394: FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



compared favourably with those of the Russians, not only in the 

 absence of swine, which the Tartars hold unclean, but even more in 

 the always well-cared-for cemeteries, usually surrounded by lofty 

 trees. For the Tartar respects the resting-place of his dead, the 

 Russian at most those of his saints. The woodlands, though divided 

 up, are really primeval forests, which rise and flourish, grow old 

 and disappear, without human interference, for they are too far 

 from navigable rivers to be as yet of much commercial value. 



Two large rivers, however, the Viatka and the Kama, cross our 

 route. The winter holds them bound, though the approach of 

 spring is beginning to loosen their fetters. The banks are flooded, 

 and the horses of the carriers, who scorn the temporary bridges, are 

 now and then forced to swim and to drag the sledge like a boat 

 behind them. 



Before we reached Perm we had to exchange the sledge for the 

 wagon, and in this we trundled along towards the Ural, which sepa- 

 rates Europe from Asia. The highway leads over long ranges of 

 hills, with easy slopes, but gradually ascending. The landscape 

 changes; the mountain scenery presents many pictures, which are 

 beautiful if they are not grand. Small woods, with fields and 

 meadows between, remind us of the spurs of the Styrian Alps. 

 Most of the woods are thin and scraggy, like those of Brandenburg, 

 others are more luxuriant and varied, and cover wide areas without 

 interruption. Here they consist of low pines and birches, and there 

 of the same trees mingled with limes, aspens, black and silver poplars, 

 above whose rounded crowns the cypress-like tops of the beautiful 

 pichta or Siberian silver-fir tapers upwards. On an average the 

 villages are larger and the houses more spacious than in the dis- 

 tricts previously traversed, but the roads are bad beyond all descrip- 

 tion. Thousands of freight wagons creep wearily along, or rather 

 in, the deep miry ruts; slowly and painfully we also jog along until, 

 after three days' journeying, we reach the watershed between the 

 two great basins of the Volga and the Ob, and learn from the mile- 

 stone, which bears "Europe" on the west side and "Asia" on the 

 east, that we have reached the boundary. Amid the clinking of 

 glasses we think of our loved ones at home. 



