vate in the fields rye, wheat, oats, barley, and millet,
and in the gardens tobacco, potatoes, and watermelons.
They make also a quantity of hay, that in
this region must be cheap, for the director of the telegraph
station at Omsk told me that most of his clerks
had horses, one of which could be kept for from 8s. to
ioi. a month.
We travelled well at setting out, covering in our first
22 hours 138 miles, and one stage of 12 miles was
accomplished in a little less than the hour. The postmaster’s
letter doubtless helped us to some extent, but
there was an amiability about the Cossack station-
masters and yemstchiks, or postilions, who needed little
persuasion to do their best. A t each station I offered
Scriptures for sale and distributed tracts, the former of
which were gladly purchased, and the latter thankfully
received. I suppose it was this at the second station
that caused the Cossacks to offer me gratis some of their
horse-hair rope that I wanted to buy, and for which,
when I insisted on payment, they took only the trifling
sum of \d. A t Cherlakovsk, the seventh station,;-a
caravan route branches off to the town of Akmolinsk,
and at Urlyutyupsk, the ninth station, 120 miles from
Omsk, we passed out of the Akmolinsk into the
Semipolatinsk government.
We were now well on to the Steppe, whose straight
unbroken horizon so frequently reminds one of the
ocean. T h e soil is yielding, stoneless, and sandy, thus
making the smoothest of roads, on which our horses
dashed along. The country is nearly treeless, and the
ground almost without vegetation, so that one had
o n l y to picture the surface covered with snow to see
the necessity for the roadside wickerwork erections
to mark the route in winter. We were crossing in
F R OM OM S K TO SEM IPO L A T IN SK . 69
the month of August this steppe, parched by the
summer sun ; but Dr. Finsch, who, in 1876, travelled
over the same route in spring, speaks with more
appreciation of its appearance.* The steppe is not
indeed a grass-covered flat, for the verdure is found
only in patches, and then forms no turf, but grows,
like the bunch or buffalo grass of the prairie, in
separate clumps, although the steppe grass is longer.
For great distances the steppe is covered with thickets
of the Spircea, or Meadow-sweet.
Here and there too are gooseberry bushes, intermixed
with feeble-looking birches, generally less than
five feet high, whilst everywhere, when the road approaches
the Irtish, we catch sight on the opposite bank
of a more or less extensive vegetation of well-grown
trees, such as willows, poplars, oaks, birches, and pines.
Alongside the river are frequently found hill-like
chains of sand resembling downs, with wild oats and
other grasses. Another characteristic of the steppe is
seen in numerous ponds and lakes, unconnected by
streams. They are for the most part isolated, and,
what is more remarkable, are in some cases filled
with sweet, in others with salt or brackish, water.
Thus it happens in their neighbourhood that one
meets now with sandy downs, and then with those
deposits of salt that have been caused by evaporation,
and frequently impart to the ground the appearance
of hoar frost or snow. In such quarters the appropriate
salt flora is met with. It is not until the
end of April that this steppe, near Omsk, begins to
present a verdant appearance, and then among the
* “ Reise nach We st Sibirien im Jahre 1876 ” (Berlin, 1879), by Dr.
O. Finsch, to whose account I am indebted in this and following
chapters for several pieces of scientific information.