The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-06-13
The Climate of Siberia.

From George Remnants illustrated
account of the " Plains and Prisons of
Western Siberia" in the June Century,
we quote the following: {" 1t is hardly
necessary to say that country which
has an area of five and half millions
of square miles and which extends in lati-
tude as far as from the southern ex-
tremity of Greenland to the Island of
Cuba must present great diversities of
climate, topography and vegetation, and
can not be everywhere a barren arctic
waste. A mere glance at a map is suffi-
cient to show that a considerable part of
western Siberia lies farther south than
Nice, Venice or Milan, and that the
southern boundary of the Siberian prov
ince of Semirechinsk is nearer the equa-
tor than Naples. In a country which
thus stretches from the latitude of Italy
to the latitude of central Greenland one
would naturally expect to find, and as a
matter of fact one does find, many va
rieties of climate and scenery. In
some parts of the province of Yakutsk
the mean temperature of the month of
January is more than fifty degrees below
zero Fahrenheit, while in the province
of Semipalatinsk the mean temperature
of the month of July is seventy-two
degrees above; and such maximum
temperatures as ninety-fve and one
hundred degrees in the shade are COM
paratively common. On the Taimyr
peninsula, east of the Gulf of Oh, the
permanently frozen ground thaws out
in summer to depth of only a few
inches and supports but a scanty vege-
tation of berry bushes and moss, while
in the southern part of western Siberia
watermelons and cantaloupes are a
profitable crop, tobacco is grown upon
thousands of plantations and the peas
ants harvest annually more than So
100000 bushels of grain. The fact
which | desire especially to impress
upon the mind of the reader is that ST.
IBERIA is not everywhere uniform and
homogeneous. The northern part of
the country differs from the southern
part quite as much as the Hudson Bay
territory differs from Kentucky, and it
is as great a mistake to attribute the cold
and barrenness of the Lena delta to the
whole of Siberia as it would be to at
tribute the cold and barrenness of King
Williams Land to the whole of North
America. To the traveller who crosses
the Urals for the first time in June
nothing is more surprising than the
fervent heat of Siberian sunshine and
the extraordinary beauty and profusion
of Siberian flowers. Although we had
been partly prepared by our voyage up
the Kama for the experience which
awaited us on the other side of the
mountains, we were fairly astonished
upon the threshold of western Siberia by
the scenery, the weather and the flora
In the fertile, poisoning country pre-
scented to us, as we rode swiftly eastward
into the province of Tobolsk, there was
absolutely nothing even remotely to
suggest an arctic region. If we had
been blindfolded and transported to it
suddenly in the middle of a sunny
afternoon, we could never have guessed
to what part of the world we had been
taken. The sky was as clear and blue
and the air as soft as the sky and air of
California; the trees were all in full leaf
birds were singing over the flowery
meadows and in the clumps of birches
by the roadside; there were a drowsy
hum of bees and faint fragrance of
flowers and verdure in the air, and the
sunshine was as warm and bright as
that of June afternoon in the most
favored part of the temperate zone"