was the Czar.

CHAPTER II RUSSIANS AND TARTARS

THE Czar had not so suddenly left the ball-room of the New Palace,
when the fete he was giving to the civil and military authorities and
principal people of Moscow was at the height of its brilliancy, without
ample cause; for he had just received information that serious events
were taking place beyond the frontiers of the Ural. It had become
evident that a formidable rebellion threatened to wrest the Siberian
provinces from the Russian crown.

Asiatic Russia, or Siberia, covers a superficial area of 1,790,208
square miles, and contains nearly two millions of inhabitants. Extending
from the Ural Mountains, which separate it from Russia in Europe, to the
shores of the Pacific Ocean, it is bounded on the south by Turkestan and
the Chinese Empire; on the north by the Arctic Ocean, from the Sea of
Kara to Behring's Straits. It is divided into several governments or
provinces, those of Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, Irkutsk, Omsk, and Yakutsk;
contains two districts, Okhotsk and Kamtschatka; and possesses two
countries, now under the Muscovite dominion--that of the Kirghiz and
that of the Tshouktshes. This immense extent of steppes, which includes
more than one hundred and ten degrees from west to east, is a land to
which criminals and political offenders are banished.

Two governor-generals represent the supreme authority of the Czar over
this vast country. The higher one resides at Irkutsk, the far capital of
Eastern Siberia. The River Tchouna separates the two Siberias.

No rail yet furrows these wide plains, some of which are in reality
extremely fertile. No iron ways lead from those precious mines which
make the Siberian soil far richer below than above its surface. The
traveler journeys in summer in a kibick or telga; in winter, in a
sledge.

An electric telegraph, with a single wire more than eight thousand
versts in length, alone affords communication between the western
and eastern frontiers of Siberia. On issuing from the Ural, it passes
through Ekaterenburg, Kasirnov, Tioumen, Ishim, Omsk, Elamsk, Kolyvan,
Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Nijni-Udinsk, Irkutsk, Verkne-Nertschink, Strelink,
Albazine, Blagowstenks, Radde, Orlomskaya, Alexandrowskoe, and
Nikolaevsk; and six roubles and nineteen copecks are paid for every
word sent from one end to the other. From Irkutsk there is a branch to
Kiatka, on the Mongolian frontier; and from thence, for thirty copecks a
word, the post conve