At the various posting-stations barracks are built, the front buildings of which are occupied by the officers, guards, and attendants. From each end, to the distance of about forty or fifty feet, stretches a high stockade, which returns at right angles, and runs about sixty feet. It is then carried along the back so as to enclose in all an area of two hundred feet by sixty; in the middle are the buildings for the prisoners. The stockade is formed of trunks of trees, twelve inches in diameter, standing fifteen feet above the ground, and cut to a sharp point at the top; placed close together, they form a very strong barrier. The prisoners, moreover, are placed under continual supervision. They march two days, at a rate of twenty to twenty-five versts daily, and rest one. A gang leaves Ekaterineburg every Monday morning. After leaving Kiansk, which Mr. Atkinson anathematizes as “the worst town in all Siberia,” he travelled directly south, with the view of visiting Lakes Sartian and Tchany, the remains of a great inland sea. From Lake Tchany a chain of lakes, some of which are fifty or sixty versts broad, extends south-west for nearly two hundred and fifty versts. The country was low and swampy, but rose occasionally in slight undulations, clothed with long coarse grass, and frequently relieved by extensive clumps of birch and aspen, or a thick underwood of bushes. The lakes proved to be surrounded by so dense a growth of reeds that the water was visible only at a few points. Beyond, the country was thickly wooded, with large pieces of cultivated land, on which were fine crops of wheat and rye growing. The villages were well-built and clean; the inmates looked comfortable and cleanly; and large herds of cattle grazed in the village pastures. Speeding onward in his tarantass, as fast as six horses could carry him, our traveller crossed the Barabinsky steppe—a region curiously unlike that dreariness of monotony, or monotony of dreariness, which is generally associated with the name. The traveller might have been excused for thinking himself in some fair district of England, when he looked around on hills of gentle slope, covered with noble trees, which formed the boundaries of considerable plains, and saw the deer nimbly bounding through the fresh green glades. The view was brightened here and there with plantations of large timber; at other points rose sheltered belts of young trees; the effect being in each case so picturesque as to induce the fancy that art had thus arranged them. The ground teemed with flowers, as if Proserpine’s fertile feet had consecrated it—with the bright geranium, pale blue and deep blue delphinium, white and dark rich crimson dianthus, peony, and purple crocus. The lakes that studded the expanse, like silver gems in an emerald setting, bore expanded on their tremulous wave the blooms of the white and yellow _Nymphoea_. The whole scene was exquisitely sweet and tranquil.