WESTERN SIBERIA AND THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS 



485 



could at least have a glimpse to make the 

 mountains live as realities in memory. 



A MUSHROOM TOWN IN SIBERIA 



Our point of departure was the town of 

 Novo Nikolaevsk, a mushroom growth 

 of the years since the opening of Trans- 

 continental line, for it stands at the meet- 

 ing point of two great lines of trade — 

 that of the Obi, which brings down the 

 minerals and the grain and the butter 

 from the south, and that of the railway 

 which carries these products eastward to 

 Irkutsk and beyond to the Pacific, west- 

 ward to Russia and Germany. It re- 

 minded me of the new cities in the newest 

 parts of America, with its big warehouses 

 rising fast along half-finished roadways, 

 while the untouched prairie, dotted here 

 and there with scrub birches, lay just out- 

 side the houses. 



In another ten years, had peace contin- 

 ued, Novo Nikolaevsk would have be- 

 come the most populous place in all Si- 

 beria. By now it may have gone to pieces. 



Steamers lay thick along the river bank ; 

 and in one of these we embarked. The 

 cabins were small and rough, but clean; 

 the food, scanty and unappetizing, was 

 sufficient to support life ; and though the 

 days were hot with a strong August sun, 

 the nights were cool, the dry air of the 

 steppe deliciously fresh and invigorating. 



From the deck one looked over a wide, 

 smooth plain, the vast dome of heaven 

 resting on a level horizon, the uniformity 

 of the prospect in all directions broken 

 only by the sweeps and curves of the 

 mighty stream. 



THE GRANDEUR OF A GREAT RIVER 



Nothing in nature is grander than a 

 great river. It embodies the irresistible 

 strength of the forces of nature and their 

 changeful activity, ever the same and yet 

 ever different, here with a glassy surface, 

 there swirling with deep eddies, making 

 and unmaking islets, here eating away the 

 bank, there piling up sand to enlarge it. 

 It is older than man, and will outlive him : 

 it is a part of his life, serves him in many 

 ways, but it heeds not his coming or 

 going. 



These great Siberian rivers specially 

 impress the imagination, because their 

 sources lie in unexplored snowy solitudes, 



and from their middle course in habitable 

 lands they descend into a frozen wilder- 

 ness — terra domibits negata — to find their 

 ending in an ice-bound sea. 



We had just come from a long voyage 

 up and down another famous river, the 

 Yangtze, singularly unlike its Siberian 

 sisters in this, that it is the central ave- 

 nue of commerce through a highly culti- 

 vated country, passing on its way many 

 cities swarming with people, and bearing 

 on its bosom not only steamships, but 

 fleets of sailing craft such as can be 

 seen nowhere on Rhine or Danube or 

 Mississippi, or even on the Nile, where 

 once they carried all the traffic of the 

 country. 



Here, on the Obi, not a sail was to be 

 seen and hardly even a rowboat. The 

 steamer calls rarely, and then it is to dis- 

 charge or take in freight, for passengers 

 are few. 



FEW VILLAGES ARE SEEN ON THE BANKS 

 OF THE OBI 



Like the Mississippi and Volga in their 

 middle courses, the Obi has scooped out 

 for itself a wide flat or depression about 

 seventy feet below the general level of 

 the steppe and swings itself hither and 

 thither across this flat, so that when it is 

 close under the high bank of the steppe 

 on one side it is far from the high bank 

 on the other side. The banks are of allu- 

 vial soil, and usually bare, but the low 

 shores and the islands are covered with a 

 growth of willows and poplars. 



The few villages on the banks, usually 

 where a small side stream comes down, 

 are clusters of rough wooden huts, irreg- 

 ular and dirty, with the blue cupola of a 

 whitewashed church rising in the midst. 



The peasants, stalwart fellows in col- 

 ored flannel shirts, crowd down to the 

 landing place when the boat puts in : the 

 women, not handsome, but with pleasant 

 kindly faces, wear gaudy blue or red or 

 yellow skirts, with handkerchiefs, mostly 

 white, tied round their heads. All are 

 Russians ; it is only in the town of Bar- 

 naul, a commercial center to which all the 

 minerals are brought, that one sees now 

 and then an aboriginal nomad from the 

 steppes to the south, over which hills, 

 outliers of the Altai, begin to show them- 

 selves. 



