Roughing it in Siberia. By Robert L. Jefferson. (Sampson Low,
Marston, and Co.) — The writer relates how three travellers, one of them an American, the other two Englishmen, took a journey from Moscow across Siberia as far as the Chinese frontier. (This frontier seems, from Mr. Jefferson's language, to be a very vague boundary. An official told him that it was " where you could not find a Russian.") Their object was to take stock of the country, with a special view to gold-mining. We get accordingly a description of incidents of travel on the Siberian Railway, of the manners and customs of the country, and of the regulations under which gold-mining is carried on. The picture is not attractive, but it is obviously drawn with a desire to be faithful to facts. The Russian Government seems to be making an honest effort to relieve the congestion of some of its European provinces by encouraging a great emigration to Siberia. Mr. Jefferson thinks that this was, at least, one of the main objects in constructing the Siberian Railway. About the strategic considera- tions on which so much weight has been laid in England he pro- nounces no opinion. Of the commercial possibilities of Siberia he has no question; but he doubts whether Englishmen will be inclined to submit to the autocratic regime by which everything is controlled.
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