It is snowing hard. The feathery flakes fly and skim like so many white-winged butterflies against the pale grey sky. It is bitterly cold, and the windows of my railway carriage are thickly frozen over, and when they clear there is not much to be seen. The high mountains have disappeared, and there is no majestic plain before us. The whole district is hilly, with here and there a river, and very scant vegetation. Villages seem to be unknown, and the first place of any importance we stop at is Petrovsk, a locality which owes its origin to its deep mines, enormous factories, and a large prison to furnish the workmen. What a gloomy site! Never have I seen factories and forges more desolate, and never has smoke appeared heavier and blacker to me than that which I see puffing from the numberless chimneys. It is an inferno, whose horrors only the genius of a Dante could describe. And if Petrovsk had a city gate, its sole inscription could be "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate." And how many have entered this ghastly place! How many of the Russian and Polish nobles have been exiled here! Nariskins, Mouravievs, Anenkoffs, Volkonskys, Troubetzkois--we find descendants of all. How many historical families have had their political aspirations stranded here! The miseries of Omsk have been described by Dostoievsky, but those of Petrovsk will never be entirely known. Many of the exiles have been followed by their brave wives, ladies of marvellous courage, leaving palaces to follow their husbands and to suffer voluntary exile. Through the frozen lands of Trans-Baikalia we continue our way. I am told the country is very rich. There are over thirty mines in work at present, and there might be a great many more. Where they have already started farming it has proved a great success, and some of the towns show signs of rising commercial activity; but I know not why this part of Siberia misses altogether the great charm, in admiration of which I was lost a few days ago. The high plateau of the Baskirs, the steppes of the Kirghiz, and the dense forests of the Kalmuks, all had a peculiar charm and atmosphere; but Trans-Baikalia, though undoubtedly possessing great economic possibilities, seems to have no beauty at all. The inhabitants are Buriats, and nomads, like the others, but lack their sympathetic features, and seem so strange--so entirely different. Their yellow, parchment-like skins and beady eyes lack all expression, or if they have any, it is so incomprehensible to us that we look at them as mere curiosities--as children belonging to another planet.