eases year by year, and the
time will certainly come when these regions will support a population
many times as large as at present, and export large quantities of corn
in addition. This is the only thing which will make this enormously long
railway pay, for it cost somewhere about L11,000,000 to build.

We have passed Tomsk and crossed the Obi by a fine massive bridge of
stone and iron. The Obi is the largest river of Asia. In length it is
equal to the Yenisei and Blue River, but its drainage basin is larger
than that of either of the others. Where the great affluent, the Irtish,
runs in from the west, the Obi has a breadth of nearly two miles, and at
its mouth, in the Gulf of Obi on the Arctic Ocean, the breadth has
increased to twelve miles. The Irtish also receives from the west a
large tributary, the Tobol, and at the confluence stands the town of
Tobolsk.

One day passes after another, and one night after another rises up blue
and cold from the east. We have left every mountain and hill behind us,
and the boundless plains, like a frozen sea, lie buried under deep snow.
Sometimes we travel for a whole hour without seeing a farm or village.
Only occasionally do we see to the north a small patch of _taiga_, or
the Siberian coniferous forest, silent and dark. A clump of birch-trees
is a rare sight. The country is open, flat, monotonous, and dead-white
as far as the horizon.

Thus we travel on by degrees through Siberia, this immense country
bounded on the south by the Altai, Sayan, the Yablonoi and Stanovoi
Mountains, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Huge areas of northern
Siberia are occupied by _tundras_--moss-grown, marshy steppes, with
little animal life, frozen hard as stone in winter and thawed during the
short summer into dangerous swamps.

In the frozen ground of northern Siberia, and particularly in old flood
plains, have been found complete specimens of the mammoth. This animal
is an extinct species of elephant, which, during the diluvial period,
was distributed over all northern Asia, Europe, and North America. The
mammoth was larger than the elephant of the present day, had tusks as
much as 13 feet long, a thick fur suitable for a cold climate, and quite
a luxuriant mane on the back of the head and neck. That prehistoric man
was a contemporary of the mammoth is proved by ancient rude drawings of
this animal.

Larches, pine and spruce, birch and willow, compose the forests of
Siberia. The larch m