It is at Oubinskoï, a small town or village on the broad, deep, willow-fringed Ouba, that the ascent of the Altai really begins. Thence you cross the Oulba, and ascend a valley full of charming bits for the artist, to the silver mines of Riddersk. About fifteen versts beyond rises the snow-crowned height of Ivanoffsky-Belock, the source of the Gromotooka, or stream of thunder (“grom”), one of the wildest rivers in the Altai. With a roar like that of thunder it hurls its foaming waters down the rugged steep, frequently tearing off and whirling along with it huge fragments of rock, and filling the startled air with a din and clang which are audible for miles. At Riddersk Mr. Atkinson was compelled to abandon his tarantass; he engaged twenty horses to accompany him, and an escort of fifteen men, five of whom carried rifles, while the rest were equipped with axes. A ride of twenty versts, and he reached Poperetchwaia, the last village in this part of the Altai. It is occupied by only eighteen families, who live there in the solitude of the mountain valley, with the great white peaks around them, ignorant of all the events that daily help to make up the history of the age into which they have been born—ignorant of the intellectual movements that are agitating the minds and filling the thoughts of men. A strange, apparently a useless, life! A life without action, without hope, without purpose! Surely ten years of our free, busy, progressive English life are preferable to a hundred years in this lonely Siberian wild. Each family, we are told, have their horses and cows, and around the village is pasture sufficient for large herds. The stags on the mountains are also theirs, and the deer on the hills, and the fish that teem in the rivers. Wild fruit is plentiful; and the bees in their hives produce abundance of honey. It is a Siberian Arcady; but an Arcady without its poetic romance. The patriarch of the village is described by Mr. Atkinson as a fine old man, with a head and countenance which would have furnished an artist with a model for one of the Evangelists. Health and happiness shone in his face, the ruddy glow of which was set off by his silver-white beard. He wore a plain white shirt, hanging over trousers of thin linen, and fastened round his waist with a red sash; the trousers were tucked into a pair of boots which reached almost to the knee. In winter, a wolf or sheep skin coat is added to this picturesque costume.