United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We find this entry of the diarist next: "I have never beheld a more beautiful landscape than the scene before me.... I am writing this on the banks of Altai Lake.... The balsam from the cone-like firs along the gorges surcharges the air with an intoxicating flavor and reflect their inverted gracefulness in the calm waters of the lake.... The mountains sloping up from either side are delineated in the mirroring surface and form an archway for the snow-capped and broken pinnacle that towers above the others like a sentinel brooding in his frosty and eternal isolation.... Far off in the distance I can see the black and white walls of the KATUN GLACIER and know that, throughout this region, gold and silver, as well as lead and copper, most certainly abound.... In our unending tramp today I have discovered many evidences of the presence of zinc and nickel and other minerals lying around.... My 'prisoner' tells me that there are mines already working in the upper part of the Talovsky River and that the copper runs very high in the vicinity of Chudak.... Alice wrote to Princess G today at T .... I am NOT much impressed nor FAVORABLY by the attitude of these natives in the hills.... They seem to be a mongrel mixture of Tartar and Mongolian who are always ready, like the huge ungainly bears we have encountered in our pilgrimage, to grapple and devour one for the mere pleasure of seeing blood!... Maria seems quite interested in these notes, today she insisted on giving me her impressions of how a NOVEL should be written.... She says that to make a story interesting it should be all movement from the opening line to the final wedding bells.... When I told her that I was writing HISTORY she pouted prettily and remarked: 'I never think of history without wondering WHO subsidized the writer of the misleading fairy tale.
The search for silver and lead has diminished since the mines were opened to private enterprise. At one time 40,000 poods of lead were produced here annually, most of it being sent to the Altai mountains to be employed in reducing silver.
"I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a delegate from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I settled in Siberia; I worked the land there, then I was homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village.
These are the most northern shrubs in Sikkim, and I regarded them with deep interest, as being possibly the last of their kind to be met with in this meridian, for many degrees further north: perhaps even no similar shrubs occur between this and the Siberian Altai, a distance of 1,500 miles.
I only learned long afterwards from a doctor who examined me that I had cracked my skull as the price of my siesta. We crossed the eastern ranges of the Altai and the Karlik Tag, which are the most oriental sentinels the great Tian Shan system throws out into the regions of the Gobi; and then traversed from the north to the south the entire width of the Khuhu Gobi.
They wore the Russian winter dress, but had their own costume for state occasions. In this part of Siberia Kirghese are frequently found in Russian employ, and are said to be generally faithful and industrious. A considerable number find employment at the Altai mines, and a great many are engaged in taking cattle and sheep to the Siberian markets.
I hastened to assure my informant that I had no intention of buying the Altai mountains or any part of them. The Nachalnik visits all mines and smelting works in his district at least once a year, and is constantly in receipt of detailed reports of operations in progress.
The Mitchell takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard journey, over Consul Mason Mitchell's trail; but the takin is about the only large hoofed game available. The Altai Mountains, of western China, contain the magnificent Siberian argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must be seen to be believed.
Rising in the Altai Mountains, it flows from the southeast to the northwest and empties itself into the Obi, after a course of four thousand miles. At this time of year, when all the rivers of the Siberian basin are much swollen, the waters of the Irtych were very high. In consequence the current was changed to a regular torrent, rendering the passage difficult enough.
They were then the inhabitants, strong and predatory, of the Altai plains and valleys: but later on, about the sixth century A.D., they are found firmly established in what is still called Turkestan, and pushing westwards towards the Caspian Sea.
Word Of The Day