Scarcity of towns and their slight importance—Their administration and commerce—Resemblance to the towns in the Russian provinces—Introduction of telephones and electric light—Intellectual progress—University at Tomsk—The drama at Irkutsk—The crisis through which these towns are passing. The absence of large manufactures doubtless accounts in a measure for the fact that Siberia, according to the census of 1897, only contains eleven towns inhabited by over 10,000 souls. Eight of these (including the two cities of Tomsk and Irkutsk, which have each 50,000 inhabitants) are situated on the postal-road which passes from the foot of the Ural to Tiumen, to terminate on the shores of the Pacific at Vladivostok; Omsk is situated somewhat to the south of the old postal-road, at the point where the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Irtysh; Tobolsk, the old capital of Siberia, which has greatly declined in our day, is built at the meeting of the Irtysh and the Tobol, and also close to the junction of the two great highroads. Barnaoul, on the Upper Obi, is the only Siberian town of any importance which is not within easy reach of either the railway or the postal-road, but then it has the advantage of being situated in the centre of the most highly cultivated part of the country. There exist, also, a number of other small towns, situated on the two main arteries and in the more fertile valleys. All of them are centres for the distribution of manufactured articles imported from Europe, and also depots whence the products cultivated in their neighbourhoods are collected and expedited. All these towns are seats both of administration and commerce, and the local capitals are always, with the sole exception of Tobolsk, the biggest towns in the district, and contain the dwellings of the officials and other functionaries, which add greatly to their handsome appearance. In the region of the Amur and the Littoral garrisons have been introduced, which lend considerable animation to the place. At Vladivostok in 1895 the Russian population consisted of 2,780 civil servants, 189 exiles, 555 functionaries and priests (including their wives and children), and 10,087 officers and soldiers with their families. At Khabarofsk the official element is still more preponderating. With the exception of Blagovyeshchensk, situated at the meeting of the Amur and the Zeya, which owes its prosperity to the neighbouring gold-mines, the towns of Eastern Siberia are nothing more or less than camps or huge villages like Chita or Nertchinsk, with very low _isbas_, or wooden houses, prodigiously broad streets, vast open spaces, the whole dominated generally by the enormous white mass of some official edifice or other.