Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/86

64 sunshine was as warm and bright as that of a June afternoon in the most favored part of the temperate zone.

The country through which we passed between the post stations of Cheremíshkaya and Sugátskaya was a rich, open, farming region, resembling somewhat that part of western New York which lies between Rochester and Buffalo. There were no extensive forests, but the gently rolling plain was diversified here and there by small patches of woodland, or groves of birch and poplar, and was sometimes cultivated as far as the eye could reach. Extensive stretches of growing wheat and rye alternated with wide fields of black plowed land not yet sown, and occasionally we crossed great expanses of prairie, whose velvety greensward was sprinkled with dandelions, buttercups, and primroses, and dotted in the distance with grazing cattle and sheep. Sometimes, for miles together, the road ran through unfenced but cultivated land where men and women in bright-colored dresses were plowing, harrowing, or weeding young grain; sometimes we plunged into a dense cool forest, from the depths of which we could hear the soft notes of shy cuckoos, and then we came out into a great sea of meadow blue with forget-me-nots, where field sparrows and warblers were filling all the air with joyous melody. Flowers met the eye everywhere in great variety and in almost incredible profusion. Never had we seen the earth so carpeted with them, even in California. The roadside was bright with wild roses, violets, buttercups, primroses, marsh-marigolds, yellow peas, iris, and Tatár honeysuckles; the woods were whitened here and there by soft clouds of wild-cherry blossoms, and the meadows were literally great floral seas of color. In some places the beautiful rose-like flowers of the golden trollius covered hundreds of acres with an almost unbroken sheet of vivid yellow; while a few miles farther on, the steppe, to the very horizon, was a blue ocean of forget-me-nots. I do not mean simply that the ground was sprinkled with them, nor merely that they grew in great abundance;