Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/80

58 They are as follows: 1. The great northern túndra or the treeless region of moss steppes, extending along the whole arctic sea-coast from Nóvaya Zémlaya to Bering strait. 2. The forest region, which, with occasional breaks, occupies a wide belt through the middle of the country from the Urál mountains to the Okhótsk sea. 3. The fertile and arable region which lies along the Central Asiatic and Mongolian frontier, and extends from Ekaterínburg and Órenburg to the coast of the Pacific. The northern and southern boundaries of these great transcontinental belts of country cannot be exactly defined, because they are more or less irregular. In some places, as for example in the valleys of the great rivers, the central forests make deep indentations into the barren region that lies north of them; while in others the northern steppes break through the central forests and even encroach upon the beautiful and fertile region along the southern frontier. Generally speaking, however, the imaginary zones or belts into which I have for convenience divided Siberia correspond with actual physical features of the country.

I will now take up these zones of climate and topography separately and sketch hastily the character of each. 1. The great northern túndra. The northern coast of Siberia, between the southern extremity of Nóvaya Zémlaya and Bering strait, is probably the most barren and inhospitable part of the whole Russian empire. For hundreds of miles back from the arctic ocean the country consists almost entirely of great desolate steppes, known to the Russians as túndras, which in summer are almost impassable wastes of brownish-gray, arctic moss, saturated with water, and in winter trackless deserts of snow, drifted and packed by polar gales into long, hard, fluted waves. The Siberian túndra differs in many essential particulars from all other treeless plains. In the first place, it has a foundation of permanently frozen ground. Underlying the great moss túndras that border the Léna river north of Yakútsk there