Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/40

After the Obi has been crossed a change comes over the country. The land rises in rolling downs, varying from 500 to 600 feet above sea-level, and it is no exaggeration to say that this is the first break in the level plain which stretches from the Ural Mountains across the Ishim-Irtish and Baraba steppes for over 1000 miles. These foothills are the first step or north-western escarpment of the Siberian Altai uplift, and this uplift itself is the north-western edge of the great Central Asiatic plateau, which protrudes into Western Siberia at this point, and is skirted by the railway in its eastern course. We now see low rolling foothills of sandy loam and friable rock, covered with open forests of Scotch pine, spruce, and Siberian pine. Although the latitude here is the same as that of the steppes to the west, the higher altitude is favourable to forest growth. At intervals in the forests are areas of open, grassy country on which peasant colonies both old and new are scattered, but nowhere in such profusion as in the western steppes. The climate is more rigorous, and, although it was April, the snow, which did not lie on the western steppes, was lying here, the drifts in the forest being several feet deep. The peasants and immigrant colonists grow chiefly rye and wheat when the season permits, but autumn frosts sometimes intervene and spoil the latter. For the next twenty-four hours after leaving the Obi River the train passes at a leisurely speed of about twenty miles an hour through this undulating forest with its open patches here and there, studded with groves of birch. I have never seen a country more like Canada, and I particularly called to mind the forest country of North Ontario and Quebec as we passed along.