process so indistinctly that he could not understand it. Their road now lay for many days through dark woods, interspersed at wide intervals with villages and cornfields. The cold daily became more and more intense; thick fogs hung upon the ground; the frost penetrated everywhere. The fingers and toes of those most exposed were frozen, and could only be restored to animation by being rubbed with snow. At length, on the 9th of December, they arrived at Solekampsky, famous for its great salt-works, which, if necessary, could not only have furnished all Russia, but several other countries also, with salt. Vast strata of salt-rocks seem here to extend on all sides at a certain distance from the surface. Pits are sunk to these rocks, and are quickly filled with water, which, being drawn off and boiled in large caldrons, the salt is deposited at the bottom. The vein of salt-rock sometimes runs under the river Kama, in which case it is reached by sinking wooden towers in the stream, as they do when building the piers of a bridge, and piercing through these to the necessary depth. The salt water then springs up, fills the wooden tower, and is pumped off as before. Prodigious strata of this kind of rock traversing the bed of the ocean, may, perhaps, be the cause of the saltness of its waters. There are extensive mines of excellent iron-ore in the same neighbourhood; where is likewise found the asbestos fossil, from which the incombustible linen is manufactured. The value of this laniferous stone is said to have been discovered by a sportsman, who, happening one day to be in want of wadding in the woods, and observing the threadlike fibres of this fossil, plucked some of them off for that use; and finding that the gunpowder had no effect upon them, communicated the fact to others, which led to those inquiries and experiments by which its extraordinary properties were discovered. From Solekampsky they proceeded to the Oural Mountains, which divide Russia from Siberia. These are covered in all directions by vast forests, excepting in a few valleys where they have been felled by man, where our traveller found the landscape beautiful even in the depth of winter. On descending their eastern slope into the plains, a milder prospect, woods, villages, cornfields, and meadows, met the eye; but winter still reigned over all, binding up the streams, whirling his snow-drifts over the plain, or clothing the forests with frost and icicles. The fogs, however, had disappeared; and as far as the eye could reach, all was snow below and sunshine above. On the 16th of December the gilded crosses and cupolas of Tobolsk were discovered, rising in the distance above the snowy plain; and in the evening of the same day they found themselves agreeably lodged within its walls.