WESTERN SIBERIA AXD THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS 



495 



believe, honestly told) by a high official 

 of the Foreign Office, that the diplomatic 

 relations between Germany and England 

 had been steadily improving. 



Whether the Altai will ever become the 

 mountain playground of Asia, as Leslie 

 Stephen called the Alps the playground 

 of Europe, may be doubted, for the Al- 

 taian landscapes, varied and charming as 

 they are, and sternly grand as is the high 

 glacier region, have not the more exqui- 

 site charm and the more inexhaustible 

 variety of the Swiss and Italian Alps. 

 But they and the lofty ridges that con- 

 tinue the great line of elevation as far as 

 the river Amur are the only Asiatic 

 ranges in which mountaineering can be 

 enjoyed as we enjoy it in Europe or as 

 Americans enjoy it in the Sierra Nevada 

 and Rocky Mountains. 



The Himalayas are incomparably 

 grander, but there the summers are wet 

 and intensely hot, and both the heights 

 and the valleys are on a scale too vast for 

 average human powers. To cross one 

 single gorge like that of the Teesta below 

 Darjeeling, descending 7,000 feet, and 

 mounting another 7,000 to the opposite 

 edge, is work enough for a long day 

 under an Indian sun. 



Nevertheless, less interesting as are the 

 Altai, there will some day be much de- 

 lightful exploration ; and some fine climb- 

 ing will be done in the thousand miles of 

 lofty Siberian mountains, east of the 85th 

 meridian of east longitude. Doubtless, 

 American and Canadian, as well as Brit- 

 ish climbers, will be found to do it. 



Hunters, also, will come, and for a time 

 at least they will find a fair number of 

 wild creatures to destroy — deer, though 

 scarce any elk, as well as wolves and 

 bears and lynxes, and the ibex that haunts 

 the high crags, and in some spots on the 

 Mongolian side of the range, the rare 

 mountain sheep (Ovis amnion) with the 

 great curved horns, a creature which, it 

 is to be hoped, they will not be allowed to 

 extirpate. 



Though disappointed, owing to the 

 difficulty of making the preparations 

 requisite, at not having been able to make 

 an effective reconnaissance of the ap- 

 proaches to the great peaks, we returned 

 to civilization — half famished, indeed, 

 but sound in health — with the satisfaction 



of having seen new and most interesting 

 aspects of nature and having caught 

 glimpses of the life of ancient nomad 

 races. 



From Siberia we carried back the rec- 

 ollection of a land of large, free, breezy, 

 sunlit spaces, beautiful in summer, with a 

 glorious abundance of flowers, and the 

 impression of a people more cheerful and 

 prosperous than we had expected to find 

 in a country hitherto associated with the 

 cruelties of a tyrannical government and 

 the sorrows of lifelong exile. 



the economic future of sibkria 



Something must now be said of the 

 economic future of Siberia, a subject that 

 will become of high significance to the 

 world, for the country contains the one 

 hitherto imperfectly developed region in 

 the temperate zones that has the greatest 

 possibilities of future development for 

 the production of food. 



Omitting the districts in eastern Si- 

 beria, comparatively small districts, that 

 are fit for agriculture, and omitting, also, 

 the larger and more fertile regions along 

 the river Amur, which Russia acquired 

 seventy years ago, there are between the 

 L T rals and the river Yenisei thousands of 

 square miles available either for pasture 

 or for cultivation. 



Into this region there had been flowing, 

 mostly from central Russia, a steady 

 stream, averaging 100,000 per annum, of 

 industrious peasants, to whom the gov- 

 ernment gave farms. Though there were 

 some large estates, Siberia has been, 

 broadly speaking, a land of occupying 

 farmers, very ignorant and living very 

 rudely, but intelligent and laborious. 



The cultivated area was being steadily 

 extended, and beyond it, especially along 

 the Obi and the middle course of the 

 Irtish, the rich pastures were supporting 

 an increasing number of cattle, so that an 

 immense trade in butter had sprung up. 

 Most of it was bought by Danish mer- 

 chants and dispatched in refrigerating 

 cars to western Europe, to be there sold 

 as Danish butter. 



Thus, in 1913, the country was thriv- 

 ing, with every prospect of a rapid 

 growth in wealth and population. There 

 were few manufacturing industries, but 

 the minerals hidden in the lonsr mountain 



