474 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by C. S. Stilwell 



A SIBERIAN PEASANT 



His is a land forty times as large as Great Britain and Ireland, but 

 with only one-fifth the population. 



ing force would be likely to cover its rear 

 by destroying the track in some part of 

 the shelf, behind or above which no pas- 

 sage could be found. I have not, how- 

 ever, been able to learn whether this has 

 happened. 



The line runs high along the curving 

 shores for forty or fifty miles, affording 

 a succession of splendid prospects. Be- 

 neath are woods, mostly of birch and 

 aspen, richly yellow in autumn, and 

 wherever they have been cleared the 

 space is filled by a profuse growth of the 

 tall willow herb (Epilobium angitstifol- 

 ium), called in North America the fire- 

 weed, whose deep pink blossoms make a 

 waving sea of color, stretching mile after 



mile till all tints melt 

 into the blue of dis- 

 tance. 



Solemn and lonely 

 in its mountain set- 

 ting, the Baikal yields 

 in grandeur to only 

 one other fresh-water 

 sea, Lake Titicaca, on 

 the plateau of Bolivia, 

 above which tower the 

 peaks of the Cordil- 

 lera Real, the finest 

 line of snows in all the 

 ranges of the Andes. 



WHERE THE TRANS- 

 SIBERIAN DIVIDES 



Presently the rail- 

 way, leaving the lake, 

 turns south up the val- 

 ley of the Selenga 

 River, and thence 

 climbs the slopes, and 

 threads for many miles 

 the ravines of the great 

 mass of rugged and al- 

 most uninhabited high- 

 lands which figure on 

 our maps as the Yab- 

 lonoi Mountains. Be- 

 yond these come wide 

 plains, and beyond 

 these plains another 

 mountain range, till at 

 Harbin the line di- 

 vides, one branch turn- 

 ing southwest to Pe- 

 king, the other south- 

 east to Vladivostok. 

 Henceforward there are no more Rus- 

 sians to be seen, nor the Buddhist or 

 spirit-worshiping tribes over whom Rus- 

 sia rules, for we are now in Manchuria, 

 where the population is mainly Chinese. 

 From overcrowded China the industri- 

 ous Celestials, no longer wearing pig- tails 

 (for the Republic abolished that custom), 

 swarm out in all directions ; and had not 

 the Russians in the middle of the last 

 century established their power in the 

 country south of the Baikal and all down 

 along the Amur River to the sea, these 

 regions would have soon been peopled 

 by Chinese emigrants. 



The last part of the way from Harbin 

 to the Sea of Japan is, perhaps, the most 



