. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. sed. Then the town of Samara, the junction of thegreat railway and the great river, then over another bridge acrossthe Ufa River, and the climb over the Ural Mountains begins. Russians had raved to us about these mountains, but thetruth is that Russians are not good judges of mountains—as in-deed, how should they be, when in the whole of European Rus-sia there is no land as high as the Washington Monument?Those in whom the Urals excite immoderate enthusiasm cannever have se
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. sed. Then the town of Samara, the junction of thegreat railway and the great river, then over another bridge acrossthe Ufa River, and the climb over the Ural Mountains begins. Russians had raved to us about these mountains, but thetruth is that Russians are not good judges of mountains—as in-deed, how should they be, when in the whole of European Rus-sia there is no land as high as the Washington Monument?Those in whom the Urals excite immoderate enthusiasm cannever have seen the Tyrol and do not know the Grampians. Letit be said at once that the Urals cannot hold a pine-knot to either. Where the firs clothe them closely, the hills seem to be wear- SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 131 ing a mantle of rough green frieze, but presently larches, yellow-ing fast in this perfect October weather, burn like flambeauxamong the green, and beside the shallow river, wimpling overits stony bed, and through the fords of stepping-stones builtcuriously in a fork shape, the purple thicket of bare alder-twigs. The Town of Zlataoust from the Railway. makes planes of soft, quiet colour. Your fir or pine en masse isan inartistic tree; the repetition of his even points becomes tire-some, and he gives the outline of the mountains a line regularas the teeth of a comb, which should be the despair of the painters wisely let these fir countries alone. In a few places, at the water-parting, which occurs near thetown of Zlataoust,-the pine gives way and the gray stone triumphs 132 ALL THE RUSSIAS where a few points, the highest of any in this southern end of thechain, rise bare against the sky. A Httle stir among the engineers,who courteously desire that I shall lose nothing, causes me toglue myself to the window^ and stare into the forest in my de-sire not to miss the frontier-post, the actual definite spot, beyondthe station of Urjumka, where Europe ends and Asi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecttolstoy, bookyear1902
