Tomsk is fifteen hundred versts from Irkutsk, and four thousand five hundred from St. Petersburg, being in latitude 56° 29' 6", and longitude 54° 50' 6" from the latter place. Its population is about ten thousand. It has many manufactories, and a number of handsome houses, with a pleasant though small society. After leaving it, the traveller passes the vast and fertile plain of Baraba, where he is whirled along at the rate of two hundred and seventy versts a day.
The first place of importance which he reaches after crossing it, is Tobolsk, the chief town of the province of that name, and formerly of Siberia. Its latitude is 55° 11' 14", and its longitude 37° 46' 14" east from St. Petersburg, from which, and from Irkutsk, it is distant three thousand versts. Fourteen years ago its population amounted to thirty thousand inhabitants, since when it has in all probability very much increased. Its manufactories are numerous; its society is agreeable, and gives evidence of the same hospitality which is witnessed so generally and so gratefully by the traveller, in those remote regions; but has it not in its very name a charm to the reader who peruses an account of it, in its connexion with those incidents, fictitious or true, which have been formed into one of the most simple, beautiful, and touching tales, that have ever flowed from the imagination or the heart?
From Tobolsk, Mr. Dobell passed rapidly through the surrounding district of the same name, visited Ecatherineburg, where he admired, so far beyond the ordinary limits of the arts, works in marble, agate, and precious stones, which would have done honour to Italian artists; and arriving at the geographical boundary that divides Siberia from Russia, closes the narrative of his travels, which we would willingly have seen continued to the gates of the imperial capital of the north.
"I assure the reader," he says at the close of his truly interesting account, "that in my humble attempt to describe what I have seen and experienced, I have been governed by no partial motives whatever. On the contrary, I have laboured to represent every object faithfully as it has affected my senses. I am, however, conscious at the same time, that it requires an abler pen than mine to delineate adequately the sublime and majestic works of nature in the regions I have been describing, and to portray them to the imagination in all their simplicity, beauty, and grandeur. Siberia does not possess the climate of Italy, nor the luxurious productions of India; but she possesses a fertile soil, a climate much better than is generally believed, and natural resources of the highest value; and she presents to the traveller such a magnificent picture of natural objects, as is no where to be equalled except on the immense continent of America. There is no longer any doubt but the greater part of her territory is susceptible of high cultivation, having a strong fertile soil, covered with superb forests, and intersected by fine rivers, or watered by numerous lakes, many of which may fairly be called seas.
"The race of men produced there, are uncommonly tall, stout, and robust; certainly the best looking people I have ever seen, particularly those of the Western parts. My readers will now, I am sure, agree with me, that this country, hitherto considered the Ultima Thule, or the finis mundi, has been highly gifted by its Creator, and only wants population and improvement to render it the most valuable portion of his Imperial Majesty's dominions."
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The old English lawyers puzzled themselves greatly in tracing the origin of the feudal tenures. The truth is, they may be found in the incipient stages of society in nearly every nation. They existed, in fact, in Hindostan, China, and many other countries, for centuries before the time of the comites of the German princes, mentioned by Tacitus, who are supposed to have founded them. The services of the tenant varied according to the character and condition of the people—the principle was every where the same.
[7] The tael is $1.66; the pecul, 133-1/3 pounds.