Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/85

Rh degrees higher than the mean summer temperature of England. Irkútsk is five degrees warmer in summer than Dublin; Tobólsk is four degrees warmer than London; Semipalátinsk exactly corresponds in temperature with Boston; and Viérni has as hot a summer as Chicago.

To the traveler who crosses the Uráls for the first time in June nothing is more surprising than the fervent heat of Siberian sunshine and the extraordinary beauty and profusion of Siberian flowers. Although we had been partly prepared, by our voyage up the Káma, for the experience that awaited us on the other side of the mountains, we were fairly astonished, upon the threshold of Western Siberia, by the scenery, the weather, and the flora. In the fertile, blossoming country presented to us as we rode swiftly eastward into the province of Tobólsk there was absolutely nothing even remotely to suggest an arctic region. If we had been blindfolded and transported to it suddenly in the middle of a sunny afternoon, we could never have guessed to what part of the world we had been taken. The sky was as clear and blue and the air as soft as the sky and air of California; the trees were all in full leaf; birds were singing over the flowery meadows and in the clumps of birches by the roadside; there were a drowsy hum of bees and a faint fragrance of flowers and verdure in the air; and the