One day passes after another, and one night after another rises up blue and cold from the east. We have left every mountain and hill behind us, and the boundless plains, like a frozen sea, lie buried under deep snow. Sometimes we travel for a whole hour without seeing a farm or village. Only occasionally do we see to the north a small patch of _taiga_, or the Siberian coniferous forest, silent and dark. A clump of birch-trees is a rare sight. The country is open, flat, monotonous, and dead-white as far as the horizon. Thus we travel on by degrees through Siberia, this immense country bounded on the south by the Altai, Sayan, the Yablonoi and Stanovoi Mountains, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Huge areas of northern Siberia are occupied by _tundras_--moss-grown, marshy steppes, with little animal life, frozen hard as stone in winter and thawed during the short summer into dangerous swamps. In the frozen ground of northern Siberia, and particularly in old flood plains, have been found complete specimens of the mammoth. This animal is an extinct species of elephant, which, during the diluvial period, was distributed over all northern Asia, Europe, and North America. The mammoth was larger than the elephant of the present day, had tusks as much as 13 feet long, a thick fur suitable for a cold climate, and quite a luxuriant mane on the back of the head and neck. That prehistoric man was a contemporary of the mammoth is proved by ancient rude drawings of this animal. Larches, pine and spruce, birch and willow, compose the forests of Siberia. The larch manages to exist even round the pole of cold. The Polar bear, the Arctic fox, the glutton, the lemming, the snow-hare, and the reindeer are the animals in the cold north. In the central parts of the country are to be found red deer, roedeer, wild swine, beaver, wolf, and lynx. Far away to the east, on the great Amur River, which is the boundary between the Amur province and Manchuria, as well as in the coast province of Ussuri, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, occur tigers and panthers. The most valuable animals, the furs of which constitute one of the resources of Siberia, are the sable, the ermine, and the grey squirrel. The south-eastern parts of this great country are a transitional region to the steppes of central Asia, and there are to be found antelopes, gazelles, and wild asses. At length, on January 5, we are up in the Ural Mountains, and the line winds among hills and valleys. Near the station of Zlatoust stands a granite column to mark the boundary between Asia and Europe. THE VOLGA AND MOSCOW