122 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



resistant they bar his steps; rich gain they promise the eager 

 merchant, but postpone the fulfilment of his wishes to the future. 

 This girdle of forest extends, as we have mentioned, between the 

 steppes and the tundra. Here and there it encroaches on both; 

 here and there they intrude upon it. At certain places in both the 

 unwooded zones, a compact wood may dispute possession with the 

 characteristic vegetation of steppes or of tundra, as the case may 

 be, but such isolated woods are almost always like islands in the 

 sea, for whose presence there is no obvious justification. In the 

 steppes they are restricted to the northern slopes of the mountains 

 and to the valleys, in the tundra to the deepest depressions. But 

 in both cases they are unimportant in comparison with the measure- 

 less extent of the forest zone, in which it is only here and there that 

 a stream, a lake, or a swamp interrupts the continuity of the 

 wilderness of trees which extends on all sides. A conflagration 

 may make a clearing, or, at the extreme fringe, man may make a 

 gap, but otherwise there is no interruption. Whole countries, as we 

 know them, might find space in one of these immense forest tracts; 

 and there are kingdoms of smaller area than some of them. What the 

 interior is like no one can tell, for not even by the streams which 

 flow from them can one penetrate far, and even the boldest sable- 

 hunters do not know more than a margin of at most fifty or sixty 

 miles. 



The general impression which the Siberian forests make on the 

 German traveller is by no means favourable. At the apparently 

 boundless tracts which are wooded, he is of course astonished, but 

 he cannot be enthusiastic, or at least very rarely. The creative, 

 productive, renewing power of the North does not seem to be 

 adequate to balance the destructive forces. Hoary age stands side 

 by side with fresh youth, but somehow there is no vitality in the 

 combination ; incomputable wealth appears in beggar's garb ; and 

 moribund life without any promise of vigorous rejuvenescence 

 inhibits any feeling of joy. Everywhere we seem to perceive the 

 hard struggle for existence, but nowhere are we really fascinated or 

 attracted by the spirit of the woods, nowhere does the interior fulfil 

 the expectations which the external aspect suggested. The splen- 



