ZOOLOGY ASD BOTANY OF THE ALTAI MOUNTAIKS. 45 



journeys, though nominally a Christian, was not free from this 

 failing. 



As to the remarkable absence of glaciers in the Altai, a few 

 words seem desirable. At the sources of the Katuna, where 

 the mountains are higher and steeper than they are in the South- 

 eastern Altai, I believe glaciers are larger and more abundant ; 

 but the only place where we saw what could really be called a 

 glacier was in a high mountain south of the Kurai Pass. Their 

 scarcity is probably accounted for by the extremely dry climate 

 and light winter snowfall of the higher mountains. Notwith- 

 standing the extreme cold, the snowfall in the Upper Tchuja 

 valley is so light that horses can procure food on the mountains 

 all through the hardest winter, whereas in the low country around 

 Lake Teletskoi and the Bija valley they have to be fed on hay. 



"When we reached the north end of Lake Teletskoi, we had 

 four days' hard riding down the Bija valley before we reached a 

 country over which carts could travel. This valley is remarkable 

 for its magnificent forests of pine, Finns syJvestris^ which exceed 

 anything I have ever seen before. In some places I counted as 

 many as 20 or 30 trees to the acre, of an average girth near the 

 ground of from 6 to 10 feet, and carrying their girth higher up 

 than I have ever previously seen, so that at a height of 80 or 

 100 feet the tree would still be over a foot in diameter. The 

 Eussians, however, who, as described by a well-known Grerman 

 forester, are "everywhere and at all times true wasters and 

 destroyers of forests," are making rapid inroads upon this 

 magnificent timber, which is felled and floated down the Bija and 

 Obb for supplying the towns and villages in the Steppe country 

 northwards. Pire also is rapidly wasting many of the hill-sides, 

 and when the pine has been burnt off, its place is usually taken 

 by poplar and birch. 



The climate of this Bija valley is evidently very much damper 

 than that of the country to the southwards, and v\e had the 

 greatest difficulty in getting our horses through some of the 

 marshy forests. The horses in the Altai are, however, capable 

 of going where even ponies in the Eocky Mountains could 

 hardly scramble, and where the road is too steep and slippery 

 10 get a foothold, will clamber up through the thick brush- 

 wood with dense undergrowth and herbaceous plants higher than 

 their heads on an incline of at least 30 degrees. To give an 

 idta of their endurance, I may state that one day we rode the 



