The Manitowoc Pilot

The Climate of Siberia.*
From George Kennan's account of
the "Plains and Prisons of Western Si-
bria," in the Century, we quote the
following: "It is hardly necessary to
say that a country which has an area
of five and a half million square miles,
and which extends in latitude as far
as from the southern extremity of
Greenland to the island of Cuba, must
present great diversities of climate, to-
graphy, and vegetation, and cannot
be everywhere a barren arctic waste.
A mere glance at a map is sufficient to
show that a considerable part of west-
tern Siberia lies farther south than Nice.
Venice, or Milan, and that the southern
boundary of the Siberian province of
Semirechinsk is nearer the equator
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
varieties of climate and scenery. In
some parts of the province of Yakutsk
the mean temperature of the month of
January is more than 50 degrees below
zero, Fahr., while in the province of
Semipalatinsk the mean temperature
of the month of July is 72 degrees
above; and such maximum tempera-
tures as 95 and 100 degrees in the
shade are comparatively common. On
the Taimyr peninsula, east of the Gulf
of Ob, the permanently frozen ground
thaws out in summer to a depth of
only a few inches, and supports but a
scanty vegetation of berry bushes and
moss, while in the southern part of
western Siberia watermelons and can-
taloupes are a profitable crop, tobacco
is grown upon thousands of plantations
and the peasants harvest annually more
than 50,000,000 bushels of grain. The
fact which I desire especially to im-
press upon the mind of the reader is
that Siberia is not everything uniform
and homogeneous. The northern part
of the country differs from the south-
tern 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 attribute the cold and barrenness
of King William Land to the whole of
North America.
"To the traveler who crosses the
Urals for the first time in June nothing
is more surprising than the fervent
heat of Siberian sunshine and the ex-
traordinary 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, blossoming coun-
try presented to us as we rode swiftly
eastward into the province of Tobolsk.
there was absolutely nothing even re-
motely to suggest an arctic region. If
we had been blindfolded and trans-
ported 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
a faint fragrance of flowers and ver-
dure in the air; and the sunshine was
as warm and bright as that of a June
afternoon in the most favored part of
the temperate zone."