CHAPTER VI
THE SIBERIAN BACKWOODSMAN AND
FRONTIER TRADER
IN relating my experiences in a peasant village I have, in the last chapter, had occasion to refer to that class of Siberian who, on account of his greater independence and enterprise, has penetrated single-handed to the remote comers of Siberia, and become the pioneer of Slavonic trade and influence in the wilder spots of Russia's Eastern Empire, in the sub-Arctic forests and on the frontier plateaus.
The agricultural colonization of the Slavs is confined to a belt lying between latitudes 55 and 57 in Western Siberia, and to a tract of country in the foothills of the Altai, in the Tomsk and Yenisei governments. North of these districts he immense stretches of almost uninhabited country. First comes the sub-Arctic forest zone stretching northward for 700 miles and eastward right across the whole continent. This great conifer forest, probably the largest in the world, lying just above sea-level, and unbroken by a single hill, is dotted with countless swamps in its southern latitudes and with areas of stunted scrub all along the toundra border. It is traversed by the great rivers Obi, Irtish and Yenisei, and along their banks the colonies of Siberian traders have for many decades past made their abodes. Tobolsk, the principal town of Western Siberia, was 135
