The Archipelago of New Siberia, situated to the north of the Lächow Islands, was discovered by Sirowatsky in 1806, and since then scientifically explored by Hedenström in 1808, and Anjou in 1823. These islands are remarkable no less for the numerous bones of horses, buffaloes, oxen, and sheep scattered over their desolate shores, than for the vast quantities of fossil-wood imbedded in their soil. The hills, which rise to a considerable altitude, consist of horizontal beds of sandstone, alternating with bituminous beams or trunks of trees. On ascending them, fossilized charcoal is everywhere met with, incrusted with an ash-colored matter, which is so hard that it can scarcely be scraped off with a knife. On the summit there is a long row of beams resembling the former, but fixed perpendicularly in the sandstone. The ends, which project from seven to ten inches, are for the most part broken, and the whole has the appearance of a ruinous dike. Thus a robust forest vegetation once flourished where now only hardy lichens can be seen; and many herbivorous animals feasted on grasses where now the reindeer finds but a scanty supply of moss, and the polar bear is the sole lord of the dreary waste. [Illustration: 85. TARTAR ENCAMPMENT.] CHAPTER XVII. SIBERIA--FUR-TRADE AND GOLD-DIGGINGS. Siberia.--Its immense Extent and Capabilities.--The Exiles.-- Mentschikoff.--Dolgorouky.--Münich.--The Criminals.--The free Siberian Peasant.--Extremes of Heat and Cold.--Fur-bearing Animals.--The Sable.--The Ermine.--The Siberian Weasel.--The Sea-otter.--The black Fox.--The Lynx.--The Squirrel.--The varying Hare.--The Suslik.--Importance of the Fur-trade for the Northern Provinces of the Russian Empire.--The Gold-diggings of Eastern Siberia.--The Taiga.--Expenses and Difficulties of searching Expeditions.--Costs of Produce, and enormous Profits of successful Speculators.--Their senseless Extravagance.--First Discovery of Gold in the Ural Mountains.--Jakowlew and Demidow.-- Nishne-Tagilsk. Siberia is at least thirty times more extensive than Great Britain and Ireland, but its scanty population forms a miserable contrast to its enormous size. Containing scarcely three millions of inhabitants, it is comparatively three hundred times less peopled than the British Islands. This small population is, moreover, very unequally distributed, consisting chiefly of Russians and Tartars, who have settled in the south or in the milder west, along the rivers and the principal thoroughfares which lead from the territory of one large stream to the other. In the northern and eastern districts, as far as they are occupied, the settlements are likewise almost entirely confined to the river-banks; and thus the greater part of the enormous forest-lands, and of the interminable tundras, are either entirely uninhabited by man, or visited only by the huntsman, the gold-digger, or the migratory savage.