Since the inclusion of Uralsk, Turgai, Akmolinsk, and Semipalatinsk within the governor-generalship of the steppes, the present administrative subdivisions stand as follows:—

[table]

It is evident that a territory so immense—covering more than 25 degrees of latitude and 120 degrees of longitude— must include a great variety of orographical and climatological characters, and that the popular conception which persists in representing Siberia as a snow-clad desert is erroneous. In fact—not to speak of the rich prairies of the middle Amur and the Usuri region, where the wild vine grows freely—we find in Siberia proper the very fertile black earth prairie steppes, or rather pampas, of the Tobol and Ishim,—not mere patches of fertile land, but plains covering some 25,000,000 acres and ready to receive millions of inhabitants; the highlands of the Altai, with their rich valleys, alpine lakes, glaciers, and snow-clad peaks, —a country three times as large as Switzerland and presenting almost the same variety of aspects; the high plains of Eastern Siberia, where water-melons are grown in the fields during the short but hot summer; the rich steppes of Minusinsk, profusely adorned with flowers; the lower plateaus of Transbaikalia, embellished with the beautiful Daurian flora and supplying food to hundreds of thousands of cattle; the high inhospitable marshy plateaus of the Selenga and Vitim; vast hilly tracts densely covered with forests, and visited only by hunters and gold-diggers; and beyond these the frozen tundras of the north,—all these constitute an immense world, with the most striking contrasts of scenery and vegetation, of manners and customs. In one direction only is the popular conception true: throughout its extension Siberia is the coldest country of the world in consequence of its protracted and exceedingly severe winter. This variety of characters will be best understood from the following brief sketch of the orography.

The leading features of the orography of Siberia are so much at variance in our best maps that a few words are necessary to explain the views taken in what follows. The inhabited districts are well laid down; but the immense areas between and beyond these have only been visited by geographers and are mapped only along a few routes hundreds of miles apart. The intermediate spaces are filled according to information derived from native hunters. With regard to a great many rivers we know only the position of their mouths and their approximate lengths estimated by natives in terms of a day’s march. Even the hydrographical network is very imperfectly known, especially in the uninhabited hilly tracts. The orographical representation of Siberia is nothing more than a combination of a few surveys and journeys, in which conscious or unconscious hypothesis is resorted to in order to connect the isolated facts. As soon as the river systems of Siberia began to be approximately known, chains of mountains were drawn in all hilly tracts,—higher ones on the chief watersheds and lower ones along the secondary ones. This representation conveyed quite a false idea as to the surface configuration of Siberia. The immense plateaus which play so predominant a part in the structure of Asia (as they also do in the western parts of North America) were quite overlooked. Chains of mountains were drawn as if they rose in the midst of plains, where in reality we have either the slopes of one side of the plateaus or border-chains. Lofty mountains appeared where none exist, as, for instance, in those parts of Yakutsk where tributaries of the Lena and the Amur start from common marshes; and some of the highest chains were represented as minor upheavals because they are pierced by rivers descending from the high plateaus to the lowlands. It was only by making use of rich unpublished collections of barometrical observations for the calculation of hundreds of heights that many sections of Siberia could be drawn, and by going into a minute study of topographical materials scattered through the bulky literature of Siberia and certain MS. field-books—the whole controlled by personal journeys—that it became possible to arrive at the following general conclusions as to the structure of the country, which may be of service until more complete surveys shall have given more reliable data. This study has shown how predominant has been the part played in the formation of Siberia by huge swellings of the earth’s crust (plateaus), and how subordinate that played by isolated chains of mountains, which latter are regulated in their direction in north-eastern Asia by the border ridges of the plateaus; and it has enabled us to make out a close connexion between the structure of Central Asia and Tibet and that of northeastern Asia, and to establish a link between the two.

A vast plateau, beginning in the south at the foot of the gigantic semicircular border range of the Himalayas, and having the lofty plateau of Pamir in the west and the little-known high tracts of the upper Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-kiang in the east, extends towards the north-eastern extremity of Asia. Broadly speaking, it has the shape of a South America pointed towards Behring Strait. It attains a width of no less than 1800 miles and an altitude of from 11,000 to 14,000 feet in the south; but both width and altitude diminish towards the north-east. In northwest Mongolia the average height is but 4000 to 5000 feet, and this diminishes to 3500 feet in the Vitim plateau; while its width is not more than 700 miles in the latitude of Lake Baikal. On the 50th parallel of latitude there occurs in the plateau a broad lateral indentation, occupied by Lake Baikal and the plains of Kansk, and this renders the resemblance of the plateau to South America still more striking. This immense plateau is the remainder of a vast and very old continent, which, so far as we know, has not been submerged since at least the Devonian period. It extends from the Himalayas to the land of the Tchuktchis, but does not of course present a plane surface of the same altitude in all its parts. It is diversified in the following ways. (1) Like other plateaus, it has on its surface a number of gentle eminences (angehäufte Gebirge of Ritter), which, although reaching great absolute heights, are relatively low. These chains for the most part follow a northeasterly direction in Siberia; but in the southern parts of the plateau, as we approach the Himalayas, they seem to assume a direction at right angles (towards the north-west). (2) On the outskirts of the plateau there are several excavations which can best be likened to gigantic trenches, like railway cuttings when with an insensible gradient a higher level has to be reached. These trenches for successive geological periods have been the drainage valleys of immense lakes (probably also of glaciers) which formerly spread over the plateau, or fiords of the seas which surrounded it. Now the chief commercial routes have been made to follow these trenches to reach the higher level of the plateau. Their steep excavated sides, which have the appearance of chains of mountains to the traveller who follows the bottom of the trench, have often been described as such; in reality they are merely unilateral slopes, which may best be compared with the steep slope of the Jura turned towards the Lake of Geneva. We have examples of such trenches in the valley of the Uda to the east of Lake Baikal (route to the Amur); in the valley of the Orkhon, leading to Urga and Mongolia (route to Peking), with a branch up the Djida; in the broad depression of the Ulungur leading from Lake Zaisan to Barkul; and in a few others which have been utilized as routes from the Lena to the Sea of Okhotsk. (3) There are, moreover, two terraces in the plateau,—a higher and a lower, which are very well pronounced in Transbaikalia ( q.v. ) and in Mongolia. The Yablonovoi range and its south-western continuation the Kentei are border-ridges of the upper terrace. Both rise very gently above it, but have steep slopes towards the lower terrace, which is occupied by the Nertchinsk steppes in Transbaikalia and by the Gobi in Mongolia (2000 to 2500 feet above the sea). They rise to from 5000 to 7000 feet above the sea; the peak of Sokhondo in Transbaikalia reaches nearly 8500 feet. Several low chains of mountains have their base on the lower terrace and run from south-west to north-east; they are known as the Nertchinsk Mountains in Transbaikalia, and their continuations reach the northern parts of the Gobi.

The great plateau is fringed on the north-west by a series of high border-ridges, which have their southern base on the plateau and their northern at a much lower level. They may be traced from the Thian-Shan to the arctic circle, and have an east-north-easterly direction in lower latitudes and a north-easterly direction farther north. Both the Alai ridge of the Pamir, continued by the Kokshal-tau range and the Khan-Tengri group of the Thian-Shan, and the Sailughem range of the Altai (see Tomsk), which is continued, in the opinion of the present writer, in the yet unnamed border-ridge of West Sayan (between the Bei-khem and the Us), belong to this category. There are, however, in these border-ridges several breaches of continuity,—broad depressions or trenches leading from Lake Balkash and Lake Zaisan to the upper parts of the plateau. On the other hand, there are on the western outskirts of the plateau a few mountain chains which take a direction at right angles to the above (that is, from the north-west to the south-east), and parallel to the great line of upheavals in south-west Asia. The Tarbagatai Mountains, on the borders of Siberia, as well as several chains in Turkestan, are instances of these upheavals. But, notwithstanding these complications, it remains certain that the Alai Mountains, the Khan-Tengri group, the Sailughem range, and the West Sayan are border-ridges of the high plateau fringing it from 70° to 100° E. long. These border-ridges contain the highest peaks of their respective regions; they are immense walls which render access to the high plateau extremely difficult, unless the traveller follows the above-mentioned trenches. Beyond 100° E. long. the above structure is complicated by the great lateral indentation of Lake Baikal. But around and beyond this lake we again find the same huge border-ridge fringing the plateau and turning its steep north-western slope towards the valleys of the Irkut, the Barguzin, the Muya, and the Tchara, while its southern base lies on the plateaus of the Selenga (nearly 4000 feet high) and the Vitim (see Transbaikalia). The peaks of the Sailughem range reach from 9000 to 11,000 feet above the sea, those of West Sayan about 10,000. In East Sayan is Munku-Sardyk, a peak 10,000 feet high, together with many others from 8000 to 9000 feet. Farther east, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal, Khamar-daban rises to 6900 feet, and the huge dome-shaped, bald summits of the Barguzin and Southern Muya Mountains attain an elevation of 6000 to 7000 feet above the sealevel. The orography of the Aldan region is but little known; but travellers who journey from the Aldan (tributary of the Lena) to the Amur or to the Sea of Okhotsk have to cross the same plateau and its border-ridge, the former becoming narrower and barely attaining an average altitude of 3200 feet. Whether it projects farther into the land of the Tchuktchis remains unsettled, although the probability is that it does.

A typical feature of the north-eastern border of the high plateau is a succession of broad longitudinal valleys along its outer base, shut in on the outer side by walls of wild mountains having a very steep slope towards them. Formerly filled with alpine lakes, these valleys have now a flat alluvial soil occupied by human settlements, and are watered by rivers which flow along them before they make their way to the north through narrow gorges pierced in the mountain-wall just mentioned. This structure is seen in the valley of the Us in West Sayan, in that of the upper Oka and Irkut in East Sayan, in the valley of the Barguzin, the upper Tsipa, the Muya, and the Tchara, at the foot of the Vitim plateau, as also, probably, in the Aldan. The chains of mountains which fringe these valleys on the north-west belong to the wildest parts of Siberia. They are named the Usinsk Mountains in West Sayan and the Tunka Alps in East Sayan; the latter, pierced by the Angara at Irkutsk, in all probability are continued north-eastwards in the Baikal Mountains, which run from Irkutsk to Olkhon Island and the Svyatoi Nos peninsula of Lake Baikal, thus dividing the lake into two parts, the great and the little. The Barguzin Mountains (on the right bank of the Barguzin river) and the Northern Muya range continue them farther to the north-east, and most probably they are prolonged still farther on the left bank of the Aldan.

A strip of alpine region, 100 to 150 miles in breadth, fringes the north-western border of the plateau beyond the ridges just mentioned. This constitutes what is called in Eastern Siberia the taiga : it consists of separate chains of mountains whose peaks rise from 4800 to 6500 feet above the sea, beyond the upper limits of forest vegetation (the goltsy ); while the narrow valleys afford difficult means of communication, their floors being thickly covered with boulders, or else swampy; the whole is clothed with thick impenetrable forests. The orography of this alpine region is very imperfectly known; but the chains have a predominant direction from south-west to north-east. They are described under different names in Siberia:—the Altai Mountains (see Tomsk) in Western Siberia, which also belong to this category, the Kuznetskiy Ala-tau and the Us and Oya Mountains in West Sayan (see Yeniseisk), the Nijne-Udinsk taiga or gold-mine district, several chains pierced by the Oka river, the Kitoi Alps in East Sayan, the mountains of the upper Lena and Kirenga, the Olekminsk gold-mine district, and the yet unnamed mountains which protrude north-east between the Lena and the Aldan.

A broad belt of elevated plains, ranging between 1200 and 1700 feet above the sea, extends beyond these alpine regions. These plains, which are entered by the great Siberian highway about Tomsk and extend farther in a south-westerly direction, fringing the Altai Mountains, are the true abodes of Russian colonizers; they are fertile for the most part, although sometimes dry, and are rapidly being covered with Russian villages. About Kansk in Eastern Siberia they penetrate in the form of a broad gulf south-eastwards as far as Irkutsk. Those on the upper Lena, having a somewhat greater altitude and being situated in higher latitudes, are almost wholly unfitted for agriculture. The north-western border of these elevated plains cannot yet be determined with exactitude. In the region between Viluisk (on the Vilui) and Yeniseisk a broad belt of alpine tracts, reaching their greatest elevation in the northern Yeniseisk taiga (between the Upper and the Podkamennaya Tunguzka) and continued to the south-west in lower upheavals, separates the elevated plains from the lowlands which extend towards the Arctic Ocean. In Western Siberia these high plains seem to occupy a narrower area towards Barnaul and Semipalatinsk, and it is difficult to say whether they are separated by an abrupt slope from the Aral-Caspian depression.

Farther to the north-west, beyond these high plains, we find a broad belt of lowlands extending as far as the Ural Mountains and the Arctic Ocean. This vast tract, which is now only a few dozen feet above the sea, and most probably was covered by the sea during the Post-Pliocene period, stretches from the Aral-Caspian depression to the lowlands of the Tobol, Irtish, and Ob, and thence towards the lower parts of the Yenisei and the Lena. Only a few separate mountain ranges, like the Byrranga on the Taimyr peninsula, the Syverma Mountains, the Verkhoyansk and the Khara-utakh ranges, diversify the monotonous surface of these lowlands, which are covered with a thick sheet of black earth in the south and assume the character of barren tundras in the north (see Tobolsk and Yeniseisk).

The south-eastern slope of the great plateau of Asia cannot properly be reckoned to Siberia, although parts of the province of Amur and the Maritime Province are situated on it; they have quite a different character, climate, and vegetation, and ought properly to be reckoned to the Manchurian region. As already said, we have to the east of the Yablonovoi border-ridge the lower terrace of the high plateau, reaching about 2000 to 2500 feet in Transbaikalia and extending farther to the south-west through the Gobi to East Turkestan. The south-eastern edge of this lower terrace is fringed by a massive border-ridge—the Khingan—which runs in a north-easterly direction from the Great Wall of China to the sources of the Nonni-ula. The traveller crossing it from the west is hardly aware of its existence; but it has a very steep slope towards the east, and forms a most important boundary for the Manchurian flora, which does not extend over the plateau. The northern parts of the Khingan are quite unexplored; the most northerly point that has been visited is the sources of the Gañ, where the present writer crossed it on his way to Mergeñ; and we have no direct data for determining where it is crossed by the Amur. But, considering the structure of the country on the left bank of the Amur, it appears probable that this river crosses it below Albazin (between Tołbuzina and Kuznetsova, where it makes great windings), and the Zeya where it is joined by the Gilui,— tje upper parts of the Zeya flowing on the plateau, while the Ud flows at its base; so that, as shown elsewhere...

Since the inclusion of Uralsk, Turgai, Akmolinsk, and Semipalatinsk within the governor-generalship of the steppes, the present administrative subdivisions stand as follows:—

[table]

It is evident that a territory so immense—covering more than 25 degrees of latitude and 120 degrees of longitude— must include a great variety of orographical and climatological characters, and that the popular conception which persists in representing Siberia as a snow-clad desert is erroneous. In fact—not to speak of the rich prairies of the middle Amur and the Usuri region, where the wild vine grows freely—we find in Siberia proper the very fertile black earth prairie steppes, or rather pampas, of the Tobol and Ishim,—not mere patches of fertile land, but plains covering some 25,000,000 acres and ready to receive millions of inhabitants; the highlands of the Altai, with their rich valleys, alpine lakes, glaciers, and snow-clad peaks, —a country three times as large as Switzerland and presenting almost the same variety of aspects; the high plains of Eastern Siberia, where water-melons are grown in the fields during the short but hot summer; the rich steppes of Minusinsk, profusely adorned with flowers; the lower plateaus of Transbaikalia, embellished with the beautiful Daurian flora and supplying food to hundreds of thousands of cattle; the high inhospitable marshy plateaus of the Selenga and Vitim; vast hilly tracts densely covered with forests, and visited only by hunters and gold-diggers; and beyond these the frozen tundras of the north,—all these constitute an immense world, with the most striking contrasts of scenery and vegetation, of manners and customs. In one direction only is the popular conception true: throughout its extension Siberia is the coldest country of the world in consequence of its protracted and exceedingly severe winter. This variety of characters will be best understood from the following brief sketch of the orography.

The leading features of the orography of Siberia are so much at variance in our best maps that a few words are necessary to explain the views taken in what follows. The inhabited districts are well laid down; but the immense areas between and beyond these have only been visited by geographers and are mapped only along a few routes hundreds of miles apart. The intermediate spaces are filled according to information derived from native hunters. With regard to a great many rivers we know only the position of their mouths and their approximate lengths estimated by natives in terms of a day’s march. Even the hydrographical network is very imperfectly known, especially in the uninhabited hilly tracts. The orographical representation of Siberia is nothing more than a combination of a few surveys and journeys, in which conscious or unconscious hypothesis is resorted to in order to connect the isolated facts. As soon as the river systems of Siberia began to be approximately known, chains of mountains were drawn in all hilly tracts,—higher ones on the chief watersheds and lower ones along the secondary ones. This representation conveyed quite a false idea as to the surface configuration of Siberia. The immense plateaus which play so predominant a part in the structure of Asia (as they also do in the western parts of North America) were quite overlooked. Chains of mountains were drawn as if they rose in the midst of plains, where in reality we have either the slopes of one side of the plateaus or border-chains. Lofty mountains appeared where none exist, as, for instance, in those parts of Yakutsk where tributaries of the Lena and the Amur start from common marshes; and some of the highest chains were represented as minor upheavals because they are pierced by rivers descending from the high plateaus to the lowlands. It was only by making use of rich unpublished collections of barometrical observations for the calculation of hundreds of heights that many sections of Siberia could be drawn, and by going into a minute study of topographical materials scattered through the bulky literature of Siberia and certain MS. field-books—the whole controlled by personal journeys—that it became possible to arrive at the following general conclusions as to the structure of the country, which may be of service until more complete surveys shall have given more reliable data. This study has shown how predominant has been the part played in the formation of Siberia by huge swellings of the earth’s crust (plateaus), and how subordinate that played by isolated chains of mountains, which latter are regulated in their direction in north-eastern Asia by the border ridges of the plateaus; and it has enabled us to make out a close connexion between the structure of Central Asia and Tibet and that of northeastern Asia, and to establish a link between the two.

A vast plateau, beginning in the south at the foot of the gigantic semicircular border range of the Himalayas, and having the lofty plateau of Pamir in the west and the little-known high tracts of the upper Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-kiang in the east, extends towards the north-eastern extremity of Asia. Broadly speaking, it has the shape of a South America pointed towards Behring Strait. It attains a width of no less than 1800 miles and an altitude of from 11,000 to 14,000 feet in the south; but both width and altitude diminish towards the north-east. In northwest Mongolia the average height is but 4000 to 5000 feet, and this diminishes to 3500 feet in the Vitim plateau; while its width is not more than 700 miles in the latitude of Lake Baikal. On the 50th parallel of latitude there occurs in the plateau a broad lateral indentation, occupied by Lake Baikal and the plains of Kansk, and this renders the resemblance of the plateau to South America still more striking. This immense plateau is the remainder of a vast and very old continent, which, so far as we know, has not been submerged since at least the Devonian period. It extends from the Himalayas to the land of the Tchuktchis, but does not of course present a plane surface of the same altitude in all its parts. It is diversified in the following ways. (1) Like other plateaus, it has on its surface a number of gentle eminences (angehäufte Gebirge of Ritter), which, although reaching great absolute heights, are relatively low. These chains for the most part follow a northeasterly direction in Siberia; but in the southern parts of the plateau, as we approach the Himalayas, they seem to assume a direction at right angles (towards the north-west). (2) On the outskirts of the plateau there are several excavations which can best be likened to gigantic trenches, like railway cuttings when with an insensible gradient a higher level has to be reached. These trenches for successive geological periods have been the drainage valleys of immense lakes (probably also of glaciers) which formerly spread over the plateau, or fiords of the seas which surrounded it. Now the chief commercial routes have been made to follow these trenches to reach the higher level of the plateau. Their steep excavated sides, which have the appearance of chains of mountains to the traveller who follows the bottom of the trench, have often been described as such; in reality they are merely unilateral slopes, which may best be compared with the steep slope of the Jura turned towards the Lake of Geneva. We have examples of such trenches in the valley of the Uda to the east of Lake Baikal (route to the Amur); in the valley of the Orkhon, leading to Urga and Mongolia (route to Peking), with a branch up the Djida; in the broad depression of the Ulungur leading from Lake Zaisan to Barkul; and in a few others which have been utilized as routes from the Lena to the Sea of Okhotsk. (3) There are, moreover, two terraces in the plateau,—a higher and a lower, which are very well pronounced in Transbaikalia ( q.v. ) and in Mongolia. The Yablonovoi range and its south-western continuation the Kentei are border-ridges of the upper terrace. Both rise very gently above it, but have steep slopes towards the lower terrace, which is occupied by the Nertchinsk steppes in Transbaikalia and by the Gobi in Mongolia (2000 to 2500 feet above the sea). They rise to from 5000 to 7000 feet above the sea; the peak of Sokhondo in Transbaikalia reaches nearly 8500 feet. Several low chains of mountains have their base on the lower terrace and run from south-west to north-east; they are known as the Nertchinsk Mountains in Transbaikalia, and their continuations reach the northern parts of the Gobi.

The great plateau is fringed on the north-west by a series of high border-ridges, which have their southern base on the plateau and their northern at a much lower level. They may be traced from the Thian-Shan to the arctic circle, and have an east-north-easterly direction in lower latitudes and a north-easterly direction farther north. Both the Alai ridge of the Pamir, continued by the Kokshal-tau range and the Khan-Tengri group of the Thian-Shan, and the Sailughem range of the Altai (see Tomsk), which is continued, in the opinion of the present writer, in the yet unnamed border-ridge of West Sayan (between the Bei-khem and the Us), belong to this category. There are, however, in these border-ridges several breaches of continuity,—broad depressions or trenches leading from Lake Balkash and Lake Zaisan to the upper parts of the plateau. On the other hand, there are on the western outskirts of the plateau a few mountain chains which take a direction at right angles to the above (that is, from the north-west to the south-east), and parallel to the great line of upheavals in south-west Asia. The Tarbagatai Mountains, on the borders of Siberia, as well as several chains in Turkestan, are instances of these upheavals. But, notwithstanding these complications, it remains certain that the Alai Mountains, the Khan-Tengri group, the Sailughem range, and the West Sayan are border-ridges of the high plateau fringing it from 70° to 100° E. long. These border-ridges contain the highest peaks of their respective regions; they are immense walls which render access to the high plateau extremely difficult, unless the traveller follows the above-mentioned trenches. Beyond 100° E. long. the above structure is complicated by the great lateral indentation of Lake Baikal. But around and beyond this lake we again find the same huge border-ridge fringing the plateau and turning its steep north-western slope towards the valleys of the Irkut, the Barguzin, the Muya, and the Tchara, while its southern base lies on the plateaus of the Selenga (nearly 4000 feet high) and the Vitim (see Transbaikalia). The peaks of the Sailughem range reach from 9000 to 11,000 feet above the sea, those of West Sayan about 10,000. In East Sayan is Munku-Sardyk, a peak 10,000 feet high, together with many others from 8000 to 9000 feet. Farther east, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal, Khamar-daban rises to 6900 feet, and the huge dome-shaped, bald summits of the Barguzin and Southern Muya Mountains attain an elevation of 6000 to 7000 feet above the sealevel. The orography of the Aldan region is but little known; but travellers who journey from the Aldan (tributary of the Lena) to the Amur or to the Sea of Okhotsk have to cross the same plateau and its border-ridge, the former becoming narrower and barely attaining an average altitude of 3200 feet. Whether it projects farther into the land of the Tchuktchis remains unsettled, although the probability is that it does.

A typical feature of the north-eastern border of the high plateau is a succession of broad longitudinal valleys along its outer base, shut in on the outer side by walls of wild mountains having a very steep slope towards them. Formerly filled with alpine lakes, these valleys have now a flat alluvial soil occupied by human settlements, and are watered by rivers which flow along them before they make their way to the north through narrow gorges pierced in the mountain-wall just mentioned. This structure is seen in the valley of the Us in West Sayan, in that of the upper Oka and Irkut in East Sayan, in the valley of the Barguzin, the upper Tsipa, the Muya, and the Tchara, at the foot of the Vitim plateau, as also, probably, in the Aldan. The chains of mountains which fringe these valleys on the north-west belong to the wildest parts of Siberia. They are named the Usinsk Mountains in West Sayan and the Tunka Alps in East Sayan; the latter, pierced by the Angara at Irkutsk, in all probability are continued north-eastwards in the Baikal Mountains, which run from Irkutsk to Olkhon Island and the Svyatoi Nos peninsula of Lake Baikal, thus dividing the lake into two parts, the great and the little. The Barguzin Mountains (on the right bank of the Barguzin river) and the Northern Muya range continue them farther to the north-east, and most probably they are prolonged still farther on the left bank of the Aldan.

A strip of alpine region, 100 to 150 miles in breadth, fringes the north-western border of the plateau beyond the ridges just mentioned. This constitutes what is called in Eastern Siberia the taiga : it consists of separate chains of mountains whose peaks rise from 4800 to 6500 feet above the sea, beyond the upper limits of forest vegetation (the goltsy ); while the narrow valleys afford difficult means of communication, their floors being thickly covered with boulders, or else swampy; the whole is clothed with thick impenetrable forests. The orography of this alpine region is very imperfectly known; but the chains have a predominant direction from south-west to north-east. They are described under different names in Siberia:—the Altai Mountains (see Tomsk) in Western Siberia, which also belong to this category, the Kuznetskiy Ala-tau and the Us and Oya Mountains in West Sayan (see Yeniseisk), the Nijne-Udinsk taiga or gold-mine district, several chains pierced by the Oka river, the Kitoi Alps in East Sayan, the mountains of the upper Lena and Kirenga, the Olekminsk gold-mine district, and the yet unnamed mountains which protrude north-east between the Lena and the Aldan.

A broad belt of elevated plains, ranging between 1200 and 1700 feet above the sea, extends beyond these alpine regions. These plains, which are entered by the great Siberian highway about Tomsk and extend farther in a south-westerly direction, fringing the Altai Mountains, are the true abodes of Russian colonizers; they are fertile for the most part, although sometimes dry, and are rapidly being covered with Russian villages. About Kansk in Eastern Siberia they penetrate in the form of a broad gulf south-eastwards as far as Irkutsk. Those on the upper Lena, having a somewhat greater altitude and being situated in higher latitudes, are almost wholly unfitted for agriculture. The north-western border of these elevated plains cannot yet be determined with exactitude. In the region between Viluisk (on the Vilui) and Yeniseisk a broad belt of alpine tracts, reaching their greatest elevation in the northern Yeniseisk taiga (between the Upper and the Podkamennaya Tunguzka) and continued to the south-west in lower upheavals, separates the elevated plains from the lowlands which extend towards the Arctic Ocean. In Western Siberia these high plains seem to occupy a narrower area towards Barnaul and Semipalatinsk, and it is difficult to say whether they are separated by an abrupt slope from the Aral-Caspian depression.

Farther to the north-west, beyond these high plains, we find a broad belt of lowlands extending as far as the Ural Mountains and the Arctic Ocean. This vast tract, which is now only a few dozen feet above the sea, and most probably was covered by the sea during the Post-Pliocene period, stretches from the Aral-Caspian depression to the lowlands of the Tobol, Irtish, and Ob, and thence towards the lower parts of the Yenisei and the Lena. Only a few separate mountain ranges, like the Byrranga on the Taimyr peninsula, the Syverma Mountains, the Verkhoyansk and the Khara-utakh ranges, diversify the monotonous surface of these lowlands, which are covered with a thick sheet of black earth in the south and assume the character of barren tundras in the north (see Tobolsk and Yeniseisk).

The south-eastern slope of the great plateau of Asia cannot properly be reckoned to Siberia, although parts of the province of Amur and the Maritime Province are situated on it; they have quite a different character, climate, and vegetation, and ought properly to be reckoned to the Manchurian region. As already said, we have to the east of the Yablonovoi border-ridge the lower terrace of the high plateau, reaching about 2000 to 2500 feet in Transbaikalia and extending farther to the south-west through the Gobi to East Turkestan. The south-eastern edge of this lower terrace is fringed by a massive border-ridge—the Khingan—which runs in a north-easterly direction from the Great Wall of China to the sources of the Nonni-ula. The traveller crossing it from the west is hardly aware of its existence; but it has a very steep slope towards the east, and forms a most important boundary for the Manchurian flora, which does not extend over the plateau. The northern parts of the Khingan are quite unexplored; the most northerly point that has been visited is the sources of the Gañ, where the present writer crossed it on his way to Mergeñ; and we have no direct data for determining where it is crossed by the Amur. But, considering the structure of the country on the left bank of the Amur, it appears probable that this river crosses it below Albazin (between Tołbuzina and Kuznetsova, where it makes great windings), and the Zeya where it is joined by the Gilui,— tje upper parts of the Zeya flowing on the plateau, while the Ud flows at its base; so that, as shown elsewhere...

In 1881 the population of Sibságar was 370,274 (males 195,194, females 175,080), of whom Hindus numbered 339,663, Mohammedans 15,665, hill tribes 13,829, and Christians 804. The only place of more than 5000 inhabitants is Sibságar (see below). Of the total area 359,225 acres were under cultivation in 1883-84, besides 78,710 acres of forests. The staple product is rice, which yields two crops in the year; tea is also extensively grown, Sibságar being second only to Cachar among the tea-growing districts of India; other crops include food-grains, pulses, oilseeds, sugar-cane, and cinchona. The local industries are limited to the weaving of silk and cotton cloth, the making of brass and bell-metal utensils, and coarse pottery. The principal exports are tea, silk, mustard-seed, cotton, and jungle products; the imports include salt, oil, opium, piece-goods, and miscellaneous hardware.

On the decline of the Aham dynasty Sibságar, with the rest of the Assam valley, fell into the hands of the Burmese. They were expelled by the British in 1823, and in the following year the valley was annexed to British India. The British, however, were indisposed to undertake the responsibilities of administration beyond what seemed absolutely necessary. The country now forming Sibságar district, together with the southern portion of Lakhimpur, was placed under the rule of Raja Purandhar Sinh, on his agreeing to pay an annual tribute of £5000. Owing to the raja’s misrule, Sibságar was reduced to a state of great poverty, and, as he was unable to pay the annual tribute, the territories were resumed by the Government of India, and in 1838 Sibságar was placed under the direct management of a British officer. The tea industry soon brought back prosperity, and the Sibságar peasants now rank among the most contented and wealthy in Assam.

SIBSÁGAR, chief town and civil headquarters of the above district, is situated about 11 miles south from the

Brahmaputra, being picturesquely placed around a magnificent tank covering an area of 114 acres. Besides the houses of the civil officials, it possesses a straggling bazaar, in which a brisk business is carried on during the cold season with the neighbouring hill tribes. In 1881 the population of the town was 5868.

The collection of so-called Sibylline oracles which has descended to us is obviously spurious, bearing marks of Jewish and Christian origin. Ewald assigns the oldest of them to about 124 b.c. and the latest to about 668-672 a.d. They have been edited by Friedlieb (Leipsic, 1852) and Alexandre (2d ed., Paris, 1869). For an examination of the different lists of Sibyls, see E. Maass, Be Sibyl-larum Indicibus, Berlin, 1879.

The Phoenician, whether from old Phoenicia or from Carthage, came from lands which were mere strips of sea-coast with a boundless continent behind them. The Greek of old Hellas came from a land of islands, peninsulas, and inland seas. So did the Greek of Asia, though he had, like the Phoenician, a vast continent behind him. In Sicily they all found a strip of sea-coast with an inland region behind; but the strip of sea-coast was not like the broken coast of Greece and Greek Asia, and the inland region was not a boundless continent like Africa or Asia. In Sicily therefore the Greek became more continental, and the Phoenician became more insular, than either nation had been in its own land. Neither people ever occupied the whole island: the presence of the other hindered either from occupying even the whole of the coast; nor was either people ever able to spread its dominion over the earlier inhabitants very far inland. Sicily thus remained a world of its own, with interests and disputes of its own, and divided among inhabitants of various nations. The history of the Greeks of Sicily is constantly connected with the history of old Hellas, but it runs a separate course of its own. Their position answers somewhat to that of the English people of the United States with regard to the mother-country of Great Britain. It differs in this, that the independence of the Greek cities in Sicily was not the result of warfare with the mother-country. Otherwise the analogy would have been almost exact, if France or Spain had kept its old power in North America. The Phoenician element ran an opposite course, as the independent Phoenician settlements in Sicily sank into dependencies of Carthage. The entrance of the Romans put an end to all practical independence on the part of either nation. But Roman ascendency did not affect Greeks and Phoenicians in the same way. Phoenician life gradually died out. But Roman ascendency nowhere crushed out Greek life where it already existed, and in some ways it strengthened it. Though the Greeks never spread their dominion over the island, they made a peaceful conquest of it. This process was in no way hindered by the Roman dominion; the work of assimilation went on still faster.

The question now comes, Who were the original inhabitants of Sicily? The island itself, ∑ικϵλία , Sicilia, plainly takes its name from the Sikels (∑ικϵλoί , Siculi), a people whom we find occupying a great part of the island, chiefly east of the river Gela. They appear also in Italy, in the toe of the boot, and older history or tradition spoke of them as having in earlier days held a large place in Latium and elsewhere in central Italy. They were believed to have crossed the strait into the island about 300 years before the beginning of the Greek settlements, that is to say in the 11th century b.c. They found in the island a people called Sikans (∑ικαvoί , Sicani ) , whose name might pass for a dialectic form of their own, did not the ancient writers straitly affirm them to be a wholly distinct people, akin to the Iberians. Sikans also appear with the Ligurians among the early inhabitants of Italy (Virg., Aen., vii. 795, viii. 328, xi. 317, and Servius’s note). It is possible then that the likeness of name is accidental, that the Sikels belonged to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Italians, while Sikans, like Ligurians and Iberians and the surviving Basques, belonged to the earlier non-Aryan population of western Europe. But, whatever the origin of either, in the history of the island Sikans and Sikels appear as two distinct nations with a clear geographical boundary. And we may venture to set down the Sikels as undeveloped Latins, who were hindered by the coming of the Greeks from reaching the same independent national life as their kinsfolk in Italy, and, instead of so doing, were gradually Hellenized. On the other hand, some Sikel elements made their way into the Greek life of Sicily. That the Sikels spoke a tongue closely akin to Latin is plain from several Sikel words which crept into Sicilian Greek, and from the Sikeliot system of weights and measures,—utterly unlike anything in old Greece. When the Greek settlements began, the Sikans had hardly got beyond the life of villages on hill-tops (Dion. Hal., v. 6), more truly perhaps villages with places of shelter on the hill-tops. The more advanced Sikels had their hill-forts also, but they had learned the advantages of the sea, and they already had settlements on the coast when the Greeks came. As we go on, we hear of both Sikel and Sikan towns; but we may suspect that any approach to true city life was owing to Greek influences. Neither people grew into any form of national unity. There was neither common king nor common confederation either of Sikels or of Sikans. They were therefore partly subdued, partly assimilated, slowly, but without much effort.

In the north-east corner of the island we find a small territory occupied by a people who seem to have made much greater advances towards civilized life. The Elymoi were a people of uncertain origin, but they claimed a mixed descent, partly Trojan, partly Greek. Thucydides however unhesitatingly reckons them among barbarians. They had considerable towns, as Segesta (the Greek Egesta) and Eryx, and the whole history, as well as the remains, of Segesta, shows that Greek influences prevailed among them very early. In short, we find in the island three nations distinct from the Greeks, two of which at least easily adopted Greek culture and came in the end to pass for Greeks by adoption.

But, as we have already seen, the Greeks were not the first colonizing people who were drawn to the great island. As in Cyprus and in the islands of the Aegaean, the Phoenicians were before them. And it is from this presence of the highest forms of Aryan and of Semitic man that the history of Sicily draws its highest interest. Of Phoenician occupation there are two, or rather three, marked periods. We must always remember that Carthage —the new city—was one of the latest of Phoenician foundations, and that the days of the Carthaginian dominion show us only the latest form of Phoenician life. Phoenician settlement in Sicily began before Carthage became great, perhaps before Carthage came into being. A crowd of small settlements from the old Phoenicia, settlements for trade rather than for dominion, factories rather than colonies, grew up on promontories and small islands all round the Sicilian coast. These were unable to withstand the Greek settlers, and the Phoenicians of Sicily withdrew step by step to form three considerable towns in the northwest corner of the island,—Motye, Soloeis or Solunto, on a hill overhanging the sea on the north coast, and the great Panormos, the all-haven (see Palermo), the city destined to be, in two different periods of the world’s history, the head of Semitic power in Sicily.

Our earlier notices of Sicily, of Sikels and Sikans, in the Homeric poems and elsewhere, are vague and legendary. Both races appear as given to the buying and selling of slaves (Od., xx. 383, xxiv. 30, 210). The intimate connexion between old Hellas and Sicily begins with the foundation of the Sicilian Naxos by Chalkidians of Euboia under Theokles, which is assigned to the year 735 b.c. The site, a low promontory on the east coast, immediately below the height of Tauromenion, marks an age which had advanced beyond the hill-fortress and which thoroughly valued the sea. The next year Corinth began her system of settlement in the west: Korkyra (Corcyra), the path to Sicily, and Syracuse on the Sicilian coast were planted as parts of one enterprise. From this time, for about 150 years, Greek settlement in the island, with some intervals, goes steadily on. Both Ionian and Dorian colonies were planted, both from the older Greek lands and from the older Sicilian settlements. The east coast, nearest to Greece and richest in good harbours, was occupied first. Here, between Naxos and Syracuse, arose the Ionian cities of Leontinoi and Katana (Catina, Catania) and the Dorian Megara by Hybla. Settlement on the south-western coast began about 688 b.c. with the joint Cretan and Rhodian settlement of Gela, and went on in the foundation of Selinous (the most distant Greek city on this side), of Kamarina (Camarina), and in 588 b.c. of the Geloan settlement of Akragas (Agrigentum, Girgenti), planted on a high hill, a little way from the sea, which became the second city of Hellenic Sicily. On the north coast the Ionian Himera was the only Greek city in Sicily itself, but the Knidians founded Lipara in the Aeolian Islands. At the north-east corner, opposite to Italy, and commanding the strait, arose Zankle, a city of uncertain date and mixed origin, better known under its later name of Messana (Messene, Messina).

Thus nearly all the east coast of Sicily, a great part of the south coast, and a much smaller part of the north, passed into the hands of Greek settlers,—Sikeliots (∑ικϵλιωται), as distinguished from the native Sikels. This was one of the greatest advances ever made by the Greek people. The Greek element began to be predominant in the island. Among the earlier inhabitants the Sikels were already becoming adopted Greeks. Many of them gradually sank into a not wholly unwilling subjection as cultivators of the soil under Greek masters,—a relation embodied perhaps in the legend that a native Sikel prince led the Greek settlers to the foundation of Megara. But there were also independent Sikel towns in the interior, and there was a strong religious intercommunion between the two races. Sikel Henna (Enna, Castrogiovanni) is the special seat of the worship of Demeter and her daughter. The Sikans, on the other hand, seem more distinct and more steadily hostile. The Phoenicians, now shut up in one corner of the island, with Selinous on one side and Himera on the other founded right in their teeth, are bitter enemies; but the time of their renewed greatness under the headship of Carthage has not yet come. The 7th century b.c. and the early part of the 6th were a time in which the Greek cities of Sicily had their full share in the general prosperity of the Greek colonies everywhere. For a while they outstripped the cities of old Greece. Their political constitutions were aristocratic; that is, the franchise was confined to the descendants of the original settlers, round whom an excluded body (δηµoς or plebs ) was often growing up. The ancient kingship was perhaps kept on or renewed in some of the Sikeliot and Italiot towns; but it is more certain that civil dissensions led very early to the rise of tyrants. The first and most famous is Phalaris of Akragas, whose exact date is uncertain, whose letters are now cast aside, and whose brazen bull has been called in question, but who clearly rose to power very soon after the foundation of Akragas. Under his rule the city at once sprang to the first place in Sicily, and he was the first Sikeliot ruler who held dominion over two Greek cities, Akragas and Himera. This time of prosperity was also a time of intellectual progress. To say nothing of lawgivers like Charondas, the line of Sikeliot poets began early, and the circumstances of the island, the adoption of many of its local traditions and beliefs—perhaps a certain intermingling of native blood—gave the intellectual life of Sicily a character in some things distinct from that of old Hellas. Stesichoros of Himera (c. 632-556 b.c. ) holds a great place among the lyric poets of Greece, and some place in the political history of Sicily as the opponent of Phalaris. The architecture and sculpture of this age have also left some of their most remarkable monuments among the Greek cities of Sicily (see Syracuse). The remains of the old temples of Selinous, attributed to the 7th century b.c., show us the Doric style in its earlier state, and the sculptures of their metopes (preserved at Palermo) are as distinctly grotesque as any Romanesque sculpture of the 11th or 12th century. In both ages the art of the builder was far in advance of that of the ornamental carver.

This first period of Sicilian history lasts as long as Sicily remains untouched from any non-Hellenic quarter outside, and as long as the Greek cities in Sicily remain as a rule independent of one another. A change begins in the 6th century and is accomplished early in the 5th. The Phoenician settlements in Sicily become dependent on Carthage, whose growing power begins to be dangerous to the Greeks of Sicily. Meanwhile the growth of tyrannies in the Greek cities was beginning to group several towns together under a single master, and thus to increase the greatness of particular cities at the expense of their freedom. Thus Theron of Akragas (488-472), who bears a good character there, acquired also, like Phalaris, the rule of Himera. One such power held dominion both in Italy and Sicily. Anaxilaos of Rhegion, by a long and strange tale of treachery, occupied Zankle and changed its name to Messana. But the greatest of the Sikeliot powers began at Gela in 505, and was in 485 translated by Gelon to Syracuse. That city now became the centre of a greater dominion over both Greeks and Sikels than the island had ever before seen. But Gelon, like several later tyrants of Syracuse, takes his place—and it is the redeeming point in the position of all of them—as the champion of Hellas against the barbarian. The great double invasion of 480 b.c. was planned in concert by the barbarians of the East and the West (Diod., xi. 20; schol. on Pind., Pyth., i. 146; Grote, V. 294). While the Persians threatened old Greece, Carthage threatened the Greeks of Sicily. There were Sikeliots who played the part of the Medizers in Greece: Selinous was on the side of Carthage, and the coming of Hamilkar was immediately brought about by a tyrant of Himera driven out by Theron. But the united power of Gelon and Theron crushed the invaders in the great battle of Himera, won, men said, on the same day as Salamis, and the victors of both were coupled as the joint deliverers of Hellas (Herod., vii. 165-167; Diod., xx. 20-25; Pind., Pyth., i. 147-156; Simonides, fr. 42; Polyainos, i. 27). But, while the victory of Salamis was followed by a long war with Persia, the peace which was now granted to Carthage stayed in force for seventy years. Gelon was followed by his brother Hieron (478-467), the special subject of the songs of Pindar. Akragas meanwhile flourished under Theron; but a war between him and Hieron led to slaughter and new settlement at Himera. These transplantings from city to city began under Gelon and went on under Hieron. They made speakers in old Greece (Thuc., vi. 17) contrast the permanence of habitation there with the constant changes in Sicily. Hieron won the fame of a founder by peopling Katana with new citizens, and changing its name to Aitna.

None of these tyrannies were long-lived. The power of Theron fell to pieces under his son Thrasydaios. When the power of Hieron passed in 467 b.c. to his brother Thrasyboulos the freedom of Syracuse was won by a combined movement of Greeks and Sikels, and the Greek cities gradually settled down as they had been before the tyrannies, only with a change to democracy in their constitutions. The mercenaries who had received citizenship from the tyrants were settled at Messana. About fifty years of general prosperity followed. We have special pictures of almost incredible wealth and luxury at Akragas, chiefly founded on an African trade. Moreover art, science, poetry, had all been encouraged by the tyrants, and they went on flourishing in the free states. To these was now added the special growth of freedom, the art of public speaking. Epicharmos (540-450), carried as a babe to Sicily, is a link between native Sikeliots and the strangers invited by Hieron; as the founder of the local...