The Caucasus, the Elburz, the
Kopetdagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known
network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau
mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed
complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of
Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim, and Aldan, all of which
are ranged _en echelon_,--the former from north-west to south-east,
and the others from south-west to north-east--all these belong
to one immense Alpine belt bordering that of the plateaus. These
have long been known to Russian colonists, who, seeking to escape
religious persecutions and exactions by the state, early penetrated
into and rapidly pushed their small settlements up the better valleys
of these tracts, and continued to spread everywhere as long as
they found no obstacles in the shape of a former population or in
unfavourable climatic conditions.
As for the flat-lands which extend from the Alpine hill-foots to
the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and assume the character either of
dry deserts in the Aral-Caspian depression, or of low table-lands
in central Russia and eastern Siberia, of lake-regions in north-west
Russia and Finland, or of marshy prairies in western Siberia, and of
_tundras_ in the north,--their monotonous surfaces are diversified
by only a few, and these for the most part low, hilly tracts.
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