290 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
IApril 15, 190S. 
Among the Siberian Urals, 
It was Thursday the 17th (29th) of April that, after 
just one year's journeying — to a day, just — the detail 
passed the historic monument in the central Ural range, 
on one side of which is inscribed 
and on the other side 
ASIA, 
EURO PA. 
Of course the wording is in Russian letters, thus : acia — 
EBOnA. 
A halt was made for the night near here at the most 
proximate house, which is precisely the stancia (station) 
V'pjymka, shown on the same block facing the granite 
boundar}'' obelisk. That liitle station, Ypjymka, is the 
last station in Europe, on the Central Ural railway system. 
There are, altogether, three railroads crossing the Urals, 
]|i monument again ! 
The Asia-Europe monument is seen by many, but 
visited by few. It is easy of access from the station 
Ypjymka, but as trains are few and there are no tourist 
accommodations in the region, travelers don't care to trou- 
ble to lose from half to a whole day over the matter. 
Personally, as I prolonged my stay in the Urals and 
region from April to July, noting the auriferous 
formations, I visited the monument twice. It was 
erected many years ago, and the purity of the atmosphere 
has not left a stain, on it. Its height would be about a 
dozen feet — quite modest, you see, for an obelisk that 
marks the dividing line of two continents. There was 
not even a single tourist scrawl disfigurement on it. 
Thank heavens for that ! Its isolation has saved it that 
much. Only on the Europe-facing side, ebpoua ; and on 
the Asiatic, acia; while at the base — unobservable from 
the line — there are the permanent survey marks in Rus- 
that's a lesser evil than ugly bruises or a fractured limb, 
or something worse. "Of two evils, choose the least." 
The young Hikolai Penn got ahead of me — and disap- 
peared. I called and called — no answer. Mounting higher 
and higher, the rocks got slippier. The weather was; 
fine, but the rains of centuries had given those rocks, a' 
slick surface like the treacherous sidewalk footlights' 
covering here and there Manhattan's new rapid-transit 
tunneling. 
Continuing on, and finding no trace of Hikolai, a dis-.' 
heartening sense oi anxiety came over me. , In his eager- , 
ness he had, I thought, perhaps fallen into one of the 
crevices, been rendered unconscious — maybe killed out- 
right ; and here was I, a stranger to the family, having to" 
take home the news of the loss. And it was at my sug- 
gestion that he had accompanied me ! It meant, of coursej 
(I went on reasoning rapidly), suspicion — the presump-i 
tion that I had contributed to his death: forcible deten- 
YPJYMKA, THE LAST STATION IN EUROPE. 
Courtesy of the Electrical Review. 
THE ASIA-EUROPE MONUMENT, THE MID-URAL RANGE. 
hundreds of miles apart. The route depicted in the illus- 
trations is the most important, and is the road directly 
connecting (via Chelabinck) with the great trans-Siberian 
■ — the self-same route over which so many hundreds of 
thousands of Russian soldiers have been massed in Man- 
churia — myriads of thousands never to return. 
A few years ago, in Scribner's Magazine, there was 
published a series of articles on Russia entitled, "All the 
Russias." So far as accuracy went, its author, H. Nor- 
man, of the rush-tourist type, might more appropriately 
have named the papers "AH the Errors !" Even some of 
his illustrations were not correct. What he terms "the 
last station in Europe," p. 518, vol. 28, is not a station at 
all, but a road guardian's house — one of a type of hun- 
dreds located along Russian lines for the housing of the 
permanent way employes every three to five versti. It is 
a house that is possibly not anywhere near the "last sta- 
sian characters of the trans-Asiatic topographic survey 
and detail. 
From the Asia-Europa monument to the first station in 
Asia, called CipoctaH (pronounced Ciro(;tan), is nearly 
a score versti. It is a beautiful railway journey. The 
trans-mountain line between these two points reaches its 
antenna on the mid-Ural range, and is a continued suc- 
cession of ravishing, enchanting scenery. For grandeur, 
however, compared to our own great-divide route, it is 
"not a patch on it." 
That station, CipoctaH, made a profound impression on 
me. It was here I discovered first a branch of the 
Siberian Penns. One oi them was acting as station chief 
here, and, tO' my surprise, addressed me in perfectly in- 
telligible American. What the discovery of the Scottish 
regalia must have been to a Scot, the discovery of a Penn 
branch in Siberia was to me, a Yank deeply interested in 
tion till ihe body was found, and so on. I was beginning 
to curse myself for having departed from my old ideals I 
of the solitary sportsm.an — "nobody else to trouble I 
about," etc. 
Still, I continued mounting the rocky side, of the old 
crater, on the lookout, and shouting. There was the for- 
lorn hope, I thought, that Hikolai might have found a 
shorter route to the crater, and was where my voice could 
not reach him. Suddenly, from a rocky ridge high above.i 
came the shout in triumphant tones, "Lodian! Lodian!": 
— and I saw the silhouette of Hikolai's figure against thei 
sky. The young monkey, agile as his years (16), had in- 
deed tripped to the top like a wilk buck of Sonora. . But, 
although I never mentioned it to him, I shall never forget ^ 
as long as life lasts that distressing half an hour of: 
anxiety. 
The view of the interior of that thousands-of-years- 
>^-~' --• SIBERIAN CHURCH ON WHEELS. 
tion in Europe" even. Anybody can see it is not a station. 
But the view of the last station in Europe here pre- 
sented, is entirely bona-fide, and is reproduced from a well 
executed Russian postal oicture card issued by Chepep & 
ITabolz, of Mockba, central Pocia. Of course, it is like 
scores of other coun' ry stations in Tolstoidom ; and the 
only reason why it is singled out for perpetuating on a 
post-card is because of its unique geographical position 
as the dernier stancia, or station, on the European side of 
the Urals. 
From the stancia Ypjymka, looking up-grade to the 
righi, you can almost perceive the modest little white 
obelisk in the distance. It is atop of a gently rising bluff, 
and the railroad sides it in a deep cutting about fifty 
yards below. If passing in daylight, all troops and pas- 
sengers are on the lookout for it — all eyes are centered on 
that single line, ebpona, and as the train rumbles past, 
necks are craned and eyes sharply look out for acia. 
' We're in Asia," or like expressions, escape from manj* 
a lip, and the people cross themselves seriously ; for 
thousands, tens of thousands, of the soldier-passengers 
destined to Manchuria will of course never pasg that 
Courtesy of Locomotive Engineering. 
clinical UNIVERSITY, TOMSK. 
the Penn family — an interest which has taken ine even to 
the side of Penn's grave at Jordan's, in the shire of 
Buckingham, state of England, a secluded spot almost as 
inaccessible and unfindable and as "far from the madding 
crowd" to-day as it was when Penn was interred there 
nearly a couple of centuries ago. I have already written 
the history of the Siberian Penns in other publications. 
The sport-tourist reaching Asia via the mid-Ural range, 
ought — once, at least — to make a stop-over at Ypjymka 
and visit the most historic boundary monument on earth. 
Take a few minor comforts with you, and have lunch 
seated on the base of that Asia-Europe obelisk — one foot 
in Europe, the other in Asia ! I did this on a couple of 
occasions, then visited the extinct volcano a couple of 
miles to the north, in company with the youthful Hikolai 
Penn. It is quite a rocky climb, the slippery rocks seem- 
ingly inviting you to destruction if you persist in wearing 
ordinary leather-soled boots ; so — lacking the regular 
coarse worsted worn outside socks of the Alps — you take 
,ofif your ordinary wool socks (no out-camper is fool 
enough to wear the cotton things) and drag them over 
your bopts, I know they are hole-rvuned in an hour; but 
since extinct crater is the ugliest geological sight I have 
seen in my life — nothing but a loathsoine expanse .of bare, 
weather-seared rocks. Irnagine what the hummock ice 
of the Arctic Ocean ice wastes is like, and you have an 
idea of what that old Ural volcano is like in rocks. It 
is about half a mile across, and apparently impassable, 
but I believe some enthusiasts have painfully made their- 
way across. 
How difTerent from the channing old crater of Mount 
Eden, near Aukland, New Zealand. There I descended; 
its grassy slopes, where a couple of cows were quietly'" 
pa.sturing, and got on to its old clinker bed at the very- 
bottom. By smashing one heavy clinker on another, thus : 
breaking them asunder and closely noting the odor of the : 
innermost fractured parts, I at length established a rather! 
curious fact — just a feeble odor of burnt stone was nowi 
and then perceptible, but only of the faintest momentary! 
duration. And to think that that feebly volcanic odor hadi 
persisted in the heart. of those debris after untold ages!' 
But it should be noted that the evanescent odor was only- 
obtained with fractures of the hardest and least porous; 
clinkers, L, LopiAif, 
