a third part of this is occupied by rocky country which is
wooded, and probably capable of being cultivated only with
considerable difficulty, but the rest consists for the most part of
easily cultivated grassy plains, with little wood, and covered with
the most luxuriant vegetation. The soil, in many places resembling
the black earth or _tscherno-sem_ of Russia, recompenses with
abundant harvests even the slightest labour of cultivation.
Notwithstanding this, these regions now support only an exceedingly
sparse population, but many, many millions may without difficulty
find their subsistence there when once cultivation has developed the
rich natural resources of the country.

It is a circumstance specially fortunate for the future development
of Siberia that its three great rivers are already navigable for the
greater part of their course. The Ob is navigable from Biisk (52-1/2 deg.
N.L.), and the Irtisch at least from Semipalitinsk (50 deg.
18' N.L.). The Yenesej, again, which, after leaving the region of
its sources in China, crosses with its two main arms the whole of
Siberia from north to south, from the forty-sixth to the
seventy-third degree of latitude, and thus traverses a territory
which corresponds in length to the distance between Venice and the
North Cape, or between the mouth of the Mississippi and the north
part of Lake Winnipeg, and is already navigable by nature from the
sea to Yenisejsk. To this town goods are already transported _down_
both the main arms from Minusinsk and the region of Lake Baikal. It
is said that the Angara might be made quite navigable during its
whole course at an expenditure trifling in comparison with the
advantages that would thus be gained, as well as its continuation,
the Selenga, in its lower part between the Chinese frontier and Lake
Baikal. In this way a river route would be opened for the conveyance
of the products of North China and South Siberia to a sea which an
ordinary steamer would cross in five or six days to the White Sea or
the North Cape. A similar communication with the Atlantic may be
opened on the double river Ob-Irtisch with Western Siberia and High
Asia as far as to Chinese Dsungaria, where the Irtisch begins its
course as a small river, the Black Irtisch, which falls into Lake
Saisan, and rises south of the Altai Mountains in the neighbourhood
of the Selenga, the source-river of the Yenisej. At several places
the river territories of the Ob and the Yenes