20 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 152 



ried to a height of a hundred feet, and drifted past 

 us in dense, suffocating clouds, hiding every thing 

 from sight, and making it almost impossible to 

 see or breathe. Although we were riding with 

 the storm, and not against it, I literally gasped 

 for breath for more than two hours ; and, when 

 we reached the station of Cherem-shanka, it would 

 have been hard to tell, from an inspection of our 

 faces, whether we were Kirghis or Americans, — 

 black men or white. Such wind, with such suffo- 

 cating heat and blinding dust, I never in my life 

 experienced before. 



At the station at Mala-Krasnoyarskaya we left 

 the Irtish to the right, and saw T it no more. Late 

 that afternoon we reached the first outlying ridges 

 of the great mountain-chain of the Altai, and 

 began the long gradual climb to the Cossack out- 

 post known as the Altai Station. Before dark on 

 the following day we were riding through cool, 

 elevated alpine meadows, where the fresh, green 

 grass was intermingled with blue-bells, fragrant 

 spireai gentians, and delicate fringed pinks, and 

 where the mountain -tops over our heads were 

 white a thousand feet down with freshly fallen 

 snow. The change from the torrid African desert 

 of the Irtish to this superb Siberian Switzerland 

 was so sudden and so extraordinary as to be 

 almost bewildering. At any time, and under any 

 circumstances, the scenery would have seemed to 

 me beautiful, but, after 2,000 versts of unbroken 

 steppe, it made upon me a most profound impres- 

 sion. 



We reached the Altai Station about six o'clock 

 in the cool of a beautiful calm midsummer after- 

 noon, and I shall never forget the enthusiastic 

 delight which I felt as I rode up out of a wooded 

 valley, fragrant with wild flowers, past a pictur- 

 esque cluster of colored Kirghis tents, across two 

 hundred yards of smooth, elevated meadow, into 

 the little settlement of log-houses, and then looked 

 about me at the mountains. Never, I thought, 

 had I seen an alpine picture which could for a 

 moment stand comparison with it. It was unsur- 

 passed in my experience, and, it seemed to me, 

 unsuq)assable. I have seen since then the higher 

 and grander peaks farther to the eastward, known 

 as the Bailkee, where the Katoon River springs 

 fully grown out from under enormous glaciers, 

 and rushes away in a furious torrent to the Obi, 

 through the wildest scenery in northern Asia; 

 but I still think, thai for varied beauty, pictur- 

 esquenesH, and elfeetiveness, the mountain land- 

 seajK' which opens before the traveller's eyes as 

 06 ascends out of the valley to the Altai Station 

 is unequalled. 



The station itself is a mere Cossack outpost of 



erenty or eighty log-houses standing in rows. 



with w 7 ide clean streets between, and with a quaint 

 w T ooden church at one end. In front of every 

 house in the settlement is a little enclosure, or 

 front yard, filled with young birches, silver-leaf 

 aspens, and flowering shrubs ; and through all of 

 these yards, down each side of every street, runs a 

 tinkling, gurgling stream of clear cold water from 

 the melting snows on the mountains. The whole 

 village, therefore, go w T here you will, is filled with 

 the murmur of falling water ; and how pleasant 

 that sound is, you must travel for a month in the 

 parched, sun-scorched, dust-smothered valley of 

 the Irtish to fully understand. 



We remained at the Altai Station three or four 

 days, making excursions into the neighboring moun- 

 tains, visiting and photographing the Kirghis, and 

 collecting information with regard to the region 

 lying farther east which we proposed to explore. 

 On Monday, July 27, we started for a journey of 

 about 300 versts to the Katoonski Alps, or ' Bail- 

 kee,' — the highest peaks of the Russian Altai. Our 

 trip occupied ten days, during three of which we 

 lay in camp storm-bound in the Rakhmanofski 

 valley, nearly 7,000 feet above the sea. The last 

 sixty versts of our journey were made with great 

 difficulty and some peril, our route lying across 

 tremendous mountain-ridges, and deep valleys 

 with almost precipitous sides, into which we 

 descended by following the course of foaming 

 mountain-torrents, or clambering down ancient 

 glacier moraines, over great masses of loose broken 

 rocks, through swamps, jungles of bushes and 

 fallen trees, and down slopes so steep that it was 

 almost impossible to throw one's body far enough 

 back to keep one's balance in the saddle ; while 

 one's horse was half the time sliding on all four 

 feet, and dislodging stones, which rolled and 

 bounded for half a mile downward until they 

 were dashed to pieces over tremendous precipices. 

 I was not inexperienced in mountain travel, hav- 

 ing ridden on horseback the whole length of the 

 peninsula of Kamchatka, and crossed three times 

 the great range of the Caucasus ; but I must con- 

 fess, that during our descents into the valleys of 

 Rakhmanofski, the Black Berel, the White Berel, 

 and the Katoon, my heart was in my mouth for 

 two hours at a time. On any but Kirghis horses 

 such descents would have been utterly impossible. 

 My horse fell with me once, but I was not hurt. 

 The region through which we passed is a primeval 

 wilderness full of wild game. We saw marals or 

 Siberian elks, wolves, wild sheep, abundant fresh 

 traces of bears, chased wild goats on horseback, 

 ami could have shot hundreds of partridges, 

 grouse, ducks, geese, herons, and eagles. The 

 flora of the Lower mountain valleys was extremely 

 rich, varied, and Luxuriant, comprising beautiful 



