Mr. H. Seebohm on the Ornithology of Siberia. 175 
jangling of the bells.'’^ However rough the road was_, I en¬ 
joyed a gopd night’s rest; and if an unusually heavy lee 
lurch/^ or weather roll/’ jolted me against my companion^ 
we only muttered that there was a heavy sea on/’ and 
dozed off again. Snow, wind, rain, sunshine, day, night, 
hills, valleys, plains, rivers, good roads, bad roads, it was all 
the same ; on we went, and nothing stopped us. The scenery 
through which we passed was very various. The first thou¬ 
sand miles was hilly and well wooded. One might imagine 
one was sledging through an endless Sherwood Torest, with 
a hundred miles of the Peak of Derbyshire placed in the 
middle to represent the Urals. The ground was covered 
with from two to three feet of snow. Sometimes we seemed 
to be sledging down a broad drive,” sometimes crossing a 
peak, and occasionally passing through a village. The forests 
were principally spruce-fir, with a little larch and Scotch fir, 
and plenty of birches. Sometimes we sledged for miles 
through avenues of pines. The Ural range is a succession 
of hills, which it took us some time to get through; but 
the loftiest peak can scarcely be dignified with the name of 
mountain. Between Tyu-main' and Tomsk we had nearly a 
thousand miles of a totally different class of scenery. The 
steppes of South-western Siberia might be compared to 
Salisbury plains. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was 
visible but snow, sky, and telegraph-lines. Now and then we 
came upon a few stunted birches; and every fifteen or twenty 
miles we passed through a village. About a hundred miles 
before reaching Tomsk we again found ourselves amongst 
hills and forests, which continued until the road permanently 
established itself down the broad river. 
The Yen-e-say' is said to be the third largest river in the 
world. In Yen-e-saisk' the inhabitants claim that the waters 
of their river have flowed at least two thousand miles (through 
Lake By-kal') to their town. In Yen-e-saisk' the river must 
be more than a mile wide. From Yen-e-saisk' to the Koo- 
ray'-i-ka is about eight hundred miles. In this distance it has 
gradually increased to a little more than three miles wide. 
From the Koo-ray'-i-ka to the limit of forest-growth, where 
