Islands and Saghalin
in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Aleutian archipelago was sold to the
United States in 1867, together with Alaska, and in 1874 the Kurile
Islands were ceded to Japan.

[ILLUSTRATION: ARCHANGEL.]

A vast variety of physical features is obviously to be expected in
a territory like this, which comprises on the one side the cotton
and silk regions of Turkestan and Trans-caucasia, and on the other
the moss and lichen-clothed Arctic _tundras_ and the Verkhoyansk
Siberian pole of cold--the dry Transcaspian deserts and the regions
watered by the monsoons on the coasts of the Sea of Japan. Still,
if the border regions, that is, two narrow belts in the north and
south, be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physical
feature prevails. High plateaus, like those of Pamir (the "Roof
of the World") or of Armenia, and high mountain chains like the
snow-clad summits of the Caucasus, the Alay, the Thian-Shan, the
Sayan, are met with only on the outskirts of the empire.

Viewed broadly by the physical geographer, it appears as occupying
the territories to the north-west of that great plateau-belt of the
old continent--the backbone of Asia--which spreads with decreasing
height and width from the high table-land of Tibet and Pamir to the
lower plateaus of Mongolia, and thence north-eastwards through the
Vitim region to the furthest extremity of Asia. It may be said to
consist of the immense plains and flat-lands which extend between
the plateau-belt and the Arctic Ocean, including all the series of
parallel chains and hilly spurs which skirt the plateau-belt on
the north-west. It extends over the plateau itself, and crosses
it beyond Lake Baikal only.

A broad belt of hilly tracts--in every respect Alpine in character,
and displaying the same variety of climate and organic life as
Alpine tracts usually do--skirts the plateau-belt throughout its
length on the north and north-west, forming an intermediate region
between the plateaus and the plains. The Caucasus, the Elburz, the
Kopetdagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known
network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau
mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed
complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of
Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim, and Aldan, all of which
are ranged _en echelon_,--the former from north-west to south-east,
and the others from south-west to north-eas