44 SIBERIA 



mistaking it ; the country, as far as one can see, 

 is as flat as a billiard-table— an ideal country for a 

 wolf-hunt. It contains about i,6oo lakes of various 

 sizes and is very swampy, owing to its uniform flat- 

 ness. In the extreme north the swamps merge into 

 the frozen tundras. The lakes and swamps, many 

 of which are bitter, exhibit a rather strange pecu- 

 liarity in that they frequently dry up altogether in 

 a most inexplicable manner and again fill with water 

 and fish after a lapse of many years. As a result 

 of this curious phenomenon many cultivated spots 

 and fertile meadows periodically lose their fertility, 

 to recover it after a more or less considerable lapse 

 of time. 



The climate is very severe and the mean tempera- 

 ture considerably below that of places situated in 

 the same degrees of latitude in European Russia. 

 The winters are colder and the extremes of tempera- 

 ture more pronounced than in the countries lying to 

 the west of the Urals. The vegetation is different, 

 birches being very much in evidence, with a 

 percentage of aspen and willows in damp places. 

 In the southern regions of the Government forest 

 fires are of frequent occurrence, sometimes destroying 

 the woods over an area of many hundreds of square 

 miles. Many parts which were orice thickly -wooded 

 are now quite denuded of trees. 



The train runs with so little vibration that it is at 

 times possible to forget that one is moving at all. It 

 is possible to write at ease and to walk the corridors 

 without being sLctken from one side to the other. 

 Even shaving is a comparatively easy operation. This 

 cannot be said of the 6o-miles-an-hour rate of pro- 

 gression by train in Europe and America ; in fact, 

 I believe it is quite possible to travel 2,000 miles 

 on the Siberian line and experience as little fatigue 

 as during a run from London to Manchester and back. 



