The agricultural resources in the districts of Barnaul, Biisk, Minusinck and Kansk, are extremely rich, and, besides excellent land, splendid water, and a relatively mild and agreeable climate, there are a variety of minerals. More to the east, if we wish to avoid the ever-silent desert, or the _taiga_, we must, on leaving the highroad, enter some of the valleys at the foot of the mountains on the Chinese frontier, on the borders of which the whole population is at present concentrated. The aspect of this region, however, differs very little from that crossed by the post-road between Irkutsk to the great prison of Alexandrof, where we behold fine wheat-fields and herds of cattle wherever there is an opening in the thick but marshy woodlands. Excepting for the extent of the cultivated lands which surround them, the appearance of the villages, however, does not change in the least. There is never a vestige of a garden or of any sort of verdure near the houses, unless, indeed, it be a few flowers growing in pots, which are never arranged on the ledge outside the window, but in the interior, and form, together with a few icons and the portraits of their Imperial Majesties, the only attempt at ornamentation indulged in by the inhabitants of these essentially comfortless and inartistic dwellings. The only crops of the least value in Siberia are those of the various cereals, of which about 150,000,000 bushels are harvested, mostly in the western part of the country, which is not only the most thickly populated, but also the freest of forests. The rest of Siberia, that is to say, the provinces watered by the Amur and the territory of the Irkutsk, which are very thinly peopled, does not produce a total of more than 5,500,000 bushels. Wheat, generally sown in spring, and oats form each about 30 per cent. of the total cereal product of Siberia. The balance is made up of rye, barley and buckwheat. The arable land has to undergo, especially when first reclaimed from the steppe, the usual process of preparation, manuring, etc. The Siberian peasants have not acquired even the most rudimentary knowledge of agricultural science, and, consequently, often have to abandon their farms. On the other hand, in certain favourable regions, in the Governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, where the earth is exceptionally rich, the pastures have gone on fairly well for over a hundred years without any sensible diminution in the excellence of their grazing properties. However, land is so abundant in Siberia that often the peasants, when they find after they have reclaimed it that its productive qualities decrease, rather than be bothered with a repetition of the processes of manuring, etc., pack up their traps and migrate elsewhere, literally, to ‘fresh woods and pastures new,’ where probably the foot of man has never trod.