WESTERN SIBERIA AND THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS 



493 



Europe grows beside 

 the glaciers with the 

 denizen of the Ara- 

 bian desert. 



Once we came sud- 

 denly on a huge eagle, 

 bigger than the sea 

 eagle of North Amer- 

 ica or the golden eagle 

 of Europe, sitting on 

 a low rock surrounded 

 by a parliament of 

 crows. He rose very 

 slowly at our approach 

 and sailed deliberately 

 away while the parlia- 

 ment dispersed. He 

 may possibly have 

 been a lammergeier, 

 but did not seem to 

 me quite the same as 

 that splendid bird, 

 which I once saw cir- 

 cling over my head 

 on the top of a peak 

 in the Engadine. 



Of hawks and fal- 

 cons there were plenty, 

 as there are of wolves, 

 bears, and lynxes ; but 

 the tiger, though he 

 can stand cold — for 

 he is sometimes seen 

 on the shores of Lake 

 Baikal, and puts on a 

 thick coat of fur in 

 northern Korea — does 

 not in this region 

 come farther north 

 than the marshes of 

 Lake Balkash, some 

 hundreds of miles to 

 the southwest. 



A few days more through picturesque 

 rocky valleys brought us down to the 

 foothills, and thence over the steppe to 

 the town of Biisk, whence we had started. 

 There, after a farewell view of the moun- 

 tains from the high bank above the river 

 Biya, we embarked on a steamer even 

 smaller than that which had carried us up. 



Having now the current of the river to 

 speed our downward course, we came in 

 three days, making a long halt at Barnaul, 

 a dreary place in the dreary hours of rain 

 we had to spend there, back to Novo 

 Nikolaevsk, where we were hospitably 



Photograph by D. A. Foster 



ALONG THE) BAIKAL, MOUNTAIN SECTION OF THE) TRANS- 

 SIBERIAN RAILWAY 



"The line runs for many miles on a shelf cut out of the steep 

 mountain side, with frequent tunnels through projecting cliffs" (see 

 text, page 473). 



entertained by the representatives of the 

 great American firm which supplies agri- 

 cultural machinery to half the Russian 

 world. 



TIIF ALTAI MOUNTAINS AS A POSSIBLE 

 PLAYGROUND OF ASIA 



Here we rejoined the railway : here we 

 boarded the train which was to carry us 

 to Omsk and through the Urals to Mos- 

 cow and Petersburg (Petrograd), and 

 Konigsburg, ancient capital of the Teu- 

 tonic Knights ; and so on to Berlin, 

 where, ten months before the fatal days 

 of July, 1914, we were told (and, as I 



