Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/39

 Rh last, the train rolled over the Baraba steppe, melancholy and monotonous. It is just the sort of country which would produce an apathetic and fatalistic trait in the human mind.

After Omsk the railway had plunged into this Baraba steppe between the River Irtish and Obi. Through this the train passed for the space of a night and a day. It is a vast fiat plain with a comparatively dry climate and, although an immense distance from the Arctic Ocean, is only a few feet above its level, and has evidently once been an estuary of it. The soil is a deep black earth, and the moisture from the water table is not far below the surface. Considerable areas of lake and swamp stud the country on all sides, while the ubiquitous birch extends for miles and miles along the line. At present the steppe is but very little settled, and the possibilities of development are even greater than farther west. Most of the land is used for grazing, and considerable quantities of horned cattle are raised, especially in the neighbourhood of Kainsk, which lies half-way between the two rivers, Obi and Irtish. The area of the Baraba steppe is 50,000 square miles, and the country has an average density of eight persons per square mile. Towards nightfall the train reached Novo-nikolaevsk on the Obi River, one of the many Siberian mushroom towns, which in the last ten years, from a collection of little log-huts, have attained a population of over 30,000 inhabitants. The point where the railway crosses the Obi has naturally become a transport centre for the waterborne traffic from the Altai district along the Obi River, and from here the railway communication goes direct to Europe.