oak, birch and poplar, which has been much wasted by fire and axe, while many of the trees are dead or dying. We passed one or two mining towns, and in the evening came out into an open down or steppe country, crossing the frontier into Asia about six the next morning, at an elevation of not more than 2,000 feet. There is a place called Zlatoust near here, where the rainfall is said to be for this dry region unusually heavy, and where many rare butterflies have been taken; but I saw no really attractive looking halting-place anywhere between Samara and Tcheliabinsk, an important railway centre where we changed trains.
From here we had two long days and nights across the great Barabousky steppe, formerly the home of the nomad Kirghiz tribes, who are now, in the more fertile parts of it, being largely replaced by Russian settlers. This great tract of almost dead flat country is the most monotonous I have ever seen, full of small lakes and brown tracts of prairie interspersed with birch woods still leafless. The summer here had not yet begun; there was a sharp frost at night, and the peasants at the stations were still in their winter sheepskin coats. Though we saw little cultivation near the railway, there must be a lot of good land further back; for at many of the stations there were long piles of wheat in sacks waiting to be sent to the Black Sea for export as soon as trucks could be procured. As a rule, it seems, this wheat is not exported owing to the heavy cost of carriage; but this year, owing to the Spanish-American War, there had been a great rise in the value, and those merchants who, by favour or bribery, had been able to secure trucks before the price fell again to a normal level made large profits. But a great deal of this wheat remained exposed to the weather when we returned four months later, and was much damaged by rain, as the upper tier was green with spoiled grain.
The only flowers one could see from the train, or round the stations where we stopped, were Adonis vernalis and an anemone very like the one which grows on the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This country has a good deal of resemblance to parts of the Canadian North- West, and may some day be a well-settled agricultural country; but the short summers, uncertain rainfall and distance from a market are all great drawbacks to its becoming, as some have predicted, a great grain exporting country.
On the third day after leaving Tcheliabinsk we reached the great river Obi, here about 1,000 yards wide and very muddy. Crossing it on a fine iron bridge, we left the train at a new town which has sprung up on the east bank since the line was made. We found that the steamer for Barnaul, the capital of the Altai Government, had just left. We slept at a small new hotel. The next day another boat came in crowded with passengers, but we were able to get on board. The weather was still cold, cloudy and rainy, and the scenery on the two banks of the river was without any beauty; with large villages at long intervals and a great many cattle, which are wintered on straw in great yards on the banks, from which the spring floods carry off all the manure.
We reached Barnaul on May 30th, and went to call on the Governor, General Bolderoff, who was very civil and promised passports as far as the Chinese frontier, I was obliged to carry a lot of money on from here,
