuel. The northern and eastern parts 

 on the other hand are still rich in forest. Viatka has 61 per cent, Kazan 36, Perm 

 75. and Ufa 42 per cent of wooded surface. Add to this the supplies of coal in the Ural 

 and the convenience of the water communication for obtaining naphtha waste from Baku 

 and no difficulties are to be expected in obtaining fuel for the extensive development 

 in this region of every kind of manufacturing industry. A beginning has been already 

 made and the enterprising spirit of the Eussian inhabitants of this district, forming 

 as it does the bond between the Moscow or Central district and Siberia, is calculated 

 to still farther help it forward. This district should be regarded as the window giving- 

 industrial light to the Asiatic coast. 



VI. The Siberian Region. 



Siberia, or the northern part of Asia, stretches from the west to the east, 

 from the Urals to the Pacific ocean, and from the Arctic on the north tu the frontiers 

 of Korea, China and the Kirghiz steppes, of the following seventh district, on the 

 south. It comprises the governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenisseisk, (chief town Kras- 

 noyarsk) and Irkutsk, the Territories of Amour, the Seacoast government, Yakutsk, 

 Transbaikal and the island of Sakhalin. Its total area, about 11,000 thousand square 

 versts, or 227,000 geographical miles, almost thrice exceeds European Eussia without 

 the Caucasian governments, and is much more extensive than tho United States of 

 America. Upon this vast territory there live only about five million souls, although the 

 southern parts of the country abound in all the gifts of nature, beginning with a 

 wealth of rivers, forests and fertile lands and ending with that abundance of mineral 

 wealth which led to the saying: Siberia is a golden well. These parts of Siberia form 

 a great reserve for the migration of the multiplying Eussian people, even if half of the 

 area of Siberia be completely excluded, a region occupied by bleak wastts, adjacent 

 to the Arctic ocean. Unacquainted with wars and never having known the dependence 

 of serfdom, Siberia was yet for a long time an object of terror from the rumours 

 that cii-culated about it. But little by little prejudice is being removed. 



With the completion of the Great Siberian Eailway already begun, and with 

 the abolition of the transportation of convicts, Siberia will not only serve by its 

 extensive lands as a grower of grain, but by its mineral wealth will be the furnisher 

 of metals, among which until now gold is obtained, it alone bearing a long trans- 

 port by land to the exclusion of almost all other metals. The rich coal veins of the 



