But in Siberia changes are frequent and sudden, and to this Eden bit quickly succeeded a Slough of Despond. Crossing a morass in a heavy vehicle, drawn by six or seven horses, is not a pleasant sensation; happily, the traject was accomplished without accident. Another and another followed; and through each, with hard struggling on the part of the horses, and much yelling on the part of the yemtschick, or driver, the traveller was carried successfully. He was thankful, however, when the country again improved, and his road once more lay among the hills and pastures. At Krontikha, he was greeted with a noble view of the valley of the Ob, one of the great rivers of Siberia. From one high ridge to the other, twelve or fifteen versts is the width of the valley; in the middle, with constant undulations, first to one side and then to the other, like a coquette between two suitors, the shining stream pursues its capricious way, sometimes breaking off into several channels, divided by green little patches of island. Looking to the north-east, the traveller discerns, at a distance of one hundred and fifty versts, Kolyvan, formerly the chief town of the government—a rank now assigned to Tomsk, which lies one hundred and fifty versts further in the same direction. To the north and east the eye rests on a vast level, dark with the heavy shadows of forests of pine. At Barnaoul, the chief town in the mining district of the Altai, Mr. Atkinson found himself 4527 versts from St. Petersburg. After a night’s rest he resumed his forward course, and the character of the country soon warned him that he was approaching the steppes which extend westward to the banks of the Irtisch. These dreary wildernesses were the home and haunt of the Kirghiz, before the Russians drove them across the river, and built a line of forts along its bank from Omsk to the mouth of the Bouchtarma. The frontier to the Kirghiz steppe is guarded by a line of barracks; the whole length of the line (about 2500 versts) stretching far up into the Altai mountain range, and along the boundary of China. Dull beyond description is the landscape here. The chief product is wormwood; and around the fords and watercourses grow only a few bushes and stunted willows. Kolyvan Lake lies at the foot of some offshoots of the Altai chain. The masses of rocks which strew its shores, broken and fantastic of outline, present all the appearance of a ruined city. The granite seems to have been forced up in a soft or liquid state; then to have flowed over and cooled; after which it has been forced up again and again, with the result that it has assumed, in hardening, the most extraordinary forms. The rocks on the heights of the Altai are not less remarkable: some mock you with the aspect of ruined battlements and feudal keeps; others might be mistaken for human heads of a size so colossal that even the magic helmet in “The Castle of Otranto” would have been a world too small for them.