60 SlIiKKlA. 



570,000, thai is, 5 head por nianiiMl couple, \vhil<! of othi-r ciUtli; tht'ie are 350 h'.-ad per 

 100 iiiliahitarits, the a?),si)liit(! iiiiiiihfr Iji-iii^' as many ;i.s 2,000,000, whicli directly lieijujaslrates 

 till' liii-'li pi(i|ioi lidii jiiiiouj,' till! jMipiihitioii of tli(j rattli! bn.M'diiif,' class, and the wealth of 

 pastures possessed liy IIm' roiiiiiiy. 



The Amour Country. 



This couiitiy, the second part of iIhj Aiuoiir-Littoriil region, piesents in all its physical 

 conditions a type absolutely diflerent linm that of Transbaikalia, By the Amour country is 

 understood all the vast area occupied by the basin of the Amour along its left bank from 

 the conlluence of the Shilka with the Argun to the Stanovoi range and the Dzhugdyr ridge, 

 dividing the Amour basin from that of the river Uda. Thus into the country of the Amour 

 enters the whole Amour territory and the expanse between the eastern frontier running along 

 the ineridian and the course of the Amour to its mouth. In tlus way the Amour country occu- 

 pies, just as Transbaikalia, not less than 11,000 square geographical miles. 



Mention has been already made above of the Stanovoi or Yablonovoi range, serving for 

 a long distance as the northern boundary of the country, as this range separates the Yakutsk 

 and Amour-Littoral regions of Siberia, But independent of this range, descending less abruptly 

 into the Amour territory than into that of Yakutsk, a considerable part of the country is 

 mountainous and filled with the spurs of the Stanovoi range and by such ofl'sets as, like the 

 Little Khingan or Bureiu range, have an almost meridional direction and fling back the 

 Amour by their prolongations, forcing it to take a wide curve to the south. The con- 

 necting link between the Little Khingan and the Stanovoi range is the Dzhugdyr ridge, form- 

 ing the watershed between the basins of the Amour and the Uda, falling into the sea of 

 Okhotsk in the Littoral Territory. The Little Khingan, with an average altitude of 2,500 feet 

 reaches as much as 4,C00 and oven 6,000 feet at its summits near the head waters of the 

 Bureya. The crest of the Khingan and especially its peaks are formed of «golets^> sprinkled 

 on their slopes with stone heaps. The rocks prevailing in the mountain ridge are crystalline 

 and consist mainly of granites which are also discovered on the Amour, where the mountains 

 approaching the bed of the river nowhere rise higher than 1,000 feet above the level of the river. 

 Upon the mountain slopes of the Stanovoi range and the Little Khingan and their offshoots 

 arc developed stratified rocks of paleozoic formations, especially the devonian, upon the 

 southern incline of the Stanovoi range: secondary, namely, Jurassic, upon the lower reaches 

 of the Oldoi and Zeya and upon the upper waters of the Bureya, and finally tertiary along 

 the Amour, Zeya and Bureya. 



The country is abundantly watered. Its chief stieam the Amour is one of the three co- 

 lossal rivers of Asia falling into the Pacific, Its length, counting the rivers Argun and 

 Keruleu as its head waters, amounts to not less than 4,600 versts. Having described its great 

 arc, whose southern part crossed 48" N. lat., and having embraced with this arc on the south 

 the whole Russian region of the Amour, it turns to the north-east and after reaching 51*5° 

 X. lat., approaches so closely to the part of the Tartar stiait, forming the northern extremity 



