THE AMOUR-LITTOKAL BOEDER LAND. 



CHAPTER V. 

 The Amour-Littoral Border Land. 



Division into four regions; Transbaikal region; its contour, climatic conditions, flora, fauna 

 and population ; the Amour region, its orography, climate, vegetative covering, fauna and pop- 

 ulation; the Ussuri-Llttoral region, its orography, hydrography, climate, fauna and flora: 

 the island of Sakhalin; the population of the country; the Okhots-Kamchatka region, and 

 its component parts; the Okhotsk shore, Kamchatka and the Chukot country; their orogi-aphy, 

 flora and fauna; scantiness of the population, and its disposition; the Okhotsk and 



Behring seas. 



AFAR greater importance than is possessed hy the above described regions belongs to the Amour- 

 Littoral border land of Siberia, consisting from an administrative point of view of three 

 territories, the Transbaikal, Amour and Littoral, forming together the Littoral Governor-Gen- 

 eralship. Geographically, the Amour-Littoral region occupies the whole Russian part of the 

 Amour basin, the Transbaikal part of the Yenissei watershed, the whole Russian coast zone 

 of the Japan Sea, the island of Sakhalin, the whole shore of the Okhotsk Sea up to the 

 Stanovoi or Yablonovol range, the whole peninsula of Kamchatka and the whole north- 

 eastern extremity of the Asiatic continent, beyond the Yablonovoi range, with the river re- 

 gion of the Anadyr and the Chukotsk peninsula. The Amour-Littoral country thus extends over 

 an area exceeding iifty-two thousand square geographical miles. This expanse is divided on 

 account of its natural conditions into four sharply contrasted regions, the Transbaikal, Amour, 

 Ussuri-Littoral and Okhotsk-Kamchatka. 



The first of these, the Transbaikal country, coincides with the Transbaikal territory, 

 and covers eleven thousand square geographical miles. It is intersected diagonally through the 

 very centre by the Stanovoi range, which is the watershed between the waters flowing from 

 its north-western side into Baikal Lake, namely the Selenga, Barguzin and Upper Angara, 

 and into the Vitim, the right tributary of the Lena, and for the streams (lowing from the 

 south-east into the Shilka, one of the two upper rivers of the system of the Amour. In an 

 offset of this range which nowhere attains the limit of eternal snow but serves to divide the 

 longitudinal valleys of the Ingoda and Onon, component branches of the river Shilka, rises 

 the highest mountain of the whole region, Chokondo 8,200 feet above sea level. Its summit 

 is in the Alpine zone but nevertheless does not reach the snow line. The whole Transbaikal 

 country with the exception of the steppe tract passing along the Chinese frontier between 



