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Updated: May 18, 2025
There is only one line which will be longer when it is finished, and that is the Grand Transsiberian, from the Urals to Vladivostock, which will measure six thousand five hundred kilometres. Between Tiflis and Pekin our journey will not last more than thirteen days, from Uzun Ada it will only last eleven. The train will only stop at the smaller stations to take in fuel and water.
Passing down the eastern slopes of the Urals the train soon reaches Cheliabinsk, running beside the Isset, a tributary of the Irtish, one of the main branches of the grand Obi river. On leaving Cheliabinsk, the traveller begins to realize that he is in Siberia.
Nobody knew his secret: he had vowed to perish rather than ever again involve others in his fate. He reckoned on getting over the first danger of pursuit by mingling with the crowds of people then traveling from every quarter to the annual fair at Irbite at the foot of the Urals. Finally, in February, 1846, he set out on foot.
The fauna of European Russia does not very materially differ from that of western Europe. In the forests not many animals which have disappeared from western Europe have held their ground; while in the Urals only a few now Siberian, but formerly also European are met with.
Leaving the zavod we were once more among the forests of the Urals, and riding over the low hills that form this part of the range. The road was good, but there were more oukhabas than suited my fancy. I was on constant lookout for the steep road leading over the range, but failed to find it.
The development of the wealth of the Urals has been largely due to the Demidoff family. Nikite Demidoff was sent by Peter the Great, about the year 1701, to examine the mines on both sides of the chain. He performed his work thoroughly, and was so well satisfied with the prospective wealth of the region that he established himself there permanently.
How pleasant was the sight of the ships, with their flags of a thousand colors, after the snow and eternal forests of the Urals! But there was again disappointment.
The only mountains throughout all the rest of the Tsar's European territories are the Urals, which nowhere reach even the heights of the Apennines, which do not form everywhere a continuous chain, and which run in almost a straight line from north to south.
The Huns came in when the Chinese drove them; and the Turks and Mongols have come in since; but there is nothing to show that the Slavs, for example, when they first appear in history, had come in from beyond the Urals and the Caspian. Slavs and Greco- Latins, Teutons and Celts, I think they were probably in Europe any time these many hundreds of thousands of years.
From the boundary between Europe and Asia the train takes us onwards past Ufa to Samara. The hills of the Urals become lower and the country flattens out again. Snow lies everywhere in a continuous sheet, and peasants are seen on the roads with sledges laden with hay, fuel, or provisions. At Batraki we pass over the Volga by a bridge nearly a mile long.
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