mile upon it. In the south of the Tomsk Government and along the north-west foothills of the Altai there are roughly 60,000 square miles of this black earth zone. Here, in spite of the attraction of fertile land, in close proximity to the mountains with their Alpine meadows, the greatest density of population is not more than twenty per square mile. In the central parts of the Tomsk Government and on the middle reaches of the Obi there is another area of 50,000 square miles of land, known as the Baraba steppe, fit for colonization and agriculture. Here again the population is probably below ten persons per square mile.
The present undeveloped state of the country can well be imagined when it is remembered that of the whole of this 190,000 square miles only three per cent., or under 6000 square miles, is at present settled with colonists engaged in agriculture. But emigration from European Russia has proceeded rapidly during the last twenty years. Between 1894 and 1903, 590,000 immigrants, or on an average about 60,000 a year, settled in Western Siberia, three-quarters of whom went to the Altai district. Between 1905 and 1908 the rate of immigration increased to about 300,000 a year and during these four years over 1,000,000 immigrants came into Western Siberia. In 1909, 500,000 immigrants came in one year, and even this figure was exceeded in 1910. In 1911, owing to bad harvests and famine, the number decreased to 189,000. The black earth zone of the Western Siberian plains, between latitudes 55 and 57, and the foothills of the Altai farther east, are the principal outlets for the population of European Russia. It is estimated that if these
