408 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



called Schlangenberg (Snake-town), and allowing ourselves but a 

 short rest in the country-town of Barnaul. Thence we journeyed 

 to the little hill-town of Zalair, and thence to the great govern- 

 ment-town of Tomsk. 



Before we came to Barnaul we had reached the Obi; at Barnaul 

 we crossed it, and at Tomsk we embarked on board a boat. 

 Through its tributary the Tom we entered this giant river, whose 

 basin is larger than that of all the west European rivers taken 

 together, and' sailed for about 1700 miles, towards the north. 

 For four days and nights the river — flooded to its highest 

 water-mark — bore us at a rate almost twice as quick as a 

 steamboat hastening up-stream; we required eleven full days and 

 nights to cover the distance between the mouth of the Irtish and 

 that of the Shtchutshya, although we only rested a few hours in 

 Samarowo and Bereosoff", and did not include in our reckoning the 

 two days which we spent in Obdorsk, the last Russian village on 

 the river. The river is gigantic and most impressive, dreary and 

 monotonous though it be called. In one valley, whose breadth 

 varied from six to sixteen miles, it split up into numerous 

 branches surrounding countless islands, and often broadening out 

 into extensive lake-like shallows; near its mouth the depth of 

 water in the main stream — miles in breadth — was on an average 

 about 90 feet. Primeval forests, hardly broken by clearings, into 

 whose heart not even the natives have penetrated, clothed the true 

 banks of the river; willow-woods in all stages of growth covered 

 the islands, which are continually carved at by the floods, eaten 

 away, and built up afresh. The further down we went the poorer 

 became the land, the thinner and more scanty the woods, the more 

 miserable the villages, though as the river nears its mouth the water 

 liberally supplies the food which the land itself denies. Not far 

 below Tomsk, beyond Tobolsk, the soil ceases to reward cultivation, 

 further down the grazing of cattle gradually ceases; but the river 

 teems with shoals of valuable fishes, and the primeval forests along 

 its shores yield rich spoil to the huntsman. Fisher-folk and hunts- 

 men replace the peasants, and the reindeer herdsmen the cattle 

 tenders. Russian settlements become more and more rare, the homes 



