A Misunderstood Country.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 922, 2 March 1881, Page 3

A Misunderstood Country.

Siberia is a singularly misunderstood region. Richer by far than Canada, it enjoys a climate neither warmer in summer nor colder in winter. In all the Dominion there is no soil like the black earth along the Obi and Yenessi and even the lumberman of the Ottawa the St. Lawrense, and the Fraser would find himself in an Elysium among the forests that line the banks of the great rivers which intersect Biberia from the borders of China to the shores of the Polar sea. Yet in this fine country, with resources greater than Western America, to which thousands are yearly fleeing from overcrowded Europe, land is a drug, and owing to the difficulty of getting anything out, produce is almost valueless and foreign goods exorbitant in price In the valley of the Yenessi dried fish can be bought for “ next to nothing,” grouse are 7d a brace, capital beef 2|d a pound, and at Krasholarsk a cargo of good wheat could be obtained for about 255. the hundredweight. Corn and hay are, indeed, so cheap that Mr Seebohm, a recent traveller, paid for post-horses over the great steppe between Tomsk and Tjumen only one half-penny per mile. At Yenesseisk a ship’s mast of hard larch, sixty feet long, is worth a guinea. On the Obi live ducks fetch five farthings apiece, the large fish called “ yass ” l|d a pair, and pike a farthing each. Young calves can be bought in villages away from the great overland route for 6d each ; and in the rich black-earth country, immediately north of the Altai, land is leased for 3ld per acre. On the other hand a ton of salt, which can be bought in Liverpool for 15s, commands on the Obi or Yenessi £l5, and on the Lena a still higher price.— St. James' Gazette.