The next province through which the railway passes is the Yenisei, which stretches right away up to the Arctic Ocean, and which at once conjures up in one’s mind visions of Merriman’s novels: it is one of the largest provinces in the empire, consisting of 987,186 square miles, but has only an average of one person to the square mile. The city of Krasnojarsk is the largest and most interesting on the railway; there are about 30,000 foreigners living in this district, most of them Tartars; it is the principal seat of Government, and lies just half-way between Moscow and Vladivostock on this wonderful railway. The whole length of the railway is 5449 miles, and with the exception of the 193 miles round Lake Baikal, it was completed in an extraordinarily short space of time, between eight and nine years, at a cost of, roughly speaking, £85,000,000. It is fairly correct to say that it was built at the rate of about a mile a day. At the distance of one verst (namely, two-thirds of a mile) apart, there are guard houses all along the line, each under the care of an ex-convict, who comes out of his house to wave a green flag when the train passes, or more frequently it is a barefooted wife or daughter who does it for him. There is a fine view of Krasnoyarsk from the train as you approach it, for the line makes a wide circular sweep before crossing the River Yenisei, on which it is situated. Of all the noble rivers which flow through Siberia, the Yenisei is the greatest; it rises in the mountains of the distant Chinese province of Kobdo in Mongolia, over 3000 miles from the Arctic Sea, and makes its impetuous way through the mountains of Sagansk, then through the strange, tundra region, with its countless islands and trackless wastes—the great nesting place of myriads of migratory birds, who come there led by some marvellous instinct at the exact time of year when the snow melts, uncovering the berries which form the requisite food for the nestlings. The Yenisei is only navigable for a little over six months of the year, and the ceremony of cutting the ice, which closes its mouth on the Arctic Sea, takes place always on June 10th.