SIBERIA 



A Record of Travel, Climbing, and 

 Exploration 



CHAPTER I 

 ST. PETERSBURG— MOSCOW— £Ar ROUTE FOR SIBERIA 



Object of the exile system— and of the Great Siberian Railway — 

 Growth of agriculture in Siberia — Object of the author's visit 

 to Siberia — A letter from Professor Sapozhnikoff of Tomsk 

 University — Departure from London — The Kiel Canal— In the 

 Baltic — Riga — Yuryeif — Peterhof — St. Petersburg— Idiosyn- 

 crasies of the Russian "jarvey" — The Nevsky Prospect— St. 

 Isaac's Cathedral— The Neva — The Fortress of St. Peter and 

 St. Paul — Moscow — The Great Siberian Railway Station — 

 Booking for Siberia — Railway comforts — Across the Steppes — 

 The " vertsman " — Dinner on the cars — Sleeping arrangements 

 — Crossing the Volga — Iron and steel industries of Ufa — 

 Zlatoust, the Russian Sheffield — The Orenburg gold fields — 

 Cheliabinsk — The Government of Tobolsk — Climate — Immensity 

 of the country — Kourgan— Bazaar and Easter fair — Sensational 

 journalism — Exile to Siberia. 



A DOMINANT theme of writers on Russian subjects 

 appears to be the banishttient to Siberia of Russia's 

 undesirables. Whatever may be said, however, either 

 for or against the system, it is clear that its intro- 

 duction was the outcome of a desire to people and 

 open out a vast, sparsely populated country, to which, 

 partly on account of the severity of the Siberian 

 winter, and partly owing to the enormous distances 

 involved — the old overland trail represented a journey 



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