Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Through the Forest-Region
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the traveller. The first thing that strikes him is the absence
of open fields about them. One comes suddenly out of
the forest into the village street, and plunges again into
the virgin forest once more. The villagers have their
plots of cultivated land scattered far and wide in valleys
or open places in the forest. Seldom does one see barns,
sheds for the cattle, or enclosures of any kind, even these
being in the forests. Moreover, the inhabitants of the
villages on the great Siberian road have not devoted
themselves much to agriculture. Founded by command to serve
as posting-stations, many of the villages are situated in
places quite unsuitable for agriculture, and their inhabitants
have spent most of their time on the box-seat. With
the opening of the railroad many of these villages will be
ruined.
Surrounded by the forest as by a dense wall, the
villages consist almost invariably of two rows of houses
lying one on each side of the road, and extend
sometimes to a length of three or four miles. In the middle
or at one end the gloomy and weather-beaten station-prison
towers above the rest of the houses, with its courtyard
surrounded by a high wooden fence. This étape-prison
dominates the settlement, which is only its attribute, its child,
on which it impresses its character. In the centre of the
village may be seen a couple of two-storeyed houses with a
drinking-saloon or a store on the lower floor. On either
hand stretches the long row of one-storeyed houses or huts,
gray or black from exposure to the hard climate or from
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