SIBERIA 415 SIBERIAN DOG extensive, but the Arctic Ocean is ice- bound at least 10 months out of the 12, and is almost valueless for commercial purposes, and the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Pacific, is infested with masses of floating ice and dense fogs. The principal ports are Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan, the chief naval station of Russia on the Pacific; Okhotsk, on the Sea of Okhotsk; and Petropavlovsk, on the E. coast of Kamchatka. Siberia has a warm summer, but the winter is exceedingly severe. South Si- beria has, in many parts, a very fertile soil, which yields rich crops of wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes; but immense tracts of Siberia are utterly unfit for tillage, more particularly the tundras, or great stretch- es of boggy country along the Arctic Ocean. In the W. are extensive steppes. Roughly speaking, the N. limits of agri- culture are 60° N. latitude. Cattle breed- ing and bee keeping are largely pursued. Hunting and fishing are also sources of remuneration, ermines, sables, and other fur-bearing animals being numerous. The wild animals include the elk, reindeer, and other deer, bear, wolf, white and blue fox, lynx, etc. The forests are extensive and valuable. Even before the World War manufactures and mining were in a backward state, though Siberia has very considerable mineral wealth. Large quan- tities of gold are obtained, as well as sil- ver, platinum, lead, iron, coal, etc. The trade was mainly with Russia, which took every year from Siberia about $20,- 000,000 worth of raw products, chiefly tal- low, hides, furs, and grain ; and sent every year to Siberia about $60,000,000 worth of manufactured wares. The foreign trade was insignificant. The. chief towns are Irkutsk, capital of eastern Siberia, a trading city; Tomsk, capital of Tomsk province, a trading city, with a univer- sity; and Tobolsk, capital of western Si- beria. Yermak the Cossack entered west- ern Siberia in 1580, and made a rapid conquest of the W. portion of the country, which he handed over to Ivan the Terrible of Russia. Bands of hunters and adven- turers then poured across the Urals, at- tracted by the furs, and gradually pene- trated to the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific. The latest acquisitions by Russia were the Amur territory and coast regions of Man- churia, ceded by China in 1858 and 1860. Exile to Siberia began soon after the con- quest, and until the downfall of the Im- perial Government in 1917, Siberia was a great penal colony. Hardened convicts and important political offenders were kept under close control, but the great majority of the exiles were simply placed in ^ a particular district and allowed to shift for themselves. Valuable goldfields have been discovered in Yeniseisk, and in the basins of the Obi, Lena and Amur rivers. In recent years thousands of Rus- sian peasants have emigrated hither, and nearly all the fertile soil free of forest land outside the steppes has been occu- pied. A new sea route through the Kara Sea to Siberia has been opened up lately. The railway connection between Russia and Siberia forms the greatest railway scheme in the world. See Russia : Trans- Siberian Railway. During, and especially after, the World War, radical political changes took place in Siberia, as in Russia proper. After the fall of the Imperial Government, in March, 1917, and after the fall of the Provisional Government in the following November, and the rise into power of the Bolshevik Government, political chaos spread over the country, until gradually a provisional government was established by General Alexander Kolchak, with head- quarters in Omsk. In January, 1920, the Kolchak Government went down before the assaults of the Red Bolshevist armies, made possible by the internal discontent of the population. During the year ending with January, 1921, still further changes took place. Transbaikalia was divided into two sepa- rate districts; the Chita District, where the Cossack leader, Seminov, had estab- ( lished a military dictatorship under the protection of the Japanese army of inva- sion; and the Verkhne-Undinsk District, where a form of government similar to that of the Bolsheviki was established. The Amur Province remained unchanged, and Blagovieschensk became the head- quarters of the revolutionary government of the Eastern Siberian Republic, recog- nized by the Bolsheviki as a concession to Japan, which desired a buffer state between its territory and Soviet Russia. The Maritime Province, which now in- cludes Kamchatka and the northern part , of Sakhalin, is administered from Vladi- vostok by a government which, while strongly inclined toward Socialism, was under the influence of the Japanese army of occupation. In October, 1920, the Red Army, in co-operation with local revolu- tionary forces, succeeded in driving Semi- nov out of the Chita District, the Cos- sack chief himself seeking flight across the Chinese frontier. SIBERIAN DOG, a variety of the Eskimo dog, but of larger size and more docile temper. They do not stand so high as the pointer, but their thick hair, three or four inches long in the winter, gives them an appearance of greater stoutness. Under this hair is a coating of soft, fine wool, which begins to grow in the winter and drops off in the spring. Muzzle sharp, generally black; ears erect.
