Marcu II, 1915] 
NATURE 37 

M. Wourtzel, the head of the traffic on the 
Siberian railway. 
“We had,” Dr. Nansen writes, “ great deliberations 
in the saloon [of the train] as to how the trade route 
between Norway and the Yenisei could be 
secured, and what were the first steps to be taken to 
this-end. We discussed the best arrangement of wire- 
less stations, the dispatch of motor sloops to investi- 
gate the extent of the ice in the Kara Sea, how aero- 
planes might be used for constantly reconnoitring the 
ice-conditions of the sea, in connection with the wire- 
less stations, and so on. The construction of an 
efficient harbour for discharging and loading in the 
northern part of the Yenisei and the transport up 
and down the river were discussed with Vostrotin, 
who has these questions at his fingers’ ends. By 
best 
— 
«on tie iii 
ee 
Group of Yenisei-Ostyaks 

From ‘ Through Siberia.” 
native huts to 
Krasnoyarsk, with its gilded 
cathedral, public 
park, museum, schools, and 
electric light in the streets—all the town profusely 
illuminated to welcome the Norwegian guest—all 
this, most sympathetically told by 
fascinating reading. 
At Krasnoyarsk Dr. Nansen took the luxurious 
eastern train which brought him in four days, from 
September 29 to October 4, to Vladivosték on the 
Pacific. Notwithstanding the rapidity of this 
journey, we still find in Dr. Nansen’s book very 
interesting remarks about the ) 
Siberia, the causes of its slow colonisation, and 
the rapid strides it has made since the Manchurian 
war. 
Nansen, is 
condition of 
By Dr. F. Nansen. (London: W. Heinemann.) 
(he fizures in the background, left and right, are Russians.) 
degrees a whole programme was drawn up under the 
shrewd guidance of Wourtzel.” 
The journey up the Yenisei to the town 
Yeniseisk, made in a little motor steamer, Omul, 
offered Dr. Nansen the opportunity of making 
many fine remarks about a variety of subjects— 
Baer’s law of excavation of the right banks of 
rivers; the first appearance of larches; the exiles 
scattered even within the Arctic circle and living 
in tiny primitive huts, the first appearance of 
iculture and cattle-breeding, and so on. “The 
rapid change on this journey, from the endless 
treeless tundra to the thick forests region, the 
gradual growth of the clusters of “snug, low 
timber buildings,” into villages, and further south 
into towns, and the transition from the isolated 
NO. 2367, VOL. 95| 

ie 
ag 
Winter was rapidly setting in, and next day 
Dr. Nansen had already begun his return journey 
—this time on the railway which runs down the 
valley of the Usuri to the new town of Khaba- 
révsk, which I knew fifty years ago as a village 
of a score of houses. The great railway which 
is now built by the Russian Government along the 
left bank of the Amur had not yet reached this 
new capital of the Lower Amur region. An im- 
mense bridge, 7827 ft. long, on nineteen piles, is 
being built below Khabarévsk across the Amur ; 
and this bridge, as well as the lowlands on the 
left bank, representing an immense swamp for 
some 200 or 300 miles, often inundated during the 
monsoon rains, offer great difficulties to the 
engineers. The journey across this marshy 
