Travels in the Tian'-Shan', 1856-1857

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TRAVEL TO TIEN SHAN IN 1856-1857 Memoirs Offered to the Soviet reader is the first edition of a complete description of the journey to the Tien Shan by the famous Russian geographer Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov, who later received the addition of Tien-Shansky to his surname, will allow you to read one of the remarkable pages in the development of Russian science. P.P. Semenov was the first of the researchers to penetrate deep into the mountainous country of the Tien Shan, mysterious to his contemporaries. He was the first to draw a diagram of the Tien Shan ridges, explored Lake Issyk-Kul, discovered the upper reaches of the Syr Darya, saw the Tengri-Tag mountain group and the majestic Khan-Tengri pyramid, the first to reach the glaciers originating in the Tengri-Tag group, the first to establish that the Chu River does not originate from Issyk-Kul, as scientists contemporary to Semenov thought, he refuted the opinion of A. Humboldt about the volcanic origin of the Tien Shan, he proved that eternal snow lies on the Tien Shan at a very high altitude, he was the first to establish vertical natural belts of the Tien Shan. Shan, discovered dozens of new plant species unknown to science, and was the first to see living argali. But it is not only the discoveries of new things that put Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky in the first rank of world scientists. He carried out his expeditions using a completely new method of geographical research. Further we will dwell on it in more detail, but here we will say that this technique was the foundation on which other studies that glorified Russian science, pushing it forward in world geography, relied - Przhevalsky, Roborovsky, Kozlov, Potanin, Pevtsov and others. The circumstances of Pyotr Petrovich’s life were such that a trip to the Tien Shan in 1856-1857. remained his only major field study. Expedition 1860-1861 he failed to implement. But being from 1873 to 1914. chairman of the Russian Geographical Society and being mostly in St. Petersburg, Pyotr Petrovich put his thoughts, his dreams, his aspirations into dozens of distant expeditions, he conveyed his ideas to Przhevalsky, Potanin, Mushketov, Krasnov, Berg and many other researchers of Central Asia and Central Asia, and in their works, to some extent, the broad geographical ideas of Pyotr Petrovich, his organizational talent, his courage, and the indomitable power of scientific generalizations are embodied. P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, without a doubt, is a classic of Russian geography, and from his works our youth can and should learn the complexity of geographical research, the purposefulness of scientific work, the simplicity and imagery of geographical characteristics, the breadth and boldness of generalizations based on carefully collected factual material. ”Journey to the Tien Shan” is interesting not only for geographers. A wide variety of readers will enjoy reading the wonderful descriptions of the travels of Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. Even before traveling to Tianynan, in 1856, Pyotr Petrovich wrote in the preface to the first volume of “Earth Studies of Asia” by Karl Ritter: “Until domestic scientists put the content of science into the forms of their native language, they will remain a caste alien to domestic development Egyptian priests, perhaps with knowledge and high aspirations, but without a beneficial influence on their compatriots.” “The desire of every 1

scientist, if he does not want to remain a cold cosmopolitan, but wants to live one life with his compatriots, should be, in addition to trying to move human knowledge absolutely forward, also a desire to introduce its treasures into people’s lives.” “Journey to the Tien Shan” was written exactly like that, to enter into the life of the people - in beautiful Russian language, colorful, strong and simple, with clear and deep thoughts. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky’s book inspires love for the homeland, pride in its brave and energetic researchers who were the first to discover to science those wonderful corners of the country where we now observe the intense economic, political, and cultural life of the Soviet people. “Travel to Tien Shan” was written by Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky already at an advanced age - in the 81st year of his life according to diaries of 1856-1857. During the day of work, P.P. processed a day from his travel diaries. In terms of accuracy and freshness of records, ”Travel to the Tien Shan” is a valuable historical document reflecting the life of Russia almost a hundred years ago. Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov was born in 1827 into the landowner family of the Semyonovs in the Ryazan province. It can be assumed, as, for example, L. S. Berg does, that Semyonov’s passion for travel and love for geography arose in early childhood. This conclusion is suggested by Semyonov’s own memoirs, in which, in the decline of his life, he recalls with deep feeling his childhood impressions of the nature around him, his first survey of a garden, taken at the age of 10, and his first children’s excursions. From 15 to 18 years old, Semenov studied at the military school of guards ensigns and cavalry cadets, where, as in childhood, he was especially interested in natural sciences. After graduating from this school, he abandoned his military career and entered the university as a volunteer. In 1851, Semenov defended his master’s thesis on botany, the material for which he collected in 1849 during botanical research in the black earth provinces. Semenov’s youthful years coincided with a significant event in the history of Russian geographical science. In 1845 the Russian Geographical Society was founded. Among the founders of the society were such major geographers as K. I. Arsenyev, F. P. Litke, I. F. Kruzenshtern, K. M. Baer, A. I. Levshin and others. By the end of the first year of the Society’s activity, there were 144 members. In 1849, young Semenov was elected a member of the Society. All stages of Semenov’s further geographical activity are inseparably connected with the history of the Russian Geographical Society. From 1850 to 1856 P.P. Semenov was the secretary of the physical geography department of the Society, from 1856 to 1860 he was assistant to the chairman and from 1860 to 1873 he was the chairman of this department. In 1873, P. P. Semenov was elected chairman of the Society and remained its leader until the end of his life - 1914, that is, for 41 years. Yu. M. Shokalsky, who became the chairman of the Geographical Society after Semyonov’s death, subsequently wrote about Semyonov: “For us, old workers of the Society, the names “Pyotr Petrovich” and “Geographical Society” are inseparable.” Another major Russian geographer, L. S. Berg, who is currently the chairman of the Geographical Society, spoke about Semenov in almost the same words: “In the minds of our old members of the Society, the Geographical Society and Pyotr Petrovich are inseparable and inseparable concepts, it’s almost synonyms”. There is no doubt that work at 2

the Geographical Society was crucial for the rapid formation of P. P. Semyonov as a geographer. He himself subsequently brilliantly described the significance of such activity in his memoirs about one of the members of the Geographical Society - N.A. Milyutin, whose vigorous activity, according to Semyonov: ”... was for him, one might say, the equivalent of a higher academic education. A whole series of things he heard he in the Society of Scientific Conversations and Communications, personal relations with first-class Russian scientists and the use of an extensive library completely replaced the reading of professorial lectures for him, and his own scientific work undertook helped him to master strict scientific research methods.” These words, with a certain right, could be applied to Semyonov himself, with the difference that his initial activity in the Geographical Society would have to be called not an equivalent (replacement) of academic higher education, but a second specialized education after St. Petersburg University. Already in the first years of P. P. Semenov’s stay at the Geographical Society, a distinctive feature of all his further scientific activities appeared - the remarkable versatility of his scientific interests. Semenov’s first independent works related to various branches of the natural sciences. In his geological work related to European Russia, P. P. Semenov, according to V. A. Obruchev, “for the first time stated the distribution of the central Russian Devonian strip beyond the Don and Voronezh rivers.” In “The Don Flora” Semyonov summarized the results of his botanical research that covered the Don basin. In his work on New California, he gave a geographical description of a vast territory based on the study of literary sources. Semyonov’s speeches at the Russian Geographical Society, his notes and reviews related to a wide variety of issues - from cosmogony to zoological geography. The most significant of Semyonov’s early works, completed before the trip of 1856-1857, is the translation of the first volume of Ritter’s ”Earth Studies of Asia” and the creation of ”Additions” to it. In 1850, the Council of the Geographical Society decided to translate certain parts of Ritter’s “Earth Science of Asia” relating to Asian Russia and the countries adjacent to it. This translation should have been supplemented by new sources accumulated after the publication of ”Earth Studies of Asia”. Translation and addition of parts relating to Southern Siberia and all of inner Chinese Asia was undertaken by Semyonov. A significant part of the translation work was done by him back in 1851-1852. Later the work continued abroad. Semyonov was abroad from 1853 to 1855. At the University of Berlin, he attended lectures by Ritter and Dove, worked a lot on geology, as a student of Beirich and Rose and as an assistant to Beirich in his summer work on geological surveys. During these same years, he made numerous excursions, which were of particular importance in his preparation as a traveler-explorer of mountainous countries. “...I was attracted to the mountains, which I, having fully studied geography in theory, had never seen in my life,” he recalls in his memoirs. Semyonov visited the Harz, Semigorye, and Vosges. In the autumn of 1853, he “traveled a lot on foot in Switzerland, especially in the Bernese Alps and on lakes Thun, Brienz and Vierwaldstedt.” Semenov was in Switzerland for the second time in the spring of 1854. This time he visited Lake Vierwaldstedt and the mountain passes leading to Italy and Wallis: Saint Gotthard, Saint 3

Bernard, Grimsel, Furku and others, making all his journeys on foot, without a guide, with a compass and Baedeker” and often traveling up to 50 miles in one day. In 1854, Semenov observed the eruption of Vesuvius, which, even before its eruption, made 17 ascents. During his stay abroad, Semyonov continued to work on the “Additions” to the “Geography of Asia”. Karl Ritter, “having met me, fell in love with me extremely as his translator and commentator, and sent to me everyone interested in the geography of the walled Chinese Empire and Central Asia in general, telling them that I was more familiar with the current state of geographical information about these parts of Asia, than himself,” this is how Semenov later recalled these years. In the spring of 1855, Semyonov returned to Russia. In St. Petersburg he completed his work on the ”Additions” and published several articles on various topics. The publication of the first volume of ”Earth Studies of Asia”, with additions written by him, was published in 1856, Semyonov provided an extensive ”Translator’s Preface”, remarkable, in particular, because it outlined Semyonov’s views on geography and gave a definition of geography as a special science. In the ”Translator’s Preface” Semyonov presented his views on geography, as an already established scientist to a large extent. This, in the most general terms, is the biographical outline that must be kept in mind when speaking about the formation of Semyonov as a geographer in the first years of his literary and geographical activity, preceding his trip to the Tien Shan. 1856-1857 occupy a very special place in Semenov’s geographical activities. These are the years of his famous journey, which marked the beginning of subsequent expeditions to Central Asia by a galaxy of remarkable Russian traveler-geographers of the second half of the 19th century: Przhevalsky, Roborovsky, Kozlov, Potanin, the Grumm-Grzhimailo brothers and others. The information about the Tien Shan that European geographical science had at its disposal by the middle of the 19th century is well characterized in a few words by G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo: “By the fifties of the last century, the entire amount of European information about the Heavenly Ridge of the Chinese was provided by Ritter’s Asia, and clearly - d’Anville’s maps in Klaproth’s later revision. This knowledge, if not equal to zero, was insignificant...” How insignificant this knowledge was can best be seen from a simple listing of the materials on which geographers based their descriptions and cartographic images of the Tien Shan. Let us use a brief enumeration of them made by Semyonov himself in one of his articles about the Tien Shan: “... the facts developed... by the best scientists of our century were meager and insufficient; they were recorded randomly and fragmentarily by people who passed through these countries not with scientific purposes and even completely alien to science, such as, for example, Chinese travelers, mainly from the Buddhist missionaries of the 4th-7th centuries, and bypass officials of modern times, and Russian-Tatar merchants who followed with their caravans for trading purposes two specific routes - to Little Bukharia or Kashgaria. Only the Chinese commission of the 18th century for cartographic survey of Xi-Yu (or western lands) during the reign of KyanLun, which determined even one astronomical point on Lake Issyk-Kul, could have been somewhat more scientific in nature, because in ”It was headed by European Jesuit missionaries. However, these latter, as far as I know, did not 4

leave any of their own reports about their routes near the Tien Shan system, and their maps, except for astronomical points, are based on the dry, unfounded routes of their Chinese assistants.” The greatest interest from Chinese sources was the evidence of a 7th century traveler. Xuan-tsang, who crossed the eastern Tien Shan from south to north through Musart, the valley of Lake Issyk-Kul and entered the valley of the Chu River. Xuanzang gave a brief, but for his time very meaningful and truthful description of the nature of the Tien Shan. About Lake Issyk-Kul, for example, Xuan-tsang wrote: “From east to west it is very long, from south to north it is short. It is surrounded on four sides by mountains, and many streams gather in it. Its waters have a greenish-black color and its taste is both salty and bitter at the same time. Sometimes it is calm, sometimes the waves are raging on it. Dragons and fish live in it together.” Of all the Chinese sources, descriptions of Xuan-tsang, as Krasnov aptly put it, “are the first and only source that is trustworthy and characterizes in detail the nature of the country.” Other original sources were distinguished not only by the extreme paucity of factual material, but also by its unreliability. “Mysterious Tien Shan” - this expression was as widespread in relation to the Tien Shan as the expression “terra incognita” in relation to Central Asia. Humboldt developed the theory of Tien Shan volcanism. The Tien Shan, according to Humboldt, was supposed to represent a high snowy ridge with alpine glaciers on its peaks and fire-breathing volcanoes located along the entire ridge, from Turkestan to Mongolia. The idea of the Tien Shan expedition arose in Semenov on the eve of his trip to Europe. He himself writes about this in the first volume of his memoirs: “My work on Asian geography led me... to a thorough acquaintance with everything that was known about inner Asia. I was especially attracted to the most central of the Asian mountain ranges - Tien Shan, which had not yet been touched by a European traveler and which was known only from scanty Chinese sources... To penetrate deep into Asia to the snowy peaks of this inaccessible ridge, which the great Humboldt, based on the same meager Chinese information, considered volcanic, and bring him several samples from the fragments of rocks of this ridge, and home - a rich collection of flora and fauna of a country newly discovered for science - this was what seemed the most tempting feat for me.” Semyonov considered his subsequent studies in geography and geology, excursions in the glacial regions of Switzerland and the study of Italian volcanoes primarily as preparation for a future trip. ”P.P. Semenov, preparing for the planned trip, paid special attention to the study of the most ancient (Paleozoic) formations, the distribution of which he expected in Central Asia, as well as to the petrographic study of crystalline rocks, but, bearing in mind Humboldt’s assumptions about the distribution of volcanic rocks and phenomena in the Tien Shan, considered it necessary to go to Italy in the fall of 1854, and stayed there for several months to study volcanic rocks and phenomena in the vicinity of Naples, where Vesuvius was erupting at that time” - this is how Semenov’s preparation for his trip is described in “History half a century of activity of the Russian Geographical Society.” During his stay in Berlin, Semyonov informed Humboldt and Ritter about his planned trip to the Tien Shan. Both of them, as Semyonov recalls, blessing him on the diffi5

cult path, “did not hide their doubts about the possibilities of penetrating so far into the heart of the Asian continent.” However, Semyonov was determined to achieve his goal. Returning to Russia, he completed the publication of the first volume of ”Geography of Asia” and received the consent of the Council of the Geographical Society to equip him for an expedition ”to collect information about those countries to which the next two volumes of Ritter’s Asia, already translated by him, belong, namely the volumes relating to Altai and Tien Shan,” he himself later wrote. Without directly informing anyone of his intention to penetrate the Tien Shan, Semyonov indicated that in order to add to the Geography of Asia, he needed to personally visit some of the areas described in the volumes he translated. At the beginning of May 1855, Semyonov went on an expedition. In June he was already in Barnaul. The reader will see a detailed description of the progress of the expedition after reading this book. However, to characterize the corresponding geographical generalizations of Semyonov, it is necessary to briefly dwell on individual stages of his journey. Initially, Semyonov expected to carry out research in Altai during the summer of 1856 and only then head to Issyk-Kul. However, a three-week illness in Zmeinogorsk forced him to limit his travel through Altai to an overview of its western outskirts in order to be able to penetrate Issyk-Kul during the fall. He visited the Ulbinskaya and Ubinskaya valleys, the most important mines, and, having climbed one of the highest squirrels near Riddersk - Ivanovsky, headed through Semipalatinsk to the Vernoye fortification, built shortly before his trip (the present city of Alma-Ata). “I slowly drove through the entire vast and interesting country from Semipalatinsk to the Kopal Fortification, stopping wherever the interests of the science of geology required it. In two places I managed to climb the tops of high mountains, close to the limits of eternal snow and covered with eternal snow spots, namely in the chain Karatau near Kopal itself and in the Alamak chain, far beyond Kopal near the Koksu River...” wrote Semyonov in his first letter sent to the Russian Geographical Society. From Verny, Semenov made two trips to Issyk-Kul. On his first trip, passing through the mountain passes of the Trans-Ili Alatau, he reached the eastern tip of Issyk-Kul. The route of his second trip to the western end of the lake passed through the Kastek Pass and the Buam Gorge. In his second letter sent to the Russian Geographical Society after completing this route, Semenov wrote: “My second big trip to the Chu River exceeded my expectations with its success: I not only managed to cross the Chu, but even reached Issyk-Kul this way, that is, its western extremity, on which no European has yet set foot and which has not been touched by any scientific research.” Before the onset of winter, Semenov still managed to visit Gulja and then again, passing through Semipalatinsk, he returned to Barnaul in November 1856. In the spring of 1857, Semenov again arrived in Vernoye together with the artist Kosharov (an art teacher at the Tomsk gymnasium), whom he invited to participate in the expedition. This time the goal of the expedition was to fulfill Semenov’s cherished desire - to penetrate deep into the Tien Shan mountain system. Having left Verny, Semenov reached the Santash plateau, from where the expedition moved to the southern shore of Issyk-Kul. Having reached the Zaukinskaya Valley, Semenov crossed the Terekey-Alatau 6

and through the Zauku Pass reached the source of Naryn. “Before the travelers spread out a vast plateau-syrt, on which were scattered small semi-frozen lakes, located between relatively low mountains, but covered on the tops with eternal snow, and on the slopes with the luxurious greenery of alpine meadows. From the top of one of these mountains, the travelers saw very clearly flowing from the syrt lakes spread out at their feet, the upper reaches of the tributaries of Naryn, the main source of which was located to the east-south-east from here. Thus, for the first time, the sources of the vast river system of Yaxartes were reached by a European traveler,” wrote P. P. Semenov in ”The History of Half a Century activities of the Russian Geographical Society”. From here the expedition set off on its return journey. Soon Semyonov made a second, even more successful ascent to the Tien Shan. This time the expedition route went in a more eastern direction. “Climbing along the Karkara River, a significant tributary of the Ili River, and then along Kok-Dzhar, one of the upper rivers of Karkara, the traveler climbed to a pass of about 3,400 meters, separating Kok-Dzhar from Sary-Dzhas...”. This difficult path, unknown to any European explorer of Asia, led Semenov to the heart of the Tien Shan - to the Khan Tengri mountain group. Having visited the sources of Sary-jas, Semenov discovered the vast glaciers of the northern slope of Khan Tengri, from which Sary-jas originates. One of these glaciers was subsequently named after Semenov. On the way back to the foot of the Tien Shan, Semenov took a different road, following the valley of the Tekesa River. That same summer he explored the Trans-Ili Alatau, visited the Katu area in the Ili Plain, the Dzhungar Alatau and Lake Ala-kul. Completion of the expeditions of 1856-1857. Semenov visited two mountain passes of Tarbagatai. It is well known that the correct choice of route is of paramount importance for the scientific value of geographical expeditions in unexplored countries. Semyonov’s research in the Tien Shan shows his remarkable ability to choose routes that are most valuable geographically. The most significant feature of these routes is that almost all of them passed primarily across the direction of the mountains, and not along the relatively more convenient longitudinal valleys for the traveler. One of the Tien Shan researchers at the end of the 19th century. Friedrichsen rightly notes that the expeditions of Semenov (and subsequently Severtsov) provided, thanks to this choice of route, mainly across mountain ranges, extremely valuable material about the configuration of the mountains. In “The History of Half a Century of Activities of the Russian Geographical Society,” Semenov evaluates his travels as “an extensive scientific reconnaissance of the northwestern outskirts of Central Mountainous Asia.” He pointed out the reconnaissance nature of his research back in 1856, describing his visit to the western tip of Issyk-Kul. “Of course, this trip, made with speed, forced by the dangers and hardships surrounding me, can only have the character of scientific reconnaissance, and not scientific research; but even in this form it will not remain without results for the geosciences of Asia.” It is quite understandable that the conditions in which these short-term trips with the Cossack detachment took place in completely unexplored areas did not make it possible to make comprehensive long-term observations. However, the results that were achieved by Semenov in his expeditions were the greatest contribu7

tion to world science. After returning from the expedition, Semenov wanted to begin scientific processing of the materials from his trip, intending to publish a full report about it in two volumes with drawings and maps. In addition, he proposed to the Geographical Society a plan for a new trip to the Tien Shan in 1860 or 1861. The results of this expedition, which included in its route (in its main version) two crossings of the least accessible ridges of the Tien Shan, were supposed to surpass, in their scientific significance, the results of the expedition of 1856-1857. Semyonov himself rightly pointed out in his memoirs: “The expedition project was set up by me as broadly as the later projects of the bold expeditions of HM Przhevalsky.” Before leaving for the expedition, Semenov expected to finish developing a report on his trip and publishing it. All these plans, however, remained unfulfilled, since the Council of the Geographical Society did not have funds at that time either for the proposed publication or for supporting a new expedition. “... Litke did not find it possible to equip the grandiose expedition I proposed, not only in 1859 and 1860, but generally in the near future,” recalls Semyonov. In this regard, Semyonov abandoned his original intentions. Official duties (work on the editorial commission for the reform of 1861) significantly distracted him in the future from the development of the collected materials. Only 50 years later, when compiling his memoirs, in 1908, he fully described all stages of his journey in the second volume of his memoirs, which for the first time in this edition, 90 years after the journey, are open to the reader. Until this publication, only articles published by Semyonov in various years covered some of the most important scientific results of his expeditions. In 1858, Semenov published two reports on individual stages of his journey. One of them was read by Semenov at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society and then published in the form of an article in the Bulletin of the Russian Geographical Society. The article contains a detailed description of the expedition route from the Santash plateau to the Zaukinsky pass and to the Naryn River in 1857. In addition, it gives a brief description of the Dzungarian and Trans-Ili Alatau. Another article (more detailed) was published in ”Petermanns Mitteilungen”. The first part of it consists of 4 chapters containing a general overview of the countries visited (Chapter 1), characteristics of the Dzhungar Alatau (Chapter 2), Trans-Ili Alatau (Chapter 3) and the Tien Shan itself and the Issyk-Kul plateau (4 -i chapter); the second part is a reprint of the report read by Semenov at the meeting of the Geographical Society, with minor changes. In 1867, Semyonov published in the “Notes of the Russian Geographical Society” a description of his trip to the western tip of Issyk-Kul in 1856. This article also contains a statement of observations he made in the Trans-Ili Alatau in August 1857. At the end of the article, Semyonov gives a detailed geographical characteristics of the Trans-Ili Alatau. The latest of his published articles, based on materials from the trip, appeared in 1885 in “Picturesque Russia” under the title “Heavenly Ridge and the Trans-Ili region.” In addition to these articles, Semyonov used the materials of his observations in the appropriate places of the Geographical-Statistical Dictionary and additions to the third volume of ”Earth Studies of Asia” (dedicated in large part to the description of the Altai and Sayan mountain systems). He also dwells on some 8

of the results of his observations in the Tien Shan in the preface to the second volume of Geography of Asia. Moving on to Semyonov’s works dedicated to the Tien Shan, let us first note some characteristic features of him as a traveler, a collector of primary geographical material, which largely determined the features of his corresponding geographical works. In Semenov’s various works one can find a number of places in which he expresses his understanding of the tasks of a traveler-explorer of little-known countries: “The explorer of unknown countries, in a difficult struggle with obstacles and hardships, has to deal with determining latitudes and longitudes, plotting on a map a visual survey of the route traveled, trigonometric or barometric determination of the heights he encountered, observations of the temperature of air and water, the overstretch and fall of the rock layers he encountered, the selection of their samples, the collection of plants and animals he encountered, observations of the influence of the surrounding nature and climate on organic life, questioning of natives and observations over their way of life, morals, customs and the influence of local conditions on them, recording everything they saw and heard in short diaries.” This is what P.P. Semenov said in his speech about HM Przhevalsky (1886). Semyonov also spoke about the qualities that a traveler should have in the preface to the fourth volume of ”Earth Studies of Asia.” He defined the work of travelers (and local observers) in this preface as the initial production of all the basic data serving a complete geographical knowledge of the country. To produce such data, according to Semenov, “local observers and researchers require special training in one of the specialties included in the cycle of geographical sciences, or at least greater observation, as well as the ability and skill in collecting information on this subject, and from the traveler, moreover, courage, bravery, the ability to endure hardships, resourcefulness, etc.” Particularly interesting in the above comments are indications of the versatility of observations that a traveler of that era had to engage in. Such versatility was not characteristic of all outstanding travelers who were Semyonov’s contemporaries. About the three largest African travelers of the second half of the 19th century - Livingston, Stanley and Barth, Joseph D. Hooker (also a famous traveler) rightly wrote: “Livingston and Stanley were brave pioneers, but they only managed to map the paths they had traversed for study nature did nothing. After the well-deserved Barthes it was even necessary to send another traveler to plot his routes on the map.” Unlike the mentioned travelers, P.P. Semenov was a traveler of a different type. “Uniting in his person a geologist, a botanist and a zoologist,” he was an example of a comprehensively prepared scientifically, a researcher who was able not only to visit, but, in the apt expression of G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo, “to conquer for science the most interesting in oro - and hydrographically part of the Central Tien Shan.” With all the diversity of his research, Semenov, as a traveler, was not just a geologist, botanist, entomologist, etc., but first of all a geographer. His geological and botanical studies, height measurements and determinations of the distribution of eternal snow were not isolated observations, but were united by a geographical approach and pursued the task of collecting material for the general geographical characteristics of the studied areas. In the above enumeration of the main geographical data, Semy9

onov does not dwell on the question of which of them are the most significant for the geographical characteristics of the area and which issues should be primarily focused on by the traveler. This issue, however, was of particular importance in his own expeditions of 1855-1857. due to the extremely short period of observation to which he was forced to limit himself. In this regard, his letter sent from Semipalatinsk to the Geographical Society after the end of the expedition, in which he highlights the most significant objects of his geographical research, is very valuable for characterizing Semenov as a traveler. “My main attention was paid to the study of mountain passes, since their height determines the average height of the ridges, and the cross-section of the geographical profile and structure of mountain ranges, not to mention their importance as routes of communication between neighboring countries. Finally, I paid no less attention to study of the general features of the orographic and geognostic structure of the country and the vertical and horizontal distribution of vegetation,” wrote Semyonov in this letter. Thus, in addition to the topographical basis of the geographical study of the area, Semyonov especially emphasizes “the study of the general features of the orographic and geognostic structure of the country” and the distribution of vegetation. Semyonov considered the study of vegetation to be a particularly important task for a geographer. In this regard, he shared the views put forward at the beginning of the 19th century. Humboldt. Already in his message “On the importance of botanical and geographical research in Russia,” made at the Geographical Society in 1850, Semenov developed in detail the idea of the importance of studying vegetation, the influence of vegetation cover “on the physiognomic characteristics of each country.” In the first geographical descriptions of Semyonov, vegetation did not occupy a particularly significant place. This is explained by the fact that when developing other people’s research, Semenov was faced with the scarcity of material available about vegetation. “It is impossible to draw general conclusions from these still incomplete facts; we must limit ourselves to only a cursory overview of the vegetation of the country,” he wrote in his “Description of New California...”. Even more meager material was available at that time about the vegetation of Manchuria and the Amur region, to which his subsequent physical and geographical descriptions were devoted. But on his journey through the Tien Shan, Semenov could pay special attention to the vegetation cover of the areas under study. A collection of up to 1,000 plant species was one of the results of his journey. Another, no less important result was systematic records of the nature of the vegetation of the areas lying on the route of the expedition. In addition to vegetation, the traveler’s primary attention was drawn to orography in its connection with the geological structure of the area. In this respect, Semyonov was significantly ahead of the geographical science of the time to which his expedition belonged. This merit of Semyonova is noted by Yu. M. Shokalsky: “In those days... the geographical study of the earth’s surface reigned, and it is completely clear why, first of all, mathematical geography, that is, the creation of a map of the area being studied, this indispensable basis for any geographical study... The geological structure of the surface of a given area and its connection with its geomorphological character were just beginning to be clarified in the works of A. Humboldt.” “There 10

is no doubt,” writes Shokalsky, “that it was Pyotr Petrovich’s geographic talent that suggested to him what was then unclear to many, even outstanding figures in the field of geography.” The routes of Semenov’s Tien Shan expeditions for the most part passed through areas where nature, almost untouched by human influence, retained its natural appearance. It is therefore quite understandable that, while listing in the letter we cited above the issues that were at the center of his attention, Semyonov does not name issues related to human geography and the influence of man on nature. However, whenever there was an opportunity for this, Semyonov observed with particular interest the economy and life of the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz - the inhabitants of the Tien Shan, trying not to miss the most insignificant fact. In his reports, he describes in detail his visits to Kyrgyz settlements, individual meetings with Kyrgyz people along the expedition route, etc. Attention to issues of human geography has been characteristic of Semyonov the traveler from the very beginning of his geographical activities. Recalling in his memoirs his first travels around Europe, Semyonov writes about how he climbed the peaks of Semigorye, “paying equal attention to their volcanic rocks (trachytes) and to the remains of medieval castles on their peaks.” Describing, further, a visit to the Vosges, he notes: “I was attracted there, as in the Harz, not only by geological goals, but also by the desire to get acquainted with the economic life of peasants in France.” Having later become the head of the Geographical Society and the organizer of the largest Russian geographical expeditions, Semyonov constantly emphasized the importance of research in these travels into the relationship between man and nature. He formulated this very clearly in the preface to Potanin’s book about his journey along the Tangut-Tibetan outskirts of China and Central Mongolia. Semyonov points out in this preface that the expeditions of the Geographical Society “were not limited to geodetic surveys and orographic determinations, which can only serve as a framework for the scientific study of the country. Being under the leadership of such people as HM Przhevalsky, they paid special attention to the study of the nature of the country, its vegetation cover , the interesting world of animals living on its surface, and finally, on the distribution over this surface and the relationship to the earth of its ruler, man, who has subjugated the forces of nature.” This general characteristic given by Semyonov to Russian expeditions to Central Asia retains its significance in relation to his own Asian travels. Noting the main characteristic features of Semenov as a traveler, we will point out another distinctive feature of the observations he made. A significant place in Semyonov’s descriptions of the routes he traveled is occupied by descriptions of individual landscapes presented in figurative, artistic language. Semenov’s desire to reproduce in his notes the characteristic features of the general appearance of the areas lying on the route of the expedition can be considered one of the significant features of him as a traveler. Semyonov attached no less importance to artistic sketches of landscapes for subsequent scientific development. We have already mentioned that he specially invited the artist Kosharov to participate in the expedition. Semyonov paid great attention to Kosharov’s works. “The artist P. M. Kosharov provided an invaluable service to my expedition,” he wrote in a letter to the Geographical Society and at the end of the same 11

letter he indicated: “much that is not conveyed in words, but only in drawings, would have been lost for me without Kosharov’s accompaniment.” . Semyonov himself did not make sketches, but his descriptions of types of terrain, including both the traveler’s immediate first impressions and the results of his subsequent geographical observations, combine scientific accuracy of the image with expressiveness, not much inferior to an artistic sketch of the landscape. Let us note in conclusion that mountainous countries especially attracted Semenov due to the variety of types of nature found in them. This is best evidenced by his letter to the Geographical Society, written by him after the end of the Tien Shan expedition. “Neither the monotonous Siberian lowland, from the Northern Ocean to the Irtysh and from the Urals to Altai, devoid of any relief and not representing in its immeasurable space any mountain uplifts or outcrops of hard rock, nor the region of the Siberian Kyrgyz, faithful to the same type, from the Irtysh to the Chu and from Ishim to Balkhash, rich only in low mountain elevations, far from reaching the limits of eternal snow, cannot attract the special attention of a geographer and geologist-traveler. Only high mountainous countries that extend beyond the borders can be particularly interesting and fully worthy of a long-distance and independent expedition eternal snow and representing the greatest variety of relief, geognostic structure, irrigation, climates, etc.” In the preface to the second volume of Geography of Asia, Semyonov highlighted some “of the most general results” of his journey. “These results relate,” he pointed out, “to three very important questions” for the geosciences of Asia, namely: a) the height of the snow line in the Heavenly Ridge, b) the existence of alpine glaciers in it, c) the existence of volcanic phenomena in it.” First Semyonov examines these questions in particular detail in response to the doubt expressed by Humboldt regarding the possibility of such a significant height of the snow line in the Tien Shan, which Semyonov determined during the expedition (from 3,300 to 3,400 meters). Pointing out the approximate nature of the results he obtained, since the determination of altitudes was made by the boiling point of water, Semyonov notes that Humboldt’s objections are not directed at the inaccuracy of the observation method (which he himself used during his American trip), but “belong to the field of comparative geography.” In his comments, Humboldt came to the conclusion that the results obtained by Semyonov were dubious, comparing the height of the Tien Shan snow line determined by Semyonov with the height of the snow line in the Pyrenees and Elbrus (approximately at the same parallels), as well as in Altai (approximately at the same parallels). the same meridians). In answering these objections, Semyonov, like Humboldt, uses the comparative method, applying it, however, much more correctly than was done by Humboldt in his critical remarks. Semenov also compares the height of the snow line in the Tien Shan, determined by him, with the height of the snow line in ridges lying 1) approximately on the same meridians and 2) approximately on the same parallels. Semyonov takes the corresponding figures from Humboldt’s own work “Central Asia”. Let us briefly summarize Semenov’s reasoning. On the same meridian with the Heavenly Ridge the snow lines are located: In Altai (Tigerets squirrels) at 51° N. w. 2,000 meters. On the northern slope of the Himalayan ridge at 32° N. w. 4,730 meters. The Heavenly Ridge ex12

tends in the part visited by the expedition between 41 and 42° N. sh., therefore, just halfway between Altai and Himalayan. Taking the average between the mentioned figures, we obtain the height of the snow line for the Heavenly Ridge at 3,370 meters. In the same parallel zone with the Sky Ridge, snow lines are at the following altitudes: In the Pyrenees (between 42=30’ - 43=N) 2,550 meters. On Elbrus and Kazbek in the Caucasus Range (43° N) 3,080 meters. On Ararat (under 39’ N latitude) 4,030 meters. In the Rocky mountains of North America (at 43° N) 3,550 meters. “Humboldt, in his explanations of my letter to Ritter, points exclusively to the Pyrenees and Elbrus. As for the former, they cannot be taken into account at all when determining the height of the snow line in the Heavenly Ridge, being in a humid coastal climate, where the snow line should be ”incomparably lower than in the continental climate of inner Asia. But the Caucasus represents a better subject for comparison, if used with due caution.” Semyonov points out that the height of the snow line on Elbrus and Kazbek lies at 3,080 meters at a latitude 1 1/2° more north than in the Tien Shan, and in a climate incomparably more humid. On Ararat, where the climate is much drier and the latitude is 2 1/2° more southerly, we find the height of the snow line to be 4,030 meters. If between Elbrus and Ararat there were mountains that, relative to the dryness of the surrounding atmosphere, were intermediate between Elbrus and Ararat, and in their astronomical position lying on the same parallel with the Heavenly Ridge, then the height of the snow line in these mountains would be determined at 3420 meters. Semyonov further explains in detail the reason for the significant height of the Tien Shan snow line, pointing out that this height depends on the characteristics of the geographical location and climate of the Heavenly Range. “The unusual dryness of the atmosphere of the Heavenly Range in comparison with the atmosphere of Altai and the Caucasus” is correctly indicated by Semyonov as the main reason for the difference in the height of the snow line in these mountain systems. Semenov also finds confirmation of the correctness of his determination of the height of the Tien Shan snow line in a few height measurements made by other observers in Dzungaria (trigonometric determinations by Fedorov in Tarbagatai and barometric observations by Schrenk in the Dzungarian Alatau). Semyonov’s polemic with Humboldt about the height of the snow line of the Tien Shan is based primarily on a comparison of the height of the snow line of various mountain systems around the globe. In this case, Semyonov gave an example of the application of the comparative method in geography, outstanding for his time, applying it in relation to the Tien Shan with greater perfection than was done in the critical remarks of Humboldt himself. In addition to determining the height of the snow line, Semenov especially highlighted the discovery of the glaciers of the Tien Shan and the absence of volcanoes and volcanic rocks in those parts of the Tien Shan that were visited by the expedition. With the discovery of the Tien Shan glaciers, Semenov confirmed the assumptions of Ritter and Humboldt, made on the basis of Chinese sources. With indications of the absence of volcanoes in the areas he explored and the considerations expressed on this occasion, Semenov, according to Mushketov, “laid the first fruitful doubt about the validity of the volcanic nature of the Tien Shan.” In 1842, Schrenk pointed 13

out that the Aral-Tyube island on Lake Ala-Kul is not a volcano, as Humboldt assumed. Schrenck’s research was confirmed in 1851 by Vlangali. Schrenk and Vlangali did not express, however, any general conjectural conclusions about the volcanism of the Tien Shan. The credit for the first indication of the doubtfulness of Tien Shan volcanism belongs to Semyonov. In the preface to the second volume of ”Earth Studies of Asia” Semyonov wrote. “The result of all my intensified searches was that I absolutely did not find any volcanoes, or true volcanic phenomena, or even volcanic rocks in the Sky Ridge.” Mount Kullok near Lake Issyk-Kul, as well as the group of Katu hills in the Ili Valley, turned out, according to Semyonov’s research, to represent “nothing volcanic.” With his characteristic caution in general conclusions, Semyonov wrote in the same preface that “the hints of Asians about phenomena that may seem volcanic should be accepted by scientific criticism with great caution, because many of them have already turned out to be unfounded. I will also note,” Semyonov pointed out, - that the impression made on me personally by Dzungaria and the Tien Shan arouses in me some doubts about the existence of volcanoes in this part of Asia, and, in any case, I, as the only eyewitness of the Heavenly Ridge, cannot accept the reality of these volcanoes as an axiom, not requiring no confirmation or evidence. This conviction is one of the important, although, of course, negative, results of my journey.” Thus, Semyonov for the first time rebelled against Humboldt’s opinion on the volcanism of the Tien Shan. Semyonov’s ideas about the orography of the parts of the Tien Shan he studied are visible from the schematic sketch of the orographic lines of the Dzungarian Alatau and Tien Shan attached to one of his articles. The division adopted by Semyonov and the terminology he established were significantly more accurate compared to earlier divisions. Semenov proposed the names of the “Dzhungar” and “Trans-Ili” Alatau for the corresponding ridges. Semenov was the first to draw attention to the connection of the Trans-Ili Alatau with other ridges of the Tien Shan, pointing out that “the Trans-Ili Alatau, with its distant extensions to the east and west, undoubtedly forms the advanced chain of the Tien Shan, from which it differs very little in its geognostic composition ”. Among the shortcomings of Semenov’s terminology is his exclusion from the geographical nomenclature of the Kyrgyz names Terskey-Alatau and Kungei-Alatau for the corresponding ridges. Subsequently, the name Trans-Ili Alatau remained behind the ridge designated by Semenov as the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Behind the ridge, called by Semenov the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, its successful popular name later remained - Kungei-Alatau. A significant amendment made by later researchers to Semyonov’s orographic scheme was the establishment of an arched shape of the Tien Shan ridges, depicted by Semyonov himself with straight lines. Later studies supplemented this scheme with new ridges and showed the absence of the intersection of the two axes of uplift in the Dzhungar Alatau, as assumed by Semyonov. In addition to the above considerations about the snow line and volcanism of the Tien Shan, Semyonov’s main generalizations, based on the materials he collected, are contained in his descriptions of the Trans-Ili Alatau and Issyk-Kul. The description of the Trans-Ili Alatau is the most significant summary characteristic in articles 14

about the Tien Shan. The Trans-Ili Alatau was studied by Semenov in more detail than other parts of the Tien Shan system. In one of his articles, Semenov wrote: “Two trips in 1856 to both ends of Lake Issyk-Kul, despite the unfavorable conditions for scientific research in which they were carried out, had already sufficiently familiarized me with the orographic structure of the TransIli Alatau, but especially the information my knowledge about the orographic structure and geognostic structure of the Trans-Ili region expanded during quite long and numerous trips in this ridge during 1857, when I tried, especially in the eastern, safer part of the Trans-Ili Alatau, to cross both chains of it in all possible accessible ways mountain passes...” A description of the Trans-Ili Alatau was made by Semyonov in his articles of 1858 and 1867; with some changes caused mainly by the popularity of the publication, it was repeated in “Picturesque Russia” in 1885 and, finally, given in this edition. Let us indicate the main points of this description, using a detailed article published by Semenov back in 1867. Semenov describes the Trans-Ili Alatau from the confluence of the KarKara River with the Kegen River to the Buam Gorge, noting that the rise of the Trans-Ili Altau is not limited to the indicated limits. Initially, Semenov’s description outlines the general view of the Trans-Ili Alatau from the Ili River. “If you look at the Trans-Ili Alatau from the Ili River,” writes Semyonov, “it appears to rise as an extremely steep wall, without any foothills, and its wavy ridge does not represent deep cuts, but is only very elevated in the middle, where it completely crosses the snow line and gradually and symmetrically lowers on its two wings, which do not reach the snow line and do not carry eternal snow even on individual peaks. It is remarkable that from the Ili picket the shapes of the snow ridge in the middle of the Trans-Ili Alatau, with the transparent atmosphere of Central Asia, in the rays of the sun are for the most part completely clearly visible ”, while the insignificant buttresses and foothills of the ridge completely merge with each other, which further gives the ridge the appearance of a wall suddenly rising from a completely horizontal plane. As you approach the ridge, its foothills also become noticeable, however, completely insignificant in comparison with its colossality.” . In the following presentation, Semenov gives a brief summary of his observations on the orography and geological structure of the Trans-Ili Alatau. The orographic structure of the Trans-Ili Alatau is characterized, according to Semyonov, by clearly expressed symmetry. The mountain range consists of two main parallel ridges, which Semenov denotes by the names of the northern and southern chains. These chains are connected by a mountain knot, which seems to block off a deep longitudinal valley dividing both ridges into two longitudinal valleys of the Kebina and Chilika rivers, converging at their peaks and located in the same line. On both sides of the highest point of the ridge, the ridge of the Trans-Ili Alatau bears eternal snow, and then, to the east and west, it gradually decreases below the snow line. “It is also remarkable that the northern and southern chains slightly and gradually diverge or are separated from one another at their eastern and western extremities, and intermediate and parallel ridges with the mountain ranges move into the extremities of the longitudinal valley separating them and thus expanding...” The geological characteristics of the Trans-Ili Alatau include data on the petrographic compo15

sition of the rocks, their stratigraphic relationship and the tectonic structure of the ridge. The most detailed data are on the petrographic composition of the rocks. The greatest expert on the geology of Central Asia, I.V. Mushketov, fully included this description in the first volume of his “Turkestan”. Semenov notes in this description the difference between the longitudinal valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau, composed predominantly of sedimentary rocks, and parallel chains, composed of predominantly crystalline rocks. Semenov’s ideas about the tectonics of the Trans-Ili Alatau are visible from the following quote: “The fall of the layers of sedimentary formations in the longitudinal valleys of Kebin and Chilik is synclinic, that is, obviously, these layers were raised by the simultaneous uplift of two parallel ridges. The intermediate ridge - Dalashik entirely consists of sedimentary formations, of which the layers form an anticlinical fold formed in the middle of the longitudinal valley and parallel to the crystalline ridges.” Semenov concludes his general review of the orography and geology of the Trans-Ili Alatau with the following general conclusion: “From all of the above it follows that the Trans-Ili Alatau is divided according to its relief into three components: 1) a northern chain with foothills; 2) longitudinal valleys with intermediate ridges and plateaus and 3) southern chain.” Semenov gives each of the components he identified a separate orographic characteristic. He characterizes the northern chain as “... a continuous ridge, in its middle part rising beyond the boundaries of the eternal snow, with very minor notches in this part, but descending in both wings and, finally, broken through in the eastern part by a transverse valley or the Chilika crack.. ”. This decrease is illustrated by the change in the height of the mountain passes, which decrease on both sides of the Talgar Peak - the highest point of the northern chain, located in its middle part. Semenov takes the average height of the ridge to be 2,450 meters, obtaining it by dividing the sum of the heights of the mountain passes he measured by their number. Of the morphological features of the ridge, Semenov further notes the transverse valleys along which mountain streams descend to the northern slope of the northern chain, and points out the features of the foothills. Semenov gives a similar characteristic for the southern chain, noting some of its orographic features. Of particular interest to us is the characteristics of the system of longitudinal valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau. A significant place in this description is given to the question of the genesis of Chilik, located east of the turn between the lowered northern and southern chains of the Jalanash plateau. This plateau is composed of thick layers of loose conglomerate, which is underlain by mountain limestone. “The three Merke rivers flowing through the plateau, as well as Karkara and Kegen at their confluence, and Charyn, formed from this confluence, dug such deep channels for themselves that the valleys of these rivers cut into the main plateau to a depth of 200 meters and eroded the sediments to solid rock, which on the second Merka consists of mountain limestone with its fossils.” “This terribly rugged terrain,” points out Semyonov, “serves as the main obstacle on the best road from Verny to Issyk-Kul...”. Semenov explains the origin of the modern relief of the plateau as follows. Initially, in place of the plateau there was a deep intermountain basin: ”... at a time when this basin was still closed, it had to be filled with boulders and erosion brought 16

into it by numerous mountain streams, until the filling of the basin raised the level of the formed lake and did not force its waters to break through and merge to the northern side, where the Chilik and Charyn rivers are currently breaking out. Since then... the Merke rivers had to dig deep channels for themselves in the smooth plateau, the constituent parts of which presented too few obstacles to the eroding force mountain stream, which little by little deepened its bed in the loose rock and finally reached the solid mountain rocks. The connected rivers also broke through the stone ridge hidden under sediments at the bottom of the Charyn valley, which forms in a deep gorge, at the confluence of the Merke rivers Charyn, beautiful and picturesque rapids and a noisy current known as Ak-Togoy, that is, a white stream, because all the water of Charyn turns here into silvery foam and water dust.” Concluding the characterization of the orographic structure of the Trans-Ili Alatau by comparing the height of the Trans-Ili Alatau with the Alps, Pyrenees and the Caucasus, Semyonov moves on to a consideration of plant zones. In the Trans-Ili Alatau they distinguish the following zones: steppe, extending “at some distance from the foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau at an absolute altitude of 150 to 600 meters,” cultural or garden, which “extends not only at the very foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau, but also rises to its foothills and into its valleys to the lower limit of coniferous forests...” - that is, to an altitude of 1,400 meters on the northern and 1,500 meters on the southern slope of the Trans-Ili Alatau; the third zone, which can be called the coniferous forest zone, as well as subalpine, extends from 1,300 - 1,400 meters to the limits of forest vegetation, that is, 2,300 - 2,450 meters; the fourth zone, alpine, extends from the upper limit of forest vegetation, that is, 2,300 - 2,450 meters, to the snow line, that is, 3,200 - 3,300 meters. This zone is divided into the lower alpine, or zone of alpine shrubs, and the upper alpine, or zone of alpine grasses; “the fifth zone is the zone of eternal snow...”. Semenov’s characteristics of individual zones were well summarized in Lipsky’s famous work on the flora of Central Asia. Let us indicate Semenov’s main conclusions regarding the zones he identified, following partially Lipsky’s presentation. The vegetation of the steppe zone differs, according to Semyonov, in its originality in comparison with Europe. Not only the composition of the flora is original, numerous salt marsh plants, tamarix, astragalus Hedysorum, Alhage, Halimodendron, Ammodendron and others, but also the absence of crowding. “Nowhere do the plants form a continuous turf, but grow... at a fairly large distance from one another, so that the soil is mostly exposed in the gaps...”. In the steppe zone, two regions (tiers) can be distinguished. The first with saxaul and other characteristic Aral-Caspian plants, as well as local species. The second is characterized by wormwood (Artemisia spp.) and contains a greater admixture of European species than the first area. Concluding the characteristics of the steppe zone, Semyonov points to the characteristics of its climate and rivers and its economic importance. “The climate and soil of the steppe zone are characterized by unusual dryness. Rivers flowing in noisy mountain streams through three zones lying above the steppe, reaching this last one, quickly decrease in volume and soon stop flowing completely, forming a series of reaches or lakes with brackish water, and then partly absorbed into the soil, partly transformed into vapor 17

and thus flowing into the dry, hot summer atmosphere of the steppe strip. Few high-water rivers, such as the Ili, make an exception to the general rule, moistening their banks with their constant flow. Due to such physical properties ”It does not have any amenities for colonization in the steppe zone. But for the economic life of the native nomadic Kirghiz, the steppe zone is extremely important, since here they have the best wintering grounds and good pasture throughout the short and very little snow winter of this zone.” The cultural, or garden, zone occupies the foothills and foothills of Alatau to the lower limit of coniferous forests. Of the fruit trees in this zone, Semenov points out “wild apple, apricot or wild apricot, and in the western Tien Shan - pistachio tree and walnut.” Among other trees, Semenov names Populus laurifolia, Populus tremula, Betula davurica, Acer semenovi, Sorbus aucuparia, Prunus padus, Crataegus pirmatifida; in addition, a number of shrubs (more than 30 are listed). The flora of this zone contains more than 60% of Central European species. Between the Asian species there are elements of the Siberian-Altai (21 listed), Aral-Caspian (23) and Dzungarian floras proper (more than 30 listed). The cultural zone is distinguished by great conveniences for arable farming and gardening and extraordinary fertility, but only under one condition, namely the possibility of artificial irrigation (irrigation). ” Turning to the question of the significance of the zone for Russian colonization, Semenov points out the difference in those foothills within its are located below the snowy or high parts of Alatau and are distinguished by fertility due to the abundance of water brought by mountain streams from these zones, and dry foothills located where the mountain ridge decreases. The coniferous forest zone is characterized by the predominance of spruce Picea schrenkiana; deciduous trees include poplar, aspen, birch, rowan and others. Among the shrubs listed by Semenov (24), 7 species of Lonicera were named. As in the cultural zone, in the coniferous forest zone there are more than 60% of European species; in the upper parts of the zone there are alpine and polar types (17 listed); of the other 40% Asian, more than half belong to plants of the Siberian north, Altai-Sayan, and partly polar (38 are listed); in addition, Caucasian (10 indicated), Himalayan (5) and local Tien Shan (26). The economic importance of this zone for Russian colonization is determined by its forests, which provide building material and fuel. In some places the zone acquires a subalpine character: forests are replaced by subalpine meadows interspersed with rocks. These meadows are important for the Kyrgyz summer migrations. The alpine zone is divided into the lower alpine, or alpine shrub zone, and the upper alpine, or alpine grass zone. Alpine shrubs belong to a small number of species (12 are listed). The absence of Rhododendron is remarkable, due to the dry climate. There are more than 25% of European plants in this zone, mainly of the alpine-polar type (23 listed), a few plants belong to the Central European ones (10), most are characteristic of the alpine zone, Altai-Sayan flora and polar Siberia (about 50 listed), several Himalayan ( 4); a number of plants belong to the Tien Shan flora proper (30). The zone is rich in excellent meadows and pastures and is therefore of great economic importance for the summer migrations of the Kyrgyz. “The zone of eternal snow also has a very large, although only indirect economic significance, since only in those foothills 18

of the ridge above which there is a zone of eternal snow is the cultural zone rich, irrigated and quite capable of irrigation, and therefore, for arable farming, gardening and colonization ”. This is how Semenov ends his description of the last zone he identified, Alatau. Much more concise, due to the smaller amount of data, is the characteristics of the basin of Lake Issyk-Kul. Before turning to Semenov’s description of the Issyk-Kul basin, we point out that one of the main results of Semenov’s trip to the western end of the lake can be considered the establishment of the existing relationships between Lake Issyk-Kul and the Chu River. Until Semenov’s expedition, the dominant view among geographers was that the Chu River flows from Issyk-Kul. During his trip, Semenov first established that the Chu is a continuation of the Kochkura River (according to Semenov, the Kochkar or Koshkar River. Ed.), flowing from the Tien Shan mountain valley west of Issyk-Kul. Semenov’s observations established that the Chu, before reaching Issyk-Kul, turns sharply in the opposite direction from the lake, crashing into the mountains rising on the western side of Issyk-Kul and, finally, bursts into the Buam Gorge. Having reached the swampy area located at the very turn of the Chu River, Semenov discovered a small river connecting the Chu with Issyk-Kul. “...This river, due to its shallowness and insignificance, is called Kutemaldy,” Semyonov later wrote in an article about the trip, “that’s what, at least at the present time, the hydrographic connection of the Chu River with Lake Issyk-Kul, which was previously geographers (Ritter and Humboldt) took it as the source of the Chu River.” In characterizing the Issyk-Kul basin, Semenov used the results of his observations to resolve the question of the origin of the existing relationship between the Chu River and Issyk-Kul and the genesis of the Buam Gorge. Let us dwell on certain aspects of the description of the Issyk-Kul valley. Just as in the description of the Trans-Ili Alatau, we find here the initial description of the external appearance of the area, as it appears when viewed directly by the observer. In the subsequent presentation, as well as in the description of the Trans-Ili Alatau, where available data allows, Semyonov highlights the issues of the genesis of modern relief and hydrographic network. Thus, noting that the Issyk-Kul valley is surrounded on all sides by terraces composed of conglomerates, which rise significantly above the modern level of the lake, he draws the following conclusions: “Since these conglomerates are in an inappropriate (discordant) bedding with the Paleozoic rocks of the Tien- Shan and Alatau, and since the same conglomerates form the bottom of the lake, where I happened to observe it, I believe that these conglomerates are the sediments of the lake itself. In this case, the distribution of these conglomerates throughout the entire lake basin to a significant height above the current level of the lake sufficiently indicates that in former times the lake occupied an incomparably more extensive surface.This opinion can be confirmed by the very formation of the Buam Gorge, the origin of which cannot be attributed to the breakthrough of too little significant for that Koshkar, but can only be explained by the breakthrough of the waters of the whole the Issyk-Kul basin, the level of which should have quickly decreased after such a breakthrough. Thus, for a long time after this breakthrough, the Chu River could have been the drainage of the Issyk-Kul, until a decrease in its level finally stopped this flow, after which 19

the former tributary of the Issyk-Kul, and then the Chu Koshkar River, became its source . This latest decline of Issyk-Kul can only be attributed to the fact that the tributaries of the lake, becoming scarce in water due to the rise of the snow line in a drier and drier continental climate, do not compensate for the amount of water lost by evaporation.” Semyonov devotes the final part of the description of the Issyk-Kul basin, as well as the final parts of the characteristics of the zones of the Trans-Ili Alatau, to the question of the opportunities provided by the area for farming. This is, in general terms, the content of the two most significant geographical characteristics of Semenov in his articles on the Tien Shan. The geological, botanical and other information contained in them was repeatedly used by later researchers. These characteristics, however, have great geographical value not only as a source of the first scientific information about the Tien Shan, but also as outstanding examples of primary data development for their time. Let us dwell on some of Semenov’s particular conclusions, which were of particular importance for subsequent researchers of the Tien Shan, and the assessment of his development of geological and botanical data by the latest researchers. Among the most important conclusions of Semenov, based on geological materials, are his conclusions about the genesis of the conglomerates of the Issyk-Kul basin and the Jalanash plateau, the origin of the Buam Gorge, as well as his explanation of the relationship between the Chu River and Issyk-Kul. The conglomerates described by Semenov for the Issyk-Kul basin and the Jalanash plateau are widespread in the longitudinal valleys of the Tien Shan. Their widespread distribution was already established in the works of researchers who visited the Tien Shan in the coming decades after Semenov’s expedition. Semyonov’s assumption that the conglomerates of the Issyk-Kul basin ”are the essence of the sediment of the lake itself” turned out to be as fruitful as his explanation of the origin of the Jalanash conglomerates. Using the example of Jalanash, Semenov gave an explanation for the formation of thick strata of conglomerates, suitable for many longitudinal valleys of the Tien Shan. As we saw above, according to Semenov, there was a lake in an initially closed mountain basin. As a result of the breakthrough of the lake’s waters and its descent, a smooth plateau was formed, which was later cut by deep river beds. Two decades later, I. V. Mushketov, in a report on his trip in 1875, wrote about the longitudinal valleys of the Tien Shan: “Almost everywhere, new lake sediments are observed in them, expressed as horizontal conglomerates and sandstones, which is why one can think that these valleys once formed large reservoirs or mountain lakes. Subsequently, these reservoirs dried up for the reason that the water accumulated in them constantly eroded the neighboring mountains, and finally made its way through one of the neighboring ridges, which was less resistant than others to its destructive force. The water, having found a way out , constantly deepened the newly formed channel and gradually flowed down this channel, draining the reservoir.” Issyk-Kul, according to Mushketov, as well as the existing lakes Son-kul, Sairam-nor, Chatyr-kul and others, “in many ways resemble these dried-up reservoirs; at Son-kul you can see with your own eyes how every year the From the lake, the only river Kodzherty-su is constantly deepening its bed, which, perhaps, will subsequently 20

spill out into the entire Son-Kul lake, as many others like it have already spilled out.” Similar thoughts about the ancient lakes of the Tien Shan were expressed by many later researchers. Krasnov gave numerous examples confirming the instructions of Semenov and Mushketov. Semenov associated the formation of thick strata of Tien Shan conglomerates (including lake conglomerates) with the activity of mountain streams. The Jalanash basin, according to him, was filled up as a result of this activity with sediments of sand, clay and boulders. This explanation was also repeatedly confirmed by later researchers of the 19th century. and has not lost its meaning today. “P.P. Semenov was the first to give, confirmed after I.V. Mushketov, an explanation of the origin of these formations. He considers them to be the results of the deposition of pebbles and other products of destruction brought by mountain streams and deposited in the valleys and foothills,” Krasnov wrote in his work about the Tien Shan. Agreeing with this idea of Semyonov, Krasnov complements it with the consideration that in the era of the formation of these sediment layers, the amount of snow that supplied these waters, rolling boulders, was greater, and the snow line descended. “In the Issyk-Kul valley, as indeed elsewhere in the Tien Shan, the denudation activity of mountain streams is very important,” L. S. Berg later wrote in his famous work on Issyk-Kul. Pointing out that the shores of Issyk-Kul and Chu “in some places, over a considerable distance, are covered with a mass of large pebbles carried out from the mountains in the spring by mountain streams and streams,” L. S. Berg, like previous researchers of the Tien Shan, refers to the classic example of P. P’s explanation Semenov formed the Jalanash conglomerate. The most significant addition to Semenov’s explanation of the formation of conglomerates in the part of the Tien Shan he studied can be considered the indications of later researchers on the role of the destructive work of insolation and wind in the formation of Quaternary deposits of the Tien Shan. There are also indications of the glacial origin of some conglomerates (the work of L. S. Berg). The development of geological data on the conglomerates of the Issyk-Kul basin was used by Semenov for geographical conclusions about the development of the Chu river system and the origin of the Buam Gorge. The resolution of the issue of the relationship of the Chu River to Issyk-Kul was one of the important results of Semenov’s expedition. The relationships between the Kochkura, Chu and Kutemaldy rivers established by Semenov’s observations were explained differently by different researchers. Venyukov and Severtsov, who visited IssykKul after Semenov, considered Kutemaldy to be Kochkur’s sleeve. Golubev and Kostenko assumed that Kutemaldy is an aryk. I.V. Mushketov joined the views of Semyonov, who mistook Kutemaldy for the former source of the river. Chu. A critical summary of these and later hypotheses was made by L. S. Berg in his work on Issyk-Kul. A comparison of various hypotheses of later researchers with the views first expressed by P. P. Semenov on the origin of the relationships between the Chu River and Issyk-Kul that he established testifies to Semenov’s great scientific insight. An assessment of these views “from the point of view of the modern theory of the evolution of river arteries” was recently given by Ya. S. Edelshtein, who pointed out that a possible addition to Semyonov’s hypothesis is the assumption of the river interception of Kochkur by the Chu River, 21

as a result of which the Kochkur River, which previously flowed into the lake Issyk-Kul was intercepted by the top of the Chu River and began to give its waters to the Syr Darya basin. “...We must not forget,” adds Edelyntein, “that these ideas, so familiar to us now, about the development of neighboring river systems did not yet exist in science at that time.” The question of the origin of the Buam Gorge, closely related to the problem of the evolution of the Chu river system, was also resolved by later researchers in the spirit of the views first expressed by Semyonov. “... The Buam Gorge is a typical breakthrough valley...” points out the largest researcher of Issyk-Kul, L. S. Berg. According to Berg, “in the era of a more significant spread of glaciers in the Tien Shan, Lake Issyk-Kul stood much higher than now. At that time, the Chu River flowed into the lake, overflowed it and gave it a source through the ridge in the place where the Buam Gorge is now located. Over time, the Chu, gradually deepening its channel, dug the Buam Gorge; at the same time, carrying away more and more waters of Issyk-Kul due to the deepening of the source, the Chu significantly lowered the level of the lake, and finally, due to still unknown reasons, it completely stopped flowing into it.” Mushketov and others also joined Semenov’s view of the Buam Gorge as a valley dug by the flowing waters of Issyk-Kul. We have given examples of Semenov’s development of geological data about the Tien Shan. A general assessment of this development can be found in I.V. Mushketov, Friedrichsen, K.I. Bogdanovich, Merzbacher, V.A. Obruchev, Ya.S. Edelshtein and others. Most later geological researchers note the role of P.P. Semenov as the first scientific explorer of Central Asia and indicate that his discoveries laid the foundation for the subsequent study of the Tien Shan system. A similar assessment can be found both in the works of Russian geologists and in Western European literature. For example, Friedrichsen at the end of the 19th century. wrote that Semyonov, thanks to his geological knowledge and insight, already in 1857 laid the foundation for our modern knowledge of the Tien Shan and created the foundation on which further solid construction became possible. No less significant in his works on the Tien Shan were Semyonov’s phytogeographical conclusions, based on the botanical materials he collected. The botanical research of P. P. Semenov received well-deserved appreciation in the works of A. N. Krasnov, V. I. Lipsky, V. L. Komarov and others. The main one of Semyonov’s phytogeographical generalizations was his proposed scheme of zones of the Trans-Ili Alatau. In his major work on the flora of Central Asia, V.I. Lipsky pointed out that Semyonov gave “the first botanical and geographical picture of Central Asia, which can still serve as a model...” (Written in 1902, almost half a century after Semyonov’s travel .) This assessment is undoubtedly fair. Before Semenov, the most significant conclusions about the vertical zonation of Central Asia were made by A. I. Shrenk as a result of his famous expedition of 1840-1842. But A. Schrenk died without having time to fully process the materials he collected. Schrenk’s report on his first trip contained interesting data on changes in the vegetation of the Dzhungar Alatau depending on altitude. However, this report did not create a developed scheme of vertical vegetation zones in relation to the Dzhungar Alatau. The patterns of vertical distribution of vegetation in the mountainous regions of Central Asia were first established by Semenov in 22

relation to the Trans-Ili Alatau. It is of interest to compare Semenov’s scheme with the schemes of Severtsov (1873) and Krasnov (1888) that appeared over the next 30 years after his expedition. A similar comparison was made by Abolin, from whom we borrow the following table (see page 32). This table shows that the later zone schemes proposed by Severtsov and Krasnov did not differ significantly from Semenov’s original scheme. The question of Semenov’s development of data on the geological structure, relief and distribution of vegetation of the Tien Shan regions he studied is covered mainly in the geological and phytogeographical literature. However, the generalizations of P. P. Semenov that we have considered are also of more general geographical interest. On the eve of the Tien Shan trip, Semyonov sharply opposed the view of geography as an aggregate or mosaic of heterogeneous information. Semyonov’s main idea was to distinguish between geography in a broad and narrow sense. “...Geography is the science of the earth. There is a word that can be given very different volumes and definitions,” wrote Semyonov. “Geography can be understood in a broad and narrow sense. In a broad sense, its subject is a complete study of the globe, that is, the laws its structure, with its solid, liquid and air shell, the laws of its relationship to other planets and to the organisms living on it. In this sense, Geography is really not a science, but a whole natural group of sciences, interconnected by the identity of the subject of research, considered only in various relationships.” Geography in the narrow sense of the word, according to Semenov, “is the physiography of the earth’s surface (P.S.’s italics), that is, a description of both its constant, indelible features for centuries, sketched by nature itself, and the variable, erasable, produced by the human hand.” CHAPTER FIRST Conclusion of the Peace of Paris.- My trip to the village on return.- The first events of Alexander II.- The support provided to my journey by the Geographical Society.- Moving Nizhny - Kazan - Kungur - the Urals and Yekaterinburg.West Siberian lowland.- Siberian riding and some features of the local population. - Ishim steppe. - Irtysh and Omsk. - Governor General Gasfort. - Potanin and Valikhanov. - Barabinsk steppe and Kainsk. - Crossing the Ob in Berdsk. - Barnaul. - Travel to Altai. - Kolyvan Lake. - Zmeinogorsk. - Uba and Ulba rivers and the squirrels surrounding them. - Riddersk and Ivanovo squirrels. The path to Semipalatinsk. Since my return to St. Petersburg in 1855 from a two-year trip abroad, there has been lively talk in all layers of metropolitan society about whether we should rush to conclude peace, or, conversely, continue the war. The entire industrial and financial world stood for the speedy conclusion of peace, while in military and patriotic circles the prevailing opinion was to continue the war. However, in government spheres the desire for peace prevailed, and Prince Orlov was sent to the Paris Conference. At the beginning of autumn, I came to my village, where I had the good fortune to meet my already three-year-old son healthy and unharmed: my wife’s worthy teacher, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Kareeva, raised him with extraordinary love and dedication. With the onset of the first signs of

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spring 1856, I hastened to return to St. Petersburg, where I had a lot to do. Peace negotiations in Paris were already coming to an end, and there was still no word of any reforms, although the leading people of the capital’s intelligentsia were deeply convinced that the most inevitable of reforms - the liberation of the peasants - would not take long to come. In the provinces, on the contrary, the landed nobility was still very far from even thinking about the possibility of liberating the peasants. Of course, even in St. Petersburg no one dared to call the upcoming legislative reform “the liberation of the peasants.” And when the first legislative act of the reign of Alexander II was the highest command about some changes in military uniforms - and, by the way, red trousers were introduced in the uniform of generals - this gave rise to people prone to light wit to say: ” They were expecting laws, but only pantaloons came out!” Of course, the change in form reflected Alexander II’s weakness for forms of clothing, which did not leave him until the end of his life. Once, already in the last years of his life, when a young officer, later a famous traveler, was introduced to him [B. L. Grombchevsky (L. V.), who ordered himself a new uniform for this from one of the best tailors in St. Petersburg, Alexander II, treating the person who was presenting himself very favorably, could not resist noticing that some kind of piping on the collar of the uniform was sewn wrong, and asked him in a somewhat stern voice which tailor he ordered the uniform from. Hearing the name of a famous tailor in response, the sovereign said: “tell him that he is a fool.” In the Geographical Society under the former vice-chairman Muravyov, I found Evgeniy Ivanovich Lamansky, a talented and outstanding young scientist in the field of economic sciences, as secretary after the deceased V.A. Milyutin. I energetically set about finishing the extensive addition to the first volume of Ritter’s Asia and found lively and active assistance in the venerable and best sinologist in Russia, Vasily Pavlovich Vasiliev [Famous orientalist and sinologist (18181900), professor and honorary member of St. Petersburg University, from 1886 Academician (L.B.), with whom I became very close at this time and who was truly a bright personality and an ardent patriot. During the winter of 1855-56, my work, which had already begun long ago, came to an end. At the same time, I also completed the translation of parts of Ritter’s Asia relating to the Tien Shan and Western Siberia and causing even more extensive additions to them. I used this excuse to fulfill my cherished dream - a trip to Central Asia. But not only to highlight my desire to penetrate the Tien Shan, but even to inform anyone at all about my firm determination to penetrate there would be a major mistake on my part, since such an intention would meet with strong opposition from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs affairs, jealously guarding the Asian countries that lay beyond Russian borders from the invasion of Russian geographical science in the person of Russian travelers, at a time when Germany was already openly, in front of the whole world, equipping its expedition to Central Asia, directing it through India! Therefore, with diplomatic caution, I officially announced to the Geographical Society about the need for my additions to the following volumes of Ritter’s Asia to visit the areas that are described in them, namely: Altai, the Kyrgyz steppes, etc. At the same time, I asked from the Society only moral assistance in in the form of open sheets, recommendations, 24

etc., and a small subsidy of 1,000 rubles for the purchase of instruments and, in general, for equipping the expedition, taking upon itself all the costs of the journey itself. I must give justice to Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov that he, for his part, reacted with great sympathy to my proposal and provided all possible assistance to my journey, and in the secretary of the Geographical Society, as well as in the chairman of the department of physical geography A.D. Ozersky, and in the membership advice, I found live support. In the spring of 1856, I was already fully equipped for my expedition, traveled by rail to Moscow and further to Nizhny along the highway, bought a durable and spacious Kazan-made tarantass there and rode by mail along the great Siberian highway. Halfway from Nizhny to Kazan, I was already in the country that on German maps of the 17th and even 18th centuries was indicated by the inscription “die grosse Tartare”. No matter how strange it seemed to us Russians, such a designation of the now indigenous Russian (Volga and even partly central) provinces, but still the German geographers had their own reason for this. After all, there is no doubt that back in the middle of the 16th century, the ethnographic border of Europe and Asia did not coincide at all with the currently accepted geographical border between both parts of the world. If you draw a straight line from Chisinau through the Dnieper rapids, Kharkov, Voronezh, Tambov, Kazan to Yekaterinburg, then European tribes (Slavs and others) lived in the era of the discovery of America only to the northwest of this line, and to the southeast of it the European there was no population at all; all this “Great Tartary” of European geographers belonged to Asian tribes, and only since the great world event - the fall of Kazan (1552), which occurred simultaneously with the colonization of the New World (America) in the transatlantic west by the European race - began on the eastern outskirts of Europe more or less continuous and consistent European-Russian colonization of Asia, which first took possession of vast lands of ethnographic Asia in Europe, and then quickly spread across the entire Palearctic zone to the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, when in 1897, after thirty-three years of persistent insistence, I managed to carry out the first general census of the population of Russia, I calculated that while the colonization of all the states of Western Europe collectively had given 90 million people of the European race since the discovery of Christopher Columbus to the New World, Russian colonization, directed to the east and southeast, introduced no less than 46 million people of the European race outside the boundaries of entographic Asia. I had the opportunity to point out this historical merit of Russia at the international anniversary celebration of Christopher Columbus in Genoa in 1892. On the morning of May 15, 1856, I was already on the right bank of the Volga, opposite Kazan. The queen of Russian rivers was still in full flood at that time. It merged with the wide Kazanka valley into one water basin about ten miles wide. The weather was stormy, and, in view of the fact that the crossing of the heavy tarantass was supposed to continue until the evening, I decided to leave my heavy crew, under the protection of the serf servant accompanying me, to its own fate, and I set off on a relatively light sailing boat with six oarsmen on inspection of picturesque Kazan, from its outer, water side. We sailed among the foaming waves, which flooded us with their spray and then broke at 25

a tall and massive gray pyramid, above which a small gilded cross rose barely noticeably. It was a modest and inelegant monument erected only in 1823 over the mass grave of the heroes who, by capturing Kazan in 1552, turned the Muscovite kingdom, which had relatively recently emerged from the Asian yoke, into one of the great European states. The monument rose above the water like a solitary cliff, but near it stood on a separate hill above the water the picturesque Silantiev (Zilantov) monastery, surrounded by green trees, in spring decoration, and to the right of it stood the entire Kazan Kremlin with its picturesque temples, mosques, the historical Sumbekin Tower and the Resurrection monastery I landed in Kazan early on purpose in order to see all the sights of the city. By nightfall my tarantass arrived, and the next morning I was already riding in it along the old Siberian highway. I drove quickly and non-stop, day and night, but still the road from Kazan to Yekaterinburg through the Kazan, Vyatka and Perm provinces took me 8 days. The entire boundless plain, starting from the Volga to the district city of Perm lips. Kungur, consisted of horizontal layers of sandstones and marls of the Permian system, covered with thick layers of rather uniform sediments, exposed only along the river banks. Along this entire stretch there were vast settlements, almost exclusively of state or mining peasants, well built and which struck me with the contentment and prosperity of their inhabitants and the presence of the main indicator of peasant wealth a large number and good quality of horses and livestock in general. Serfdom, which had such a heavy impact on the mining population, in the strict sense of the term, did not affect the conditions of peasant life in the local villages, which fully enjoyed relative freedom of labor. They did not have agricultural corvee. They were engaged in farming - exclusively for their own needs - only during the lean period of field work, and in other seasons, especially in winter, and in general in their free time from field work, the local peasants, with the significant development of their cattle breeding, received greater benefits from their trades than in our central black earth Russia. Although they themselves were not the owners of the mineral wealth of the region, and the exploitation of these riches, that is, factory and mining work, was carried out by the enslaved mining population, but the peasant rural population directly or indirectly received benefits from mining exploitation. Not to mention the fact that in operating factories and mines, peasants found good sales for their rural products, which they processed in relation to local needs, they also found income from auxiliary work in factory and mine production, such as, for example, cutting down wood, burning coal and delivery of forestry products to factories and marinas. All these trades, as well as the carriage supported by the enormous postal traffic along the great Siberian highway, brought all the greater benefits to the local rural population because they coincided with the time free from field work. About 35 years after the liberation of the peasants in Russia, highly educated scientists of Western Europe, who came to Russia for the first time in 1897 for a geological congress and had formed the idea of a Russian peasant only from the Berlin humor magazine ”Kladderadatsch”, were amazed during their visit to the Urals by the beauty of the type and build, the originality of mind and development of the Ural peasants, in whom they did not find the slightest traces of slavery 26

and humiliation. Yes, there were no such traces even half a century ago, during my trip in 1856-1857. And at that time, the peasants of the Vyatka and Perm regions seemed to me to be direct descendants of that strong and healthy Slavic tribe, which from ancient Veliky Novgorod had long strived to the east and freely colonized the lands of the Khlynovsky and Perm regions to the Asian borders. I return to my story. At the first station outside Kazan, where I had to wait for several hours for post horses due to the passage of a prince with the rank of general, I made an interesting meeting. This was mining engineer Vasily Apollonovich Poletika, a man outstanding in his talent and education. After several hours of lively exchange of thoughts, we agreed so much that I invited him to ride with me in my tarantass, since he did not have his own carriage and was traveling on carriages. Poletika accepted my offer only on the condition that he would stay at his house when I was in Barnaul. Just beyond Kungur, on the way to Yekaterinburg, we finally moved across the entire width of the Ural ridge. With the joy of a geologist, I met the outcrops of first solid mountain sedimentary rocks, uplifted and broken through by crystalline rocks; then outcrops of these latter appeared, namely granites and diorites; but, in relation to the topography of the country, the Urals parallel to Yekaterinburg can be crossed almost unnoticed. The mountains do not seem particularly picturesque here; granite rocks are flat and barely emerge from the sediment; the vegetation, consisting of coniferous forest, is quite monotonous, and only a milepost with the inscription “Europe” on one side and “Asia” on the other, naively, although clearly depicting the artificial border of both parts of the world. Yekaterinburg exceeded my expectations. I did not think to find such a beautiful city on the Asian side of the Urals, which, of course, owed its development to the ore riches of the Urals. It is remarkable that the Ural ridge, colossal in its extent from north to south (almost 20° latitude), serves both physically and economically not to separate the two parts of the world between which it passes, but to establish a close, inextricable connection between them . Neither in terms of climate nor in terms of flora and fauna, the Urals do not represent a sharp boundary. Its mineral riches, located in a not too wide strip, mainly along its eastern slope, tie the strongest knot of mutual relations between the inhabitants of its European and Asian slopes; they attract workers from the wide Ural strips of Europe and Asia, and also revive and enrich the agricultural population of even wider strips by delivering reliable and profitable sales not only for agricultural, but also for rural products in general to the Ural mining factories and mines. Having become familiar with all the features of the mining industry of Yekaterinburg with the help of V.A. Poletika, I left it on May 26th. For three hundred and thirty miles the road followed the Iset River through Shadrinsk, the last district town of the Perm province. The mountains, or, better to say, hills, serving as the foothills of the Urals, extended for another two stations from Yekaterinburg, but then they were already smoothed out, solid sedimentary rocks were finally buried under sediment, coniferous forests first began to show admixtures of birch and aspen, and then were replaced by deciduous ones, interspersed with vast meadow spaces and peasant fields. Beyond Shadrinsk, and even more so beyond the border of the Tobolsk province, the 27

vast West Siberian Lowland stretched out in front of me, the most extensive in the Old World, the absolute height of which does not exceed 200 meters and on which, from the last Ural to the first Altai foothills, there is not a single stone in the form of solid rock, or even in the form of boulders, so this country cannot boast of an abundance of stone building materials. With curiosity, I looked closely at the nature of the spring cover of the West Siberian Lowland and soon became convinced of the validity of the remark of the famous author of the first Siberian flora, Gmelin, who, back in the 17th century, noted that, in fact, the characteristic Siberian flora on the large Siberian tract begins only beyond the Yenisei. There was no sharp transition from the typical vegetation that covers the entire Slavic plain from Silesia to the Urals in spring. Of the flowers that enlivened the vast meadows of Western Siberia at that time (at the end of May), the light purple, fluffy, gracefully drooping heads of anemone, which bears the poetic name of dream grass (Pulsatilla albana), golden flowers of adonis (Adonis vernalis), emerging from thick bunches their bright green feathery leaves, and the deep blue flowers of the azure lungwort (Pulmonaria azurea) gave color to the vegetation cover over vast areas, and only the replacement of the yellow semi-double heads of the European swimmer with brightly fiery flowers of the no less double Asian form of this beautiful plant (Trollius asiaticus), especially spectacular where it covers the clearings with vast thickets, reminding me that I am already in the middle of the Asian plain. What struck me in particular about this vegetation was that its most characteristic plants love to live, like the local agricultural population, a communal life and, with their crowding, give a wonderful bright color to vast spaces. The paintings by the artist Yartsev, exhibited in the Russian-Asian section of the Paris Exhibition of 1900, which I organized, depicting the vegetation cover of Siberia, mainly the Yenisei valleys, very clearly conveyed this feature of the Siberian flora. The West Siberian Plain is given great beauty by its bright, gigantic rivers, incredibly rich in water in the spring. The first of the trans-Ural rivers lying on our way was the Tobol, through which we crossed near the city of Yalutorovsk on May 28 before sunrise, on a bright, poetic May night. Beyond Tobol we no longer needed to stop at government postal stations. Dashing coachmen very willingly drove tarantasses in troikas for official runs (1 1/2 kopecks per mile and horse) “on delivery”, passing the rider to each other. This saved us from the boring presentation and registration of travel documents, from waiting in line when changing horses, and in general from unpleasant relations with the “station attendants” who were at the lowest level of Russian bureaucracy, who were all indiscriminately promoted to the lowest class rank (college registrar) in my memory, during the reign of Nicholas I, only to protect them from the brutal beatings of passing “generals”. In Siberia, however, these beatings were rare. With magnificent peasant horses and the highest development of the carriage industry, in which the speed of postal travel could be increased to 400 or more miles per day (!), the generals were always happy, and the downtrodden, seedy postal official was completely shaded and seemed superfluous in front of the rich and an original, brave coachman elder, who himself was ready to sit on the goat of the impatient general in order to carry him one station with dashing daring. For me, moving across 28

Siberia by delivery was all the more interesting because my stops and rests took place not in boring state postal yards built according to the same official model, but in the huts of wealthy Siberian peasants who willingly engaged in carting. The dashing troika, harnessed to my heavy tarantass, picked it up immediately and raced in a march-march all the way from the station, with the exception of long inclines along which the Siberian coachman likes to ride at a walk; at the same time, the most interesting conversations began between him and me, in which the Russian peasant, without fear (and we met quite a few of them), was ready to lay out his whole soul. No matter how closely I knew my fellow countrymen - the serfs of Ryazan peasants, no matter how trusting they were towards their master who grew up near them and before their eyes, still in conversations about their life and worldviews, in statements about their needs there was something unspoken and unfree, and the limit of their sincerity was always felt... The peasants - old-timers of Siberia, who grew up and developed in its vastness, did not know serfdom, and it was easier for them to lay out their souls in conversations with people who came from afar and did not belong to their local bureaucratic oppressors - officials. Therefore, I successfully used my travels, and even more so, stops in the huts of Siberian peasants in order to get acquainted with their life, agrarian situation and worldview. The huts of the peasants of the southern districts of the Tobolsk province amazed me with their spaciousness in comparison with the cramped huts of the peasants of the black earth Great Russian provinces: they usually had six windows onto the street, and sometimes up to twelve, they were covered with planks, and sometimes they were built on two floors. In the villages there were also brick peasant houses of rich peasants, roofed with iron. The food of the peasants was unusually plentiful. In the simplest peasant huts I found three or four dishes at dinner. Meat food, consisting of beef and veal, poultry and game, as well as fish, was half included in the everyday table. This was accompanied by wheat and rye bread, dumplings - the favorite dish of Siberians, vegetables and dairy products, the latter in unlimited quantities. With the development of cattle breeding and significant plantings of flax and hemp, the homemade clothing of the Siberian old-timers was also incomparably better than the clothing of the peasants of European Russia, especially its black earth strip. The Siberian old-timers did not want to believe that in the Ryazan province there was sometimes only one sheepskin coat for a whole yard, and it did not seem possible for them to exist without each member of the family not having their own warm clothes; at the same time, the separateness of each person’s clothing developed the individuality and enterprise of individuals; Their varied amateur activities also contributed to this. They had space not only in the house, but also in the pasture and in the field; it did not give rise to petty family discords and troubles that so often complicate the lives of our European peasants and often force them, due to crowded housing, to premature and economically harmful family divisions. All these living conditions of the Siberian peasants ensured not only the strength of the court, but also the strength of the communal union, in which the rural population felt absolutely necessary to fight the elemental forces of nature and external enemies. For the time being, the communal union placed very little 29

constraint on individual householders in the use of family allotments. Each of them, through unhindered seizure, took as much land as he wanted, and, clearing it, managed it as he wanted, often establishing both permanent and portable farms (borrowings) on this land. Respect for other people’s clearings and, in general, for other people’s farms was so great that there were no invaders of other people’s goods among the Siberian peasants, and only escaped convicts and wandering exiled settlers were robbers and robbers, against whom, in the event of their robberies, the Siberian old-timers persecuted and lynching Only when the peasants, as they put it, suffered oppression in the land, that is, its insufficiency, did the community come into its own and take compulsory measures to regulate land relations, which always caused displeasure of individuals, neutralized only by worldly sentences, to which everyone unconditionally obeyed . No matter how bad and greedy the Siberian officials who were the scum of the Russian bureaucracy were, the strong communities successfully withstood the fight against them. I continue my story. The second significant Siberian river lying on our way beyond the city of Ishim was Ishim. We went to it through the Ishim steppe, in which rivers are rare, but which at this spring time was a low-lying, damp plain, rich in stagnant waters and overgrown with birch small forests. The road through the Ishim steppe for a long distance looked like a wide road, dug on both sides with ditches. On May 31, early in the morning, we were already in sight of the wide flood of Ishim, near the village of Abatsky, which boasted with its two churches on the left bank of the river. The road was terrible, the tarantass was thrown from side to side so much that, despite all my worries about the integrity of my barometer, it was broken into pieces. The Ishim flood was 8 miles wide, that is, it was twice as wide as the Tobol flood, and therefore crossing it took at least five hours. Four times we ran aground in shallow floods, but finally a gust of wind blew us onto the mane, that is, onto the sandbank that marked the coast of the river bed. Upon entering this channel, the strong excitement in it made our position critical, and our boat could have been overturned if the rowers who rushed into the water had not managed to push the boat through the mane, and in a few minutes we were already in the fast and stormy Ishim, through the riverbed of which was crossed in three quarters of an hour. In the distance, ahead of us, rose a steep ledge on the right bank of the river, mostly covered with turf and bushes. On the dry sandy soil of the intermediate zone, I saw for the first time a vast beautiful thicket of a purely Asian plant form, covering a large area with its golden cover. This plant - a form of iris (Iris flavissima) discovered and described for the first time by the great Pallas - also belongs to the plants of the Siberian flora that love communal life. The outcroppings of the steep ledge consisted of clay drift, and below it of horizontal layers of sand without any boulders. Having climbed the ledge, I again saw the immense continuation of the Ishim steppe, stretching another 200 miles, already through the Omsk district to the Irtysh. Birch copses, meadows and vast expanses of standing water interspersed with each other. The vegetation cover of the wet steppe was still of a European-Russian character. Fluffy lilac dream (Pulsatilla), golden adonis (Adonis vernalis), large white flowers of another anemone (Anemone silvestris), pale yellow slender mynes (Pedicularis 30

sceptrum-carolinum), tall red honey flowers (Phlomis tuberosa) and, finally, in drier places, gracefully Feather grass (Stipa pennata) waving in the wind more characterized the cover of the steppe, to which a myriad of water birds gave incredible animation. Ducks of different breeds walked in pairs along the high road, rising only from under the quickly rushing carriage. Numerous flocks of geese descended without fear onto countless small ponds, great snipes and snipes constantly flew out of the marsh grasses with noise. A little further on, a female large sickle-billed sandpiper (Numenius arquatus) hovered around the galloping horses with a plaintive cry, as if wanting to stop them with the span of her long wings and protect her still helpless offspring, hiding somewhere in the tall grass near the steppe road, from their hooves. Even further, a pair of cranes, with a cry of fear and outstretched wings, fought with a steppe gyrfalcon two steps from the main road, not embarrassed by the running of horses. The female falls, knocked over by the rapid onslaught of the gyrfalcon, but the male desperately rushes at him, and the gyrfalcon, jumping out from under the oncoming horses, soars high and soars further over the steppe, looking for easier prey. On the morning of June 1, we left at Krasny Yar for the third and most gigantic river of the West Siberian Lowland - the Irtysh. The outcrops I encountered here no longer consisted of sediment, but of quiet deposits of alternating sandy layers of a freshwater basin of the latest formations. These sands, in all their outcrops along the Irtysh, contained an innumerable number of shells, collected by me and subsequently described for the first time in the “Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft”. Only later did I learn that these shells did not escape the attention of the great 18th century traveler Pallas, but he mentions them, however, without describing them. At Krasny Yar I parted with my companion V.A. Poletika, who headed to Barnaul without stopping in Omsk, and who made me promise to stay with him in Barnaul, where I was supposed to come after finishing my business in Omsk. From the crossing of the Irtysh at Krasny Yar, where the colossal river was no longer in full flood, there were still forty-five miles left to Omsk. I arrived there in the evening of the first of June and had to stay there for two days to present myself to the Governor-General, on negotiations with whom depended the possibility of realizing my cherished and hidden intention to penetrate at any cost into the depths of the unknown Tien Shan, whose name is in that time was hardly even known to anyone in Omsk, since no one here was familiar with either Humboldt’s famous work “Asie Centrale” or Ritter’s volume of Asia dating back to the Tien Shan. Omsk, which now has over one hundred thousand inhabitants, then, despite its large administrative significance, accommodated no more than sixteen thousand souls; it was more like a temporary military-administrative camp than an urban industrial and commercial settlement. It was built on both sides of the Om River at its confluence with the Irtysh, into which the city abutted. On the right bank of the Om there was a fortress, inside it there was a church and several government buildings, and between them the wooden house of the governor-general at that time; outside the fortress there was a large main administration building, from which a street descended towards the Irtysh; On it were located mainly the houses of the fourteen military and civilian generals living in Omsk at that time. 31

These houses were all wooden, very nondescript and not surrounded by gardens or trees. Each house had only a spacious balcony overlooking a wide and dusty unpaved street. On the left, high bank of the Omi River there was a larger part of the city with two churches, a guest courtyard, a post office, shops, two squares and a very miserable willow boulevard. But outside the city, two miles below the city limits of that time, on the high right bank of the river, there was a vast and beautiful park - a convenient and favorite place for Omsk townsfolk to hang out. The most interesting person in Omsk for me then, of course, was the Governor-General himself, on whom the entire fate of my journey depended. Such a governor-general at that time was the elderly infantry general Gustav Ivanovich Gasfort, who became known as an outstanding military leader during the Hungarian campaign. Despite some of his oddities and human weaknesses, Gustav Ivanovich Gasfort was a remarkable person and, of course, owes his brilliant career not only to chance, but even more to his personal qualities. Having completed a course of science at the Koenigsberg Higher Veterinary Educational Institution, Gasfort entered the service as a veterinarian in the Prussian army at the beginning of the 19th century, and in one of the wars against Napoleon, waged by us in alliance with Prussia, he was seconded to the Russian troops, who needed veterinarians on the occasion of the opening of in our cavalry of epizootics. In one of the battles with the French, it seems, at Preussisch-Eylau, when many Russian officers were killed, Gasfort, promoted to officer, in the heat of battle so distinguished himself for his bravery that he was renamed to the rank of officer and remained forever in the ranks of the Russian army. Then, at the end of the Patriotic War of 1812-1815, Gasfort entered the newly formed school of column leaders - this original cradle of officers of the Russian General Staff. Having completed his course of science with brilliant success, he transferred to Russian citizenship and became an officer of the General Staff. During the Hungarian campaign of 1849, Gasfort already commanded a division and became famous for his truly skillful retreat to Hermannstadt (Sibiu) in Transylvania, to which he withdrew the main forces of Görgei and thereby made it possible for other Russian troops to bypass the latter’s army, which decided the fate of the war. Gasfort was very proud of his retreat to Hermannstadt. He said that in world military history there were only three such retreats: one by Xenophon, another by Raevsky near Smolensk and his third to Hermannstadt (Sibiu). When in 1853, the Governor-General of Western Siberia, Prince Pyotr Dmitrievich Gorchakov, upon the appointment of his brother Prince Mikhail Dmitrievich as commander-in-chief of the active army in Crimea, expressed a desire to take part in the Sevastopol War and received command of one of the corps of the active army, Nicholas I did not find him more a worthy successor for the West Siberian General Government, except for General Gasfort, who was appointed by him and commander of the troops of all Siberia. It cannot be said that this choice was particularly unfortunate. Gasfort was one of the most enlightened officers of the Russian army, had a completely scientific military education, great experience and undoubted abilities in military affairs, personal courage and impeccable honesty. Unfortunately, Gasfort did not have administrative abilities, but he was not a bureaucrat or a routinist, but, on the contrary, 32

showed personal initiative, especially in matters in which he considered himself somewhat competent. The position of the Siberian governors-general in the half of the 19th century was, however, not easy, and in order to do something truly useful for the region, it was necessary to have either the statesmanship of Speransky, or the unyielding will of Muravyov-Amursky. The position of the Governor-General of Western Siberia was no easier than the position of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia. He was in charge of two huge provinces within Siberia - Tobolsk and Tomsk - and the steppe regions enclosing them from the south with a military border line: the Siberian Kyrgyz and Semipalatinsk. General Gasfort had almost no influence on the Tobolsk province. It was governed in the usual administrative manner from the provincial city of Tobolsk by an intelligent and experienced governor, Viktor Antonovich Artsimovich. The Tomsk province was almost to a greater extent removed from the actual jurisdiction of General Gasfort. Its center of gravity was in the Altai mining district, the mining chief of which lived in Barnaul and, in relation to the entire economy of the district, was subordinate directly to the Cabinet and the Ministry of the Court and Appanages, only to some extent being under the supervision of the Tomsk governor, who was always appointed from among the mining engineers, so that in the Tomsk province, under the direct authority of the governor-general, as commander of the troops of all Siberia, there were only small troops located in this province. At the direct disposal of the governor-general were two steppe regions: the Siberian Kyrgyz and Semipalatinsk, with their almost exclusively Kyrgyz population at that time. As the commander of the troops of all Siberia, the troops of the Siberian Corps were subordinate to him, and as the ataman of the Siberian Cossack army - the entire wide strip of Cossack lands from the border of the Orenburg province through Petropavlovsk, along the entire Irtysh line to Lake Zaisan. This territory corresponded to the subsequently formed Steppe General Government before the Semirechensk region was separated from it and annexed to Turkestan. But even in the management of this vast region, the Governor-General was greatly limited by the Council of the Main Administration of Western Siberia, especially since this Council was not just an advisory board, but a truly administrative institution, in which each member was in charge of his own part, such as economic , financial, administrative, judicial, foreign, etc. At the same time, the governor-general had no direct influence on the appointment of council members. Gasfort found in the Council of the Main Directorate a ready-made, united gang of predators and bribe-takers (during my visit to Omsk in 1856, only one of the council members did not take any direct part in these abuses), which, despite the strong power granted by law governors-general, he was unable to crush them, since they were connected with each other and with some dark forces in the capital’s institutions with a golden chain... This did not prevent the members of the Council of the Main Directorate from catering to all the weaknesses of the governor-general, which brought him immediately to a major mistake in choosing the head of affairs of the Governor General’s Office. One of Gasfort’s weaknesses was his envious rivalry with two neighboring governors-general and especially with N.N. Muravyov, who, although much younger than him in service, had already received 33

the title of Count of Amur. Gasfort was so hostile to Muravyov that in his eyes, the best recommendation for an official was his statement that he left service in Eastern Siberia due to troubles with the governor general... So Gasfort took the former ruler of the chancellery, ousted by Muravyov, as the ruler of his chancellery -Amursky for bribery. The intelligent and experienced Pochekunin (the name of the official who was the ruler of Gasfort’s office) rallied, as far as possible, the entire Management Council of Western Siberia and was a deft and active conductor of all the thefts carried out by the members of the Council, each in his own part. Gasfort subsequently admitted that he knew about their abuses, but that he held them in his hands, producing “thunder and lightning” from time to time, to alert them. This thunder and lightning consisted in the fact that, having collected from his very successfully chosen officials of special assignments some data on some major abuse, he denounced the accused in the presence of everyone, not even sparing harsh expressions, to which the guilty bowed low, without denying their guilt. But that was the end of the matter, and these same culprits, after waiting a little, continued their abuses, cleverly covered up by the ruler of the chancellery. Not to mention the abuses associated with wine farming, which the Council handed over to predatory hands, the supply of bread for troops and settlers in the Semirechensky and Zailiysky regions served as an even greater source of the largest income for members of the Main Directorate Council. At the auction, dummies received delivery for the bread ordered there at 11 and 12 rubles per quarter under the pretext of the high cost of delivering it along the Irtysh line deep into the steppe and to the Trans-Ili region, and they themselves bought it from the settlers who had just settled there from 90 kopecks to 1 ruble per quarter. Such income, shared by suppliers with members of the Council, explained the spilled sea of champagne at the feasts of the highest Omsk officials and their rude, cynical orgies... However, even at that time, a fresh stream of bright personalities was breaking through in the administrative world of Western Siberia. Not to mention the Tobolsk governor (later senator) Artsimovich, who managed to streamline the entire Tobolsk provincial administration, almost all the officials elected by Gasfort himself for special assignments under him turned out to be impeccable. Already from the first year of his appointment, convinced of his powerlessness to carry out any reforms in the management of the Russian population of Western Siberia, Gasfort turned all his attention to the Kyrgyz regions under his jurisdiction. But in the region of the Siberian Kirghiz, inhabited exclusively by the Kirghiz of the Middle Horde, he was extremely embarrassed by the fact that this horde was divided between the West Siberian and Orenburg general governments. What sad results were caused by the chronic disagreement and ill will that existed during almost the entire 19th century between the two neighboring governorsgeneral, in whose hands were the most dear interests of Russia in relation to its neighboring countries, is most clearly demonstrated by the history of constant uprisings in the first half of this century Kyrgyz Sultan Kenesary Kasimov. This brave Mithridate of the Kyrgyz steppe for decades successfully fought against Russian rule because, when he was defeated in the region of the Siberian Kirghiz, he migrated to the Orenburg Governor-General, where he not only received an 34

amnesty, but also honorary awards on the proposal of the Governor-General . Then, having quarreled with the latter, he again migrated to Western Siberia, where he was greeted with honor by the governor-general, who had changed during this period of time. Only on rare occasions, when both governors-general took up arms against him. Kenesary migrated to the Kokand Khanate, under the protection of the khan, who was no more hostile to both governors-general than the latter were to each other. And not the Russians, but the Kokand subjects of the Kara-Kyrgyz, during one of these migrations of Kenesary to the Kokand borders, managed to crush him, which happened shortly before the appointment of Gasfort as governor-general. Upon Gasfort’s arrival in the region entrusted to him, his first concern was to familiarize himself with the life of the Kyrgyz people and try to establish a somewhat consistent and permanent policy that the Russian authorities should adhere to in managing the Kyrgyz hordes and the nomadic population in general. It is remarkable that Gasfort immediately realized that his predecessors and neighbors (governors-general of Western Siberia and Orenburg) were making a very big mistake, intensively and artificially instilling Islam in the Kirghiz, who had not completely lost their ancient shamanic beliefs and were still poorly imbued with the teachings of Mohammed, and supplying their sultans and their villages by Tatar mullahs from Kazan. But from his completely fair consideration, Gasfort came to a strange and unexpected conclusion, which to some extent justified the nickname given to him by his peers [Giving justice to Gasfort’s versatile education and extensive erudition, they characterized him by the name of an “overturned bookcase” in which everything was mixed up. ]. This conclusion, expressed in a note submitted by him to Nicholas I in 1854, was as follows. In his opinion, Gasfort, the preaching of the Christian religion among the Kyrgyz cannot be successful, since many customs and conditions of nomadic life, such as nomadic polygamy, are incompatible with the tenets of Christian teaching. On the other hand, the conversion of the huge Kyrgyz people to Islam is contrary to Russian state interests. Therefore, it is necessary to give the Kirghiz a new religion, adapted to their living conditions and consistent with Russian state interests. When defining the dogmas of this new religion, one must take as their starting point the religion that was the old testament of the law of God, namely the Jewish one, cleansing it of Talmudic interpretations and reforming it in the spirit of Christianity, that is, adding many dogmas of the Christian religion to the commandments and teachings of Moses. A complete draft of this religion, exposing Gasfort’s extensive theological knowledge, was presented by him to Nicholas I, who, as they say, having written a resolution on a note: “Religions are not composed like articles of a code of laws,” returned it to the author with an unflattering review of his considerations. Having not found satisfaction either as an administrator of the large Russian population, or as a legislator of the no less numerous Kyrgyz population, Gasfort devoted all his strength to the care of the most remote outskirts of his general government - the polar Berezovsky region and the southernmost of our Asian possessions at that time - Semirechensky. He was the first of the Western Siberian governors-general to visit personally these two extremities of Western Siberia, distant from each other by 30° latitude. In the Berezovsky and 35

Obdorsky regions, he found an intelligent and kind owner of a vast region in the person of the Berezovsky police officer. Whoever had the honor of choosing this person, remarkable for his administrative abilities, from among the unknown modest army officers to the post of Beryozovsky police officer, whether it was Tobolsk Governor Artsimovich or Governor General Gasfort, but in any case the choice was extremely successful. Subsequently, the Berezovsky police officer G. A. Kolpakovsky, having passed through the position of bailiff of the Great Horde, governor of the Semirechensk region, assistant to the Turkestan governor-general, became himself a steppe governor-general and in all the positions he held, rendered unforgettable services to his fatherland. In any case, Gasfort’s merit is that he was the first to nominate such a worthy person. Having calmed down regarding the Berezovsky region, Gasfort focused all his attention on Semirechensky and here he already felt like a complete master, having not encountered any opposition in the Main Directorate of Western Siberia, since its members benefited from Gasfort’s activities on the remote outskirts. The movement forward into the depths of Asia and the colonization of Semirechye, the construction of roads there and the establishment of communication routes with the emerging settlements caused numerous deliveries and contracts made by the Main Directorate, and provided rich spoils to its members. In the city of Kopala, created by Prince Gorchakov, Gasfort also found a kind owner in the person of the remarkably talented and energetic lieutenant colonel of the Siberian Cossack army Abakumov, who managed to maintain the prestige of the first large Russian agricultural settlement on the territory of the Great Kyrgyz Horde. But Gasfort’s visit to the Semirechensk region left its mark. With a pick and an ax in his hands, he set about constructing a better route to Kopal through one of the chains of the Semirechensky Alatau at a pass called Gasfortova, then contributed to the formation of new villages in the region - Lepsinskaya in one of the high valleys of Alatau and Urdzharskaya on a tributary of Lake Ala-Kulya , near the Chinese city of Chuguchak. The locations of these villages were chosen well, and all these three significant Russian villages became a solid stronghold of Russian rule in Semirechye. Then the road from Semipalatinsk to the Ili River, with its well-arranged stations (pickets) at every 20-25 versts, equipped with a sufficient number of Cossacks and horses, was completely ordered after General Gasfort visited Semirechye. But his greatest achievement was the occupation of the Trans-Ili region. This corner of the West Siberian General Government, best in terms of climate and soil fertility with the possibility of irrigation (irrigation), representing the northern slope of the gigantic mountain range (Trans-Ili Alatau) to the Ili plain, has long been a disputed territory between our subjects - the Kirghiz of the Great Horde and the Kara-Kirghiz tribes: Chinese subjects of the goddesses and Kokand subjects of the Sarybagish. The brave and enterprising sultans of the Great Horde willingly volunteered to be our pioneers in occupying the foothills contested by them by the Kara-Kirghiz, the alpine meadows of which were willingly visited by them since they felt a firm stronghold behind them in the Russian colonization of the Semirechensk region. On his first visit to this region, General Gasfort finally decided to occupy the entire northern slope of the Trans-Ili Alatau. As an experienced military leader, 36

he was convinced that the tribes under the citizenship of two different states and warring among themselves could not serve as a serious obstacle to his occupation of the Trans-Ili region, but that he could only encounter obstacles to achieving his goal in St. Petersburg, where he had neither connections, nor the authority that constituted the strength of Muravyov-Amursky. With all this, Gasfort decided to send a reconnaissance detachment across the Ili River in the fall of 1854, consisting of one infantry battalion and three hundred Cossacks. The expedition was successful. She spotted seventy miles from the Ili River, at the very foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau, at the exit of the Almaty River from the mountains, an ideally beautiful place for a Russian settlement, the beginning of which was laid at the same time by the foundation of the Zailiysky fortification here, which was renamed the following year to Vernoye. Although not a single tree grew on this foothill, the valley overlooking it was rich in forest vegetation, and the abundance of water in it made it possible for artificial irrigation of the entire foothill area. During their further reconnaissance along the foot of the mountain range to the west, the detachment was surrounded by a countless number of Kara-Kirghiz, Kokand subjects, but still returned without any losses to the Ili River. In the summer of 1856, the final occupation of the foothills took place. The troops and Cossacks settled in the place chosen for the foundation of the fortification of Verny, and began cutting down forest in the Almaty Valley for the first necessary buildings. The first meeting of Russian settlers with the wild stone Kirghiz, who migrated to the southwest, was very hostile. On the very first night after the Russians arrived, a strong Kara-Kirghiz baranta, fifteen versts from Verny, stole a herd of Russian horses, killing 12 Cossacks guarding them, whose heads were found on pikes in the places where they were guarding the herd. In the fall, Gasfort himself visited the occupied foothills for the first time. The real colonization of family Cossacks and peasants began only in the spring of 1857. I return to the memory of the first day of my acquaintance with General Gasfort in Omsk. He received me very cordially; There is no doubt that in the conditions in which he then found himself, the arrival of a member of the then already highly respected Russian Geographical Society, sent to his region, was precisely in the interests of the Governor-General, who was looking for all support in his endeavors from independent, impartial and any authoritative witnesses to his actions. When introducing myself to Gasfort, I was careful not to utter a single word about the main purpose of my trip to the Tien Shan... I expressed only the deep sympathy of the Geographical Society for the activities of Gasfort on the southeastern edge of the Kyrgyz steppe and in particular for the colonization movement in the Trans-Ili and the Semirechensky region and told him that the Society had instructed me to study both the nature of the region they peacefully conquered and the successes of Russian colonization in it. That is why I have no doubt, I said, that the enlightened initiator of our progressive movement in Central Asia will give me the opportunity not only to visit Vernoye, but also to study, if possible, the geological structure of the region, its flora and fauna, as well as the population of the neighboring mountainous country . Gasfort, in response to this, expressed the hope that his role as a bearer of enlightenment in Central Asia could bring more benefits to Rus37

sia than the hasty, in his opinion, occupation of a waterway passing through a foreign state, glorified by his neighbor in the General Government, and that his peaceful conquest of a region richly endowed by nature will be later appreciated by history, and that for now he has to rejoice that the Russian Geographical Society, respected by all of Europe, has turned its attention to the region he has just occupied, which is why he welcomes the young scientist striving to study it . At the same time, Gasfort promised to immediately fulfill my wish and order the local authorities to provide the widest assistance to my research and provide me with a sufficient convoy for trips to the mountains of the Trans-Ili region, as well as to send topographers after me to photograph, if possible, all my routes. Gasfort immediately introduced me to the head of all topographic work in Western Siberia, Major General Baron Silvergelm, who was with him at that time, and instructed him to show me not only all the consolidated cartographic works, but also all the survey tablets carried out in the Kyrgyz regions during that time. Gasfort’s management. The order of the Governor-General was carried out with pleasure by the honest and good-natured Finn, especially since he hoped that the Geographical Society, with its connections with the General Staff, would remind him of the need to quickly supply Omsk with good tools. It turned out that the tablets and, in general, instrumental surveys of Omsk topographers were perfectly executed and that only in their summary cartographic works were major shortcomings noticed, which were explained by the fact that surveys of such huge spaces could not be carried out either simultaneously or uniformly. Different spaces were taken by different topographers and, moreover, at different times, some instrumentally, others by eye, others were plotted on summary maps only based on inquiries, and the summary of all this motley material was carried out hastily and prematurely at the sudden request of the authorities, to please him. The Omsk cartographers explained to me what role this pleasure played. Once they brought Gasfort, at his request, several new filming tablets. Examining them very carefully, he noticed that in some interfluves of the Kyrgyz steppe there were no mountains at all on the watersheds, and he inquired why the mountains were not depicted there. Having received the answer that there are no mountains in this area, Gasfort noted that topographers, given their lack of culture, have no criterion in their judgments, and that, in his opinion, Gasfort, there should be mountains. A few days after that, Gasfort was presented with a consolidated map of the Siberian expanse of the Kyrgyz steppe, on which the mountains he supposed were plotted (!). Gasfort was very pleased that the mountains were where he expected them to be, and in response to my question to Baron Silverhelm about what happened to the original tablets, I received the answer: “We, of course, did not correct the tablets, but only hid them How could we not amuse the old man when drawing up a summary map?” During my short stay in Omsk, I managed to become acquainted, although still quite superficially, with the best figures of the city, whom I have already mentioned above. But my special attention was drawn to two talented young officers, who had recently completed a course in the Omsk Cadet Corps, and who themselves were looking for an opportunity to get to know me. One of them, a Cossack by birth, struck me not only with 38

his curiosity and hard work, but also with his extraordinary, absolutely ideal spiritual purity and honesty of his strong convictions; it was Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin, who later became famous as a traveler and explorer of Siberia and Central Asia. He was the son of a very talented and inquisitive Cossack officer, who in the first quarter of the 19th century was often sent to the Kyrgyz steppes. Traveling along them within the region of the Siberian Kirghiz (now Akmola), he reached the banks of the Chu River and the borders of the Kokand Khanate. Some of his interesting routes and visual surveys reached Humboldt and were used by him in his “Central Asia”. At the end of his life, despite his fame and merits, Potanin’s father was demoted to ordinary Cossacks, but his son was accepted into the cadet corps in the city of Omsk and completed the course there with great success. At this time, Cossack officers with the rank of cornet received only 90 rubles in salary per year and replenished their budgets with easy payments from the Kyrgyz during their business trips and performance of official duties in the Kyrgyz steppe. But in this regard, G.N. Potanin alone was an exception. Acting steadfastly according to his pure and honest convictions, he did not collect any taxes from the Kyrgyz and managed to live on his 90 rubles. With the permission of the highest authorities, he began dismantling the Omsk archives and extracted from there data precious for the history of Siberia and the Siberian Cossack troops. It goes without saying that I not only became interested in the fate of the young officer, but, upon further acquaintance with him, tried to develop in him a love of nature and natural science, which subsequently attracted an outstanding young man to St. Petersburg University and developed him into a wonderful traveler, ethnographer and naturalist. Another person who especially interested me in Omsk was Chokan Chingisovich Valikhanov. A Kyrgyz originally from the Middle Horde, he was the grandson of the last Kyrgyz khan Valiya and the great-grandson of the famous Ablai Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan. His mother was the sister of “Mithridates” of the Kyrgyz people - Kenesary Kasimov. His paternal grandmother, the widow of Khan Valiy, and her children remained faithful to Russia, while the rest of her relatives, the children of Khan Valiy from his first marriage and his brothers, did not want to admit that Khan Valiy had accepted Russian citizenship. Alexander I paid great attention to the widow of Khan Valiya and ordered her to build the first house in the Kyrgyz steppe, in which Chokan Valikhanov was born. Possessing absolutely outstanding abilities, Valikhanov completed a course at the Omsk Cadet Corps with great success, and subsequently, already in St. Petersburg, under my influence, he listened to lectures at the university and became so familiar with the French and German languages that he became a remarkable scholar on the history of the East and in particular peoples related to the Kyrgyz people. He would have made a wonderful scientist if death caused by consumption had not snatched him away prematurely, in the twenty-eighth year of his life. It goes without saying that I considered it my duty to draw the special attention of General Gasfort to this young talented man, and upon my return from a trip to the Tien Shan, I suggested the idea of sending Valikhanov in Kyrgyz clothes with a trade caravan to Kashgar, which was subsequently carried out by Valikhanov with full success. The purpose of 39

my two-day stop in Omsk was completely achieved, and on the third of June I left Omsk for Barnaul. On the way to Barnaul, between the Irtysh and Ob, the vast and interesting Barabinskaya steppe, or Baraba, stretched for 700 miles, which at that time had little attraction for Russian colonization. My road to the city of Kainsk, at a distance of 480 miles, went along the Omi River. For the first thirty miles I drove through a treeless steppe, but then, upon arriving on the right bank of the river, I again encountered birch small forests - “kolki”. In the gullies of the high left bank of the Om, snow deposits that had not yet melted could be seen. On the steppe itself, the most characteristic grasses were feather grass (Stipa parmata) and honey grass (Phlomis tuberosa). On the fourth of June the weather was stormy and cold, and it was hailing. The terrain was tiresomely monotonous. The villages we encountered were poorly built and seemed poorer than in the Tobolsk province. The city of Kainsk, to which we arrived on the evening of the fourth of June, was not much different from large Siberian villages: there was only one church in it, but, however, there were up to 2,700 inhabitants in 470 households. Beyond Kainsk, I finally parted with Omya and on the morning of June 5th I reached the most characteristic part of the Barabinsk steppe, characterized mainly by an abundance of lakes and an almost complete absence of flowing waters. Behind the Ubinskaya station, in the distance, to the left of the road there is a vast lake Ubinskoye. The lowlying, swampy surface of the steppe is overgrown with birch and willow small forests. Some copses were decorated with dark orange, fiery-colored bouquets of the Siberian swimmer (Trollius asiaticus). A pink primrose (Primula cortusoides), alien to our European-Russian plain, appeared on the steppe. The most common shrub was our common, so-called yellow acacia (Caragana arborescens), which, having been exported from Siberia in the 17th century, filled the gardens of our ancestors. The abundance of freshwater lakes in the Barabinsk steppe, which did not have a drainage, was in conflict with the then widespread belief among geographers that any lake that does not have a drainage turns into a salt lake. Obviously, the question of under what conditions lakes that do not have drains can maintain their freshwater quality and under what conditions they become salty could only be resolved by a careful and, moreover, comparative study of the freshwater lakes of the Barabinsk steppe and the salty ones of the Kyrgyz steppe, and although the Barabinskaya steppe was subsequently visited and studied by such a thorough scientist as Academician Middendorf, much remains to be done to study the lakes of Central Asia, to which the Russian Geographical Society has been and continues to be so attentive throughout the last thirty years of its activity. On the sixth of June, at 9 o’clock in the morning, the majestic Ob River appeared from behind the dense pine forest that accompanied its flow. Some Siberian plant forms also appeared for the first time on its sandy shores: the luxurious purple urchinberry (Oxytropis uralensis) and a species of wild pea (Orobus alpestris), but the predominant species in the pine forest were the common European lingonberry, blueberry, blueberry, etc. Crossing the Ob took me the whole day (June 6th) from 9 1/2 o’clock in the morning until sunset. In order to make this crossing, we had to stretch the towline upstream for nine miles. This whole procedure lasted seven hours. Then we 40

began to move across the Ob, but, having reached its middle, we were caught in a strong thunderstorm. The rain, accompanied by continuous lightning and strong peals of thunder, drenched us. With difficulty we landed on the shore, where the vast village of Berdskoye with three churches was located on a hill. The Ob between Barnaul and Berdsky forms a huge bend, so that on the way from the Barabinsk steppe to Barnaul, located on the left bank of the Ob, it was necessary to cross the river twice. I did not stop in Berdskoye, but continued my journey through the space around the Ob, in the middle of which the right tributary of the Ob, the Chumysh River, flows. Unfortunately, I had to pass the second station from Berdskoye - the village of Medvedskoye - at night. Meanwhile, this undulating and picturesque area was extremely interesting to me, because here were the first outcrops of solid rocks (clayey shales, crystalline diorites and conglomerates) of the Altai Highlands, which served as a continuation of the uplift of the Salair Ridge and determined the bend, or bow, formed by the Ob. When on the morning of June 7 I reached the Chumysh River, I found here the same sandy soil, the same coniferous forests and the same ordinary European-Russian vegetation. From Chumysh to the second crossing we traveled about forty versts; we descended to the Ob River along an elongated sandy hillock, on which I happily met three luxurious Asian plant forms new to me: astragalus (Astragalus sabuletorum), saltwort (Statice gmelini) and fragrant yellow wild lily (Hemerocallis flava). Crossing the Ob here was far from being as difficult and dangerous as in Berdskoye; only thirteen miles remained from the crossing to Barnaul, and by six o’clock in the evening I was in the city. Barnaul is located on the left bank of the Ob, at the confluence of the Barnaulka River, on the left side of this river, along which it was stretched more than along the Ob. All longitudinal streets of the city were parallel to the Ob. The Barnaul plant was located on a dam of the Barnaulka River, dammed into a vast and beautiful pond. The right bank of the river rose high and quite picturesquely above its dam; a cemetery church was built on it. On one of the city squares there was a granite obelisk in memory of the centenary of the existence of the Altai mining plants; almost the entire area was surrounded by state-owned stone buildings, but all private houses, despite the comfort and even luxury with which the mining engineers lived, were wooden. During my stay in Barnaul (1856), there were up to 1,800 houses, and the number of residents exceeded 10,000 of both sexes. I stayed in Barnaul, according to the word I had given, with V. A. Poletika, who hospitably invited me to his place. Through him I very soon became acquainted with the entire Barnaul society. Although the city of Barnaul was not distinguished by the external beauty of its buildings, everything inside was decorated with comfort and luxury, and everything seemed cheerful. The society, all homogeneous, consisted of very well-educated and cultured mining and forestry officers and their families, who were strongly related to each other, as well as the families of two or three gold miners, some of whom were also mining officers at one time. They lived cheerfully and even luxuriously, but their feasts did not have the rudeness that distinguished the orgies of members of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia in Omsk. The aesthetic inclinations of the mining engineers of the Altai Mining District were 41

manifested not only in the decoration of their rooms and the elegant clothing of their ladies, but also in their familiarity with both scientific and fiction literature and, finally, in the prosperity of the Barnaul amateur theater, which even had its own building . Many of the mining engineers, constantly taking part in amateur performances, developed into subtle, educated artists, among whom the mining engineer Samoilov, brother of the famous actor Samoilov, and the young mining engineer Davidovich-Nashchinsky remained in my memory in dramatic roles. In female roles, two of the engineers’ wives were also very outstanding artists. In a word, Barnaul was at that time, undoubtedly, the most cultural corner of Siberia, and I nicknamed it the Siberian Athens, leaving the nickname of Sparta for Omsk... But, of course, between these cities and the ancient cities of Greece there was a difference proportional to the difference in the culture of Siberia in half of the 19th century from the culture of ancient Greece. And Siberian Sparta, with the rudeness of its warlike morals, did not have Spartan purity and impeccability, and Siberian Athens had its dark sides. I will return to the description of Barnaul life later. The mining chief of the Altai mountain district, Colonel Andrei Rodionovich Gerngross, received me very warmly and not only ordered the governor of the Zmeinogorsk region to provide me with possible assistance during my trips around Altai, but provided me with a tent, which helped me throughout my trip in Altai and Tien- shan great services. Acquaintance with Barnaul, its society, among which I subsequently had to spend the winter of 1856/57, with the Barnaul mining industry, its interesting geological, paleontological and archaeological collections, with new wonderful photographs taken in the Altai mining district on the initiative of M.N. Muravyov, as well as the actual preparation for my equipment, took me a week and a half, and I got ready to set off only on June 19th. I left Barnaul that day in the morning: I was traveling by mail, but not at the usual speed on this route, due to stops caused by my desire to thoroughly familiarize myself with the character of the Altai country. On the first two stages, my road ran parallel to the Ob, and then parallel to the Alei River, through steppes covered with luxurious early summer vegetation. We moved through a narrow Alley on June 20 very early in the morning. From the Kalmyk Capes station, located on the Charysh River, I saw the Altai Mountains for the first time in the blue distance. The first three “hills” that serve as the foothills of Altai were given names by the Cossacks: Vostrukha, Rechikha and Ignatikha; behind them, in a truly blue distance, Sinyukha rises. Since each of these mountains rises separately and does not represent a continuous ridge, the Siberians call them “hills,” although there is nothing volcanic about them. Moreover, Siberians say: “the hills are smoking” when, attracting clouds to themselves, the hills are enveloped in them. Further, when the Cossacks see a solid ridge, they call it “Ural”, in the form of not their own, but a common noun. I was also struck by the Cossacks’ use of the verb “to prove” in the sense of informing. Beyond the Kalmyk capes, on the banks of the Loktyovka River, I met the first outcrops of hard rocks of Altai: these were gray porphyries, on the rocks of which grew a typical Altai plant - patrinia (Patrinia rupestris) and Altai species of sedum (Sedum). I spent the night from June 20 to 21 at the Saushke station in order to devote 42

the next day to exploring the already world-famous Kolyvan Lake, located two or three miles from the named station. This lake, located in the slightly hilly foothills of Altai, has always amazed travelers visiting Altai with the bizarre shapes of its granite rocks, rising vertically near and far from it in a slightly hilly area. The granite rocks of Lake Kolyvan in their forms have rivals only in the granite rocks of Mount Brocken in the Harz. The difference between the two is that the Brocken rocks are made up of individual granite blocks, piled one on top of the other in a chaotic disorder like mattresses; Kolyvan rocks, with their fantastic forms, have a more shell-like separateness. Individual rocks rise on both sides of the Barnaul road and the surface of the slightly undulating feather grass steppe, and the most fantastic ones are located to the west of it. The rather flat, arched western shore of the lake consists of the same granites. On the northern shore, at the foot of the high cliffs, already at that time there was a garden with a large wooden canopy or veranda, from where there was a beautiful view of the lake and the rocky cape jutting into it from the eastern side. Near the southeastern corner of the lake, a river originates, apparently fed by swamps formed by water seeping from the lake. On the southern side of the lake rises a mountain, rising 150 meters above the lake level, covered with small birch forests and not particularly numerous fir trees. In the waters grows floating chilim (Trapa natans), characterized by its angular nuts. The land vegetation near the lake is not much different from the European one, only the wild Tatar honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica), which has passed from the Altai Highlands in countless numbers into our gardens, and the beautiful pale yellow iris (Iris halophila), decorating the shores, remind the traveler that he is already in deep in Asia. From Saushka I arrived in Zmeinogorsk on June 22 and decided to devote five weeks to studying Altai. During this time, I visited the Zmeinogorsky and Loktevsky plants, all the mines of the Zmeinogorsk group, as well as mines located along the Uba and Ulba river systems. These excursions took about a month. In relation to the Zmeinogorsk mine, I was interested in the immediate reasons for the fall of this mine, previously the first in terms of wealth in Altai and, in particular, in the Zmeinogorsk region, and the attitude of the Altai Mining Administration to the then numerous serf mining Russian population of Altai. I could, however, complete such a study only after spending the winter of 1856/57 in Barnaul, and therefore I will return to this subject further. Zmeinogorsk did not seem particularly attractive to me. It is located in a very hilly area, but the surrounding rocky mountains are devoid of forest vegetation. The town consisted of ugly wooden houses, but their interior decoration was distinguished by the same comfort as in Barnaul. In a word, Zmeinogorsk was the most significant cultural center of inland Altai. Despite the severe depletion of the mine, exploration work was still carried out in it, which allowed a geologist with a hammer in his hands to penetrate into the underground kingdom of Altai, where hard labor did not exist, and the huge dumps made it possible to get acquainted with everything that had ever been extracted here from the bowels of the earth, not excluding the “Chud” tools of the Bronze Age. In Zmeinogorsky, Cherepanovsky and other mines of the Zmeinogorsk group and at the Loktevsky plant, I met the most cordial hospitality of educated and cul43

tured mining engineers. But my most interesting trip in Altai was a trip to the valleys of the Uba and Ulba rivers, and especially to the most inland and interesting of the inhabited Altai valleys - Ridder. My companion on this trip was an educated and cultured officer of the forest ranger corps, who was very familiar with Altai [The entire forest administration of Altai, like the mountain administration, at that time had officer ranks and wore military uniforms.] Koptev. He was only four years older than me and, married to the daughter of one of the Altai mining engineers, was widowed shortly before my arrival, which is why he willingly went with me to travel in the Altai valleys. We left for this trip from Zmeinogorsk on July 20. The road from the dam of the vast Upper Zmeevsky Pond went uphill to the ridge of Shaggy Hills, consisting of granite. Having reached the pass, from which the high mountains of the Kolyvan Ridge - Sinyukha and Revnyukha - were visible, the road descended to the Alei River along an inclined steppe plane. From this descent, twelve miles away on the silver ribbon of Alei, the vast village of Staro-Aleiskoye could be seen. This village had the appearance of a remarkably rich and prosperous one, but the old, swaying chapel located in it, instead of a temple, sufficiently indicated that the thousand inhabitants of the village belonged to the Old Believers, and that a new temple would be erected as magnificent as they might have desired they were not allowed to build for themselves. Beyond Staro-Aleisky, nineteen versts from Zmeinogorsk, we crossed Alei into a ford. Its current was fast, the banks consisted of sediment. The steppe behind them was monotonous, but near the road to the left there remained low rocky mountains, rising with a very broken ridge. They consisted of granite and formed a continuation of the Ubo-Aleysky ridge. The steppe itself was undulating and crossed by gentle ravines. Beyond Staro-Aleisky, here and there on the steppe we came across crops of wheat, spelt, oats and millet from the rich peasants of the Staro-Aleisky volost. In some places there were salt licks, which could be recognized by their vegetation, consisting of salt marsh (Statice gmelini) and halophytes (saltwort). On the small rivers flowing through this steppe - Zolotushka and Gryaznushka, there were two mines - Gerikhovsky and Titovsky, but both, as well as the neighboring Surgutanovsky mine, were abandoned long ago; There weren’t even any buildings on them, and only at the Titovsky mine were explorations carried out by temporary workers. Gerich Hill, which I examined, consisted of porphyry, breccia and limestone. In these latter I found, to my great satisfaction, many fossils of the Devonian system. The sun had already set when I, carried away by the search for fossils, left the Gerikhovsky mine in my spacious carriage, in which all the treasures I had collected easily fit. At first we drove along the Zolotushka River up its course, but then turned across the steppe to the southeast. It got dark very soon, and just as soon we lost our way. I had to spend the night in the steppe. At dawn on July 21, our horses grazing on the steppe were no longer there. The coachman went to look for them when it was already dawn. When the sun rose, it illuminated a gently sloping dome-shaped mountain located about eight miles ahead of us, on the top of which buildings were visible. According to Koptev’s identification, this was the Sugatovsky mine. With the help of my servant, we found the horses quite soon, but there was no 44

coachman, and without him we decided to go straight to the Sugatovsky mine, crossed the ford of the Babylonka River and began to climb the six-verst ascent, which we passed safely. The Sugatovsky mine was one of the richest iron and silver mines in Altai. Sugatovskaya Mountain consisted of porphyry, cut through by a stock of pure iron ore and containing many more soft ocher placer ores. At that time, the mine annually produced an output of 250 thousand poods of ore, the content of which was 1 3/4 spools of silver per pood of ore. From the Sugatovsky mine, the road descended for 12 miles to the Ube River, which here had already emerged from the mountain valley and flowed freely in the low but steep banks quite quickly and in a wide flood. Three miles after crossing it there was a surviving village of the Nikolaevsky mine, although the mine was no longer in operation, and only exploration was carried out on it. The area around the Nikolaevsky mine was still steppe. Eight miles from Nikolaevsk we drove through the steppe to the Uba, opposite Shemonaikha, a vast and flourishing village located on the right bank of the Uba, at its very exit from the mountain valley into the steppe. Behind Uba rose a mountain, which, judging by its torn profile, undoubtedly consisted of granite. From Shemonaikha to Vydrikha, twenty miles away, the road went up the Ubinskaya valley, bounded on both sides by granite mountains. Beyond Vydrikha, the road began to move away from Uba and quickly climb up the mountain. Several miles before reaching the next station, Losikha, twenty miles from Vydrikha, a charming view of the Uba valley suddenly opened up, expanding here into a basin, in the middle of which a majestic river meandered in a wide ribbon and a vast village was spread out, descending into the basin from the foot of a porphyry hill. Our descent from the granite mountains was long and steep, along an inclined plane with a rapid fall, past a deep ravine. The entire slope was overgrown with luxurious vegetation of unusually tall steppe grasses, between which stood out the beautiful large pink flowers of khama (Lavatera thuringiaca) and slender wild mallows (Althaea ficifolia), dense tufts of feather grass (Stipa capillata) and large drooping inflorescences of thistle (Cnicus cernuus). The lower part was overgrown with dense bushes, between which the characteristic Altai wolfberry (Daphne altaica) filled the air with the aroma of its white and pink flowers. Beyond the wide basin, the descent into which vividly reminded me, although not in such a grandiose form, of one of the descents into the Vallese Valley of the Upper Rhone (descente de Forclas), tall Ubin squirrels rose in the distance, on the highest of which streaks of snow glittered. While descending into the valley, a catastrophe almost happened to us: a lively Siberian troika, harnessed to our heavy tarantass, carried down the mountain at the steepest point of the descent, and there was no way to hold it. At this time I was enthusiastically telling Al. Bor. Koptev my memories of the Vallese Valley, and, noticing that my companion was looking around with concern, taking a moment to jump out of the carriage, I quite calmly continued my story, filling in with it that critical moment when the horses, dodging the road, rushed towards steep cliff. There was no way to stop them, but the resourceful driver, gathering his strength, turned them sharply to the side, and they, entangled in the bushes, fell, and the carriage, whose wheels were wrapped in tall grasses, stopped. Before riding to 45

Losikha, I made a side excursion on horseback to the Losikhinsky copper mine, located four miles from the village, in the hope of finding there the Losikhinsky fossils familiar to me from the Barnaul museum. But it was not possible to find them. I just inspected the mine and returned to the village, from where we, having fixed our tarantass, continued on our way. At the twelfth mile on the road from Losikha to Sekisovka a very beautiful panorama opened up. Ahead of us appeared a mountain with a saddle-shaped peak, which differed from all the Altai mountains we had seen before in that its saddle, called Prohodnoy Squirrel, was overgrown with a vast and dense pine forest. To our left towered the majestic Uba squirrels with their patches of snow, partly covered by a blanket of clouds. At the foot of the Belousovsky Bor mountain on the Sekisovka river flowing from it there was a large village of this name with a well-whitewashed wooden church. Upon entering Sekisovka, I was struck by some features in the clothing and homes of the inhabitants of this village. Women’s headdresses consisted of low kokoshniks, gracefully wrapped in a light white bandage, giving the entire headdress the appearance of a turban; Their shirts and shirts were beautifully embroidered with red cords. The interior of their homes was remarkably clean; the unpainted wooden floors were thoroughly cleaned. The furniture, especially the cabinets, as well as the ceilings and walls, were painted in bright colors. The inhabitants of Sekisovka were called “Poles,” although they spoke only Russian and were Old Believers who fled to Poland during the time of Patriarch Nikon, but returned to Russia after the first partition of Poland and were evicted here by Catherine II. Between the Sekisovka and Bobrovka stations (22 versts), we finally crossed the watershed between Uba and Ulba, from which the three-domed Monastic Hill, already beyond the Irtysh, was visible in the blue distance in the southwest. Bobrovka was a large village consisting of little white houses (huts) of the southern Russian type, completely different from the Old Believers, which is explained by the fact that Bobrovka was inhabited by Cossacks and was a Cossack outpost at the beginning of the 19th century. Beyond Bobrovka it soon became dark, and we rode the last ten miles in complete darkness to the village of Tarkhanskoye, where we spent the night. Tarkhanskoye is located on the right bank of the Ulba, in its charming valley, which I spent the entire next day (July 22) exploring. Very early in the morning I set out on horseback for my excursion, the goal of which was Mount Dolgaya, closest to the valley. Its slope was covered with luxurious grass vegetation of the Altai valleys. The giant grasses were so tall that a rider on a horse riding along a narrow path was buried in them up to his waist. The morning dew was so abundant that it fell from the grass onto me like rain, and, despite the brilliance of the sun and the cloudless sky, before I left for the summit I was wet, as they say, to the bone. The herbaceous vegetation consisted of tall grasses (Gramineae), umbrellas (Umbelliferae), mallows (Malvaceae), asteraceae (Compositae), and bellflowers (Campanu Jaceae). This mass of gigantic plants was enlivened by the varied and partly bright colors of luxurious flowers. Before reaching the top of the mountain, these grasses were replaced first by shrubs, and then by low turf, and finally, outcrops of rocks appeared, namely shale, with a steep drop in their layers (up to 70°). There was a picturesque view from the top of the 46

mountain. The vast valley was decorated with the wide silver ribbon of Ulba; on both sides of it rose mountain ranges, widely covered with a dark cover of forests, and from behind these mountains, in some places, Ulba squirrels, decorated with white shiny stripes of snow, could be seen. Only on one side, the southwestern one, the valley, expanding, was lost in the undulating, boundless Irtysh steppe, behind which the three-domed Monastic Hill rose on the distant horizon in the foggy distance. Having reached the ridge of the Long Mountain, I moved to the other side and descended into the side valley of a small tributary of the Ulba, along which I again went to the Ulba and returned to Tarkhanskoye. On this descent, to my great satisfaction, I found what had been the main object of my entire excursion: outcrops of the Carboniferous rocks, rich in fossils and providing me with abundant spoils. The next day, July 23, we continued our journey to Riddersk. We were warned back in Zmeinogorsk that this last part of the journey would be difficult, since the Ulba, where it is formed from its constituent branches, washed away and demolished the well-maintained road and bridges, causing great devastation. Therefore, the mining authorities took special measures to completely secure our move to Riddersk. Our tarantass was harnessed to six horses in a train, and, regardless of the postilion, we were accompanied by six horsemen. Not far from the village we crossed a ford through the fast Ulba, which demolished the bridge and scattered huge stones throughout its valley with a generous hand. However, despite the devastation caused by the wayward river, its valley between the Dolgaya and Shipitsynskaya mountains was likened to a blooming park. Its tree vegetation consisted of slender Siberian poplars (Populus laurifolia), birches, willows, aspens, cherry trees, etc. Groups of trees interspersed with clearings and thickets of Siberian shrubs. Among the tall grasses, I noticed here many peonies (Paeonia hybrida), unfortunately already faded, but opening the dark purple interior of their fruits. With every turn of the road, new landscapes revealed themselves in all their beauty. We constantly forded through the branches of the Ulba or through mountain streams flowing into it, or climbed low porphyry cliffs covered with luxurious vegetation. Particularly picturesque were the views from some of these elevations of the bends of the river and the cliffs hanging over it in places; to our right we could see a mountain rising hundreds of meters above the river level. From its high, sharply angular ridge, one could unmistakably conclude that it consisted of granite; local residents gave it the slightly poetic but characteristic name Ugloukha. Its slopes are densely overgrown with forest. At the twentieth verst from Shemonaikha, having crossed Ulba along a deep ford, we reached the vast village of Cheremshanki, located at the very foot of Ugloukha. Without changing our grandiose harness here, we drove another 12 versts to the village of Butachikha, through the most dangerous part of our journey, since here an artificial structure consisting of huge stone slabs and stretching for almost ten versts was destroyed by extraordinary floods. Such structures are called “cuts” here. This cut was destroyed in the spring of 1856, and the river scattered the huge stones from which the cut was made throughout the valley. Butachikha is a fairly extensive village, picturesquely spread out along the valley, located not far from the area in which Ulba is formed from the merger of its constituent 47

branches. The most interesting of them is a noisy, fast and foaming mountain stream, which originates from the snows of the Ulbinskie proteins and received the name Gromotukha from the local residents. The day was already approaching evening when we left Butachikha, but it was not yet completely dark when we finally reached Riddersk, where we found the most cordial hospitality in the house of an educated mining engineer from the Ridder mine. During my travels through Altai, as well as during my move through the Ishim and Barabinsk steppes, I was highly interested in the question of how the Russian population settled and settled upon its arrival in the country or area that it was occupying for the first time. It goes without saying that this kind of observation is especially important in Siberia, a country in which the process of colonization continues to this day. There is no doubt that the entire process of settlement and resettlement of the Russian population is in the power and direct dependence not only on the properties of those resettling, but also even more on the local conditions of the country to which the resettlement is directed. I was primarily interested in the question: how did the Siberian settlers initially settle singly (in farmsteads) or more or less crowded, that is, in large villages. This issue was easily resolved in a country like the Ishim steppe. Here, as in most of the dry chernozem continental space of European Russia, it is impossible to live in interfluve areas due to the lack of water, and therefore you can only settle on the banks of rivers and fresh lakes. Moreover, the entire southern strip of Siberia adjacent to the Kyrgyz hordes was so little protected from the raids of nomads in the 18th century that the agriculture of the farm population was not guaranteed from ruin, and the Russians had to settle in large villages. Therefore, even now in the Ishim district, since the occupation of this country by the Russian population, there are no very small villages: the conditions of nature and the history of the country prevented the development of farmsteads or settlements here. The Altai settlers found themselves in different conditions. Here nature, rich in water and building materials, did not prevent settlement everywhere and encouraged the development of rural farmsteads; but, despite this, the settlers who began to settle in Altai from the beginning of the second quarter of the 18th century were located in fairly large villages (from 15 to 30 households). This depended on the fact that during the initial settlement of settlers who came here from afar, the fight against the wild forces of nature was beyond the capabilities of individual settlers (farmers) and forced them to unite both for the exploitation of local wealth and for self-defense against neighboring nomads and wandering foreigners in more or less less significant villages. This was also made easier by the fact that the first Russian settlers of Altai in the 18th and 19th centuries, like the Old Believers and Cossacks, formed strong alliances already in their former places of residence in European Russia or the Urals. The first act of settling settlers in a newly occupied country consisted in the construction (where this was allowed by the presence of water and building materials, namely timber or at least clay) of a more or less crowded village; wide enclosure of it with an extensive fence, which designated the common land ownership of the essentials - a common pasture (grassland), and then concentration on this pasture of what was most dear to them and nec48

essary to ensure their existence, protected from attacks by predatory animals and semi-wild nomads of livestock. Only from the second year of his settlement did the settler take up farming, appropriating for himself from the total mass of lands occupied by his colonization through unhindered seizure, as much land as he could cultivate. He cleared it of vegetation (forest, bush or grass) for sowing. All fellow villagers respected his rights to the clearing, and since no one challenged these rights, the settler had no need for the time being to occupy new lands to form farms. He continued to live in his yard and in his village until he abandoned his depleted arable land, and started a farm in a fresh place only when he did not find land for a new clearing nearby and when to form it he needed to move at least temporarily to a new place. Thus, occupations and evictions arose, but not earlier than several years after the initial settlement in the country or area. However, such secondary migrations were not caused by economic considerations alone, but sometimes had the goal of escaping religious and other oppression, as happened in Altai when the Old Believers fled “behind the stone,” that is, through the mountain range into the Bukhtarma River basin. The Altai villages that I visited in 1856 retained their original large size until the middle of the 19th century and did not crumble into farmsteads; even less could large settlements scatter along the large Siberian tract and in the Ishim steppe, where nature itself does not allow, as in the black earth expanse of Russia, the settlement of residents in small farmsteads in small cutting areas, which, however, is possible not only in the entire woodland region of European Russia, starting from Novgorod Russia and the Moscow industrial region to the Vyatka and Perm provinces, but also in our extreme East - beyond Baikal and to the Sea of Japan. I return to the continuation of my story. On July 25, the second day of our arrival in Riddersk, Koptev and I undertook an ascent to Ivanovsky Belok. We left at dawn in a carriage to the place where the river. Gromotukha emerges from its wild gorge into the valley, in which, merging with the Tikhaya River, it forms the Ulba. Here we mounted the riding horses that were waiting for us with our guides. The first climb was very steep. At a distance of about 250 meters above the valley, on steep, treeless slopes, I met the first plants of the wonderful Alpine Altai flora. These were large golden-yellow flowers of the Alpine Altai poppy (Papaver nudikaule), blue gentians (Gentiana procumbens) and dark purple flowers of saxifrage (Saxifraga crassifolia), the large, round leaves of which are used by local residents as a substitute for tea under the name “Koporo” tea. When we reached the wooded ridge, our ascent lost its steepness; but the forest was barely passable. Felled trees lay across the path that disappeared into the dense thickets. Even in the clearings, the grass and shrubs reached the rider’s waist, but these were European types of plants. As we climbed another 130 to 150 meters, the birch disappeared, and the forest became completely coniferous: spruce and pine were joined by larch and Siberian cedar. Where there were steep slopes, bare of forest vegetation, they were covered with alpine grasses of the Altai flora: these were pale lilac columbine (Aquilegia glandulosa), pale yellow grass (Pedicuiaris), bright yellow flax (Linum sibiricum) and yellow onion (Allium flavum), blue snakeheads (Dracocephalum altaicum and Dr. grandiflorum), Altai species of gumweed (Si49

lene) and waterwort (Bupleurum), and some, however, of the European type, orchids (Cymnadenia conopea, Coeloglossum viride) and others. Even higher 150 meters - larches and spruces began to disappear, and the pines themselves were covered with needles only on the western and northwestern sides, and on the southeastern side, under the influence of dry continental winds, they were completely bare. Even higher, the pines lost the character of trees and turned into low-growing shrubs, in the clearings between which Altai forms of a high-alpine character appeared: low-growing, with large, mostly bright flowers. These were the pink flowers of dryads (Dryas octopetala) and blue flowers of gentians (Gentiana altaica, pratensis, glacialis, silvestris and obtusa), which covered the rocks, of which the thinnest and most delicate, Gentiana glacialis, was exposed from the cracks of the rocks. In the same crevices nested white and yellow saxifrage (Saxifraga), patrinia rupestris and many asteraceae: small petal (Erigeron alpinum), bitterbush (Saussurea pygmaea and S. pycnocephala) and white, fluffy cut grass stars (edelweiss, Leontopodium alpinum). Finally, having circled the peak of Ivanovsky Belok in a long arc on the southern side, we climbed up to it. The fairly extensive area that forms this peak consists of many flat granite rocks. The view from the outskirts of this square was extremely vast and majestic. Behind the wild gorge of Gromotukha was closed by the ridge of the Ulba squirrels, between which Prohodnaya and Rassypnaya attracted special attention. The Turgusun squirrels were visible ahead, and to the left across the Ridder valley in the striking blue distance of the Ridder Sinyukha and the Uba squirrels; unfortunately, many of the mountains were shrouded in clouds at that time. Everywhere on the northern slopes of the mountain peaks wide stripes and patches of snow were visible, but continuous snow cover, like on the Altai Belukha or on the Tien Shan, was not visible on all these squirrels. We had just climbed to the top of Ivanovsky Squirrel when a strong wind blew a cloud over us, covering us with a blanket of thick fog. On the outskirts of the summit we found a table placed by the famous botanist Ledebur on the spot where he made his measurements. The onset of severe bad weather prevented me from taking a hypsometric measurement. The temperature dropped to 4° R, while in Riddersk it was 14°. Having stayed at the top for about an hour, already in an impenetrable fog, we began to descend along a steep granite northwestern slope, on which tall alpine grasses bloomed luxuriously near wide snow stripes: pink cortusa (Cortusa matthioli) and delicate white anemone (Anemone narcissiflora), Cladonia acutifolia , sedum (Sedum elongatum), Gymnandra altaica, gentians (Gentiana altaica and G. glacialis) and other specifically Altai and alpine plants. The western wind blew with extraordinary force, and, starting halfway down the descent, torrential rain and hail poured down, so that when two hours later we reached the exit of Gromotukha from its gorge and got into the carriage, we were already wet to the bones. The next day I inspected the Ridder mines underground, but deteriorating weather and severe malaise due to a cold forced me to abandon my original intention of going through Prohodnoy Belok to the Charysh valley, and on July 27 I left Riddersk, visiting also the Uba valley, and by the evening of July 30 returned to Zmeinogorsk, where he quickly prepared for his departure through Semipalatinsk to realize his cherished and 50

hidden dream - reaching the Tien Shan. On August 1, I left Zmeinogorsk and spent two more days (August 2 and 3) exploring the southwestern foothills of Altai near the Nikolaevsky and Sugatovsky mines. On August 4, I left Nikolaevsk, three miles from which I crossed the Uba River along a crossing that was already familiar to me. On the opposite, right, bank of the river, a rocky mountain rose, consisting of fine-grained dark green diabase (Grunstein). This mountain is the last of those accompanying the flow of the Uba, which then flows towards the Irtysh across the steppe. Fifteen miles from the crossing we reached the village of Krasnoyarsk, the last village of the Altai mountain district, which received its name from a large reddish sandy cliff that stretched in an arc along the right bank of the Uba. All around, wherever his gaze was directed, he met everywhere the boundless steppe, and only the village itself was overshadowed by several willows. The vegetation of the steppe was very monotonous; it was tediously dominated by feather grass (Stipa capillata), labiatae - honey grass (Phlomis tuberosa), small shrub meadowsweet (Spiraea crenata) and others. Mountains were visible on the horizon in the blue fog beyond the Irtysh. The road from the Krasnoyarsk village went first about eight miles along the Uba River, along the banks of which there were still bushes: honeysuckle (Lonicera) and rose hips (Rosa soongarica), then it rose to a low plateau and after twenty-six miles reached the first Cossack settlement on the Irtysh - Pyanogorskoye. A little further than halfway, the undulating descent to the Irtysh began. On the gentle elevations of this descent, piles of stones of dazzling whiteness caught my eye. These were large fragments of white quartz, apparently scattered here by human hand. According to the natives, these were old Kyrgyz cemeteries. Ahead of us the Irtysh flowed and silvered, and near it the old Pyanogorsk outpost stretched with its beautiful little white houses. The steppe that spread all around was very sandy, which influenced its flora, in which characteristic sand plants appeared: hairweed (Elymus arenarius), dried grass (Helichrysum arenarium), licorice root (Glycyrrhiza echinata), scabiosa (Scabiosa ochroleuca), some types of wormwood ( Artemisia) and even some saltworts (Salsolaceae). Four versts beyond the Irtysh rose Mount Jamantash (Bad Stone), in the saddle of which the yurts of the Kyrgyz camp could be seen. Near the outpost there were extensive tobacco plantations. Beyond Pyanogorsk, our path already went along the Irtysh Cossack line of outposts. The next outpost after Pyanogorsk - Shulbinsky - was located twenty-five versts from it. Halfway between both outposts, I noticed the Irtysh branch rising 6 meters above the level of the Irtysh branch approaching the road and granite rocks washed by its waters. The granite was extremely coarse-grained: the pale pink feldspar and white silver mica that were part of it gave it a light appearance. If these rocks had not been washed by the waves of the Irtysh floods, they would have been hidden under large layers of sandy sediments filled with small and large boulders. The largest of these boulders were composed of black amphibolite. The vegetation here was more diverse than on the steppe watershed. This interesting area was approached from the north-eastern side by the vast Shulbinsky forest. We forded the Shulba River itself without difficulty, not reaching two miles to the Shulbinsky outpost. Since between the Shulbinsky and the next - Talitsky - outposts, at a distance of all 51

twenty-five versts, shifting sands stretch along the right bank of the Irtysh, we had to, in order to avoid a difficult crossing through them, cross to the left bank of the Irtysh River, which here is over 600 meters wide, and drive along this bank, overgrown with aspen, silver poplar and thaw, as well as bird cherry and Tatar honeysuckle. All the way to the Talitsky outpost, the area was very picturesque and was likened to a natural garden, decorated with a wide silver ribbon of the Irtysh, meandering between the banks and islands, beautifully overgrown with tall trees. On the other side of the river, the Shulbinsky forest was visible from afar, descending along an inclined plane towards the Irtysh. Having reached the confluence on the left of the Irtysh of the steppe river Chargurban (twenty versts from the Shulbinsky outpost), we returned to the right bank of the river to the Talitsky outpost and, having passed another station that day (24 versts), we reached the Ozerny outpost at dusk, where we spent the night, and the next day, August 5, at dawn they arrived in Semipalatinsk. CHAPTER TWO Semipalatinsk.- Meeting with F. M. Dostoevsky.- The path to the south.Ayaguz.- Lepsinsky outpost.- Semirechensky Alatau.- Arasan.- Kopal.- Colonel Abakumov.- Cholokazaks.- Alaman Ridge.- Ili River.- Fortification Vernoye.Trans-Ili Alatau.- View of the Tien Shan.- Lake Issyk-Kul.- Chu River.- Buam Gorge.- Karakirghiz.- Return to Vernoye.- Trip to Gulja.- Return through Kopal to Semipalatinsk.- Secondary meeting with F. M. Dostoevsky. - Return to Barnaul. In Semipalatinsk, where I had nothing to do except visit the governor, since I was recommended to him by the governor-general, and where the city, like its immediate surroundings, was of no interest to me, I decided to stay only a day. At the same time, I received the most helpful welcome from the governor, Major General of the Main Staff Panov, who, having been warned about my arrival, sent me to meet his adjutant, the brilliant army officer Demchinsky, who kindly invited me to stay with him, since in Semipalatinsk at that time there were no hotels at that time. But most of all, Demchinsky delighted me with a delicately arranged surprise: he introduced me, quite unexpectedly, in his apartment, dressed in a soldier’s overcoat, to my dear St. Petersburg friend Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, whom I saw as the first of his St. Petersburg acquaintances after his emergence from the “house of the dead.” Dostoevsky quickly told me everything that he had experienced since his exile. At the same time, he told me that he considered his situation in Semipalatinsk quite bearable, thanks to the kind attitude towards him not only of his direct superior, the battalion commander, but also of the entire Semipalatinsk administration. However, the governor considered it inconvenient for himself to accept the officer demoted to the rank and file as his acquaintance, but did not prevent his adjutant from being on almost friendly terms with him. It should be noted that in Siberia, in general, the authorities at that time treated the exiles or those under surveillance who were already free. Thus, a “regular” at General Panov’s, who formed his constant game of whist in the evenings, was a physician, who at

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the same time monitored the poor health of the governor. When the coronation manifesto of Alexander II was published, Panov was officially informed that this physician, who in his opinion had reached the rank of state councilor, was being removed from police supervision, the existence of which the governor learned about this for the first time, believing, as he told me jokingly, that At the time of his appointment as governor, it was not the physician who was under his supervision, but, on the contrary, he was under the supervision of the physician. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky gave me the hope that he would agree with me, on my return journey, to visit me at my winter quarters in Barnaul, having written to me on this subject in advance. Leaving Semipalatinsk on August 6, I headed in my tarantass along the postal picket road to the city of Kopal. At this time, travelers could not travel along this road otherwise than with a convoy of two to five Cossacks. The stations along the road consisted of adobe houses built in the steppe at a distance of twenty-five to thirty-five miles from one another and occupied by a picket of twelve Cossacks. There were few horses kept at these stations, and if necessary, they were taken directly from the herds of the Kirghiz wandering nearby. A troika caught in a herd that had never seen a harness was harnessed in such a way that the horses were blindfolded and placed facing the tarantass, and then they were turned properly and, when everything was ready, the blindfolds were removed from the horses’ eyes and the entire team was sent on the road. The horses raced like mad across the steppe. The Cossack coachman did not even try to hold them back, but the mounted Cossacks raced on both sides of the carriage and only drove the troika away from dangerous places, observing the general direction. Having raced about ten miles in this way, the horses, having become significantly tired, ran smoother and calmer, and were easy to control. So, on August 6, around noon, I drove up with Demchinsky to the crossing of the Irtysh, where my carriage was already waiting for us, having gone through customs inspection, and where F. M. Dostoevsky met us. The crossing was quite long, because in the summer, instead of one, there are two: one through the Semipalatinsk branch of the Irtysh, and the other through the Irtysh itself. Having crossed both crossings, I said goodbye to my old and new friends, receiving from them sincere wishes for success, and boarded my tarantass, which set off, accompanied by four guards. The view of Semipalatinsk from across the Irtysh was more attractive than the interior of the city, which consisted of ugly wooden houses and stretched along the river bank. To the right stood the sharp tops of 5 or 6 ugly wooden minarets, and to the left rose the best stone buildings of the city at that time: a white stone hospital and the only brick Orthodox church. Even further to the left, a long Cossack settlement stretched along the shore, consisting of the same nondescript wooden houses as the city. At that time (in 1856) the city had less than 9 thousand inhabitants; by the end of the century their number almost quadrupled (to 35 thousand). There were no trees in the city at that time. The entire left bank of the Irtysh beyond the river, sandy and dusty, had the appearance of a complete desert, and only on the islands of the river were tall trees visible - aspens and poplars. The space between the Irtysh and the first Uluguz picket on my way (26 versts) had the character of a semi-desert. The soil here was sandy, with pebbles; 53

The unusually sparse vegetation consisted of feather grass (Stipa capillata) and wormwood (several species of Artemisia), but some characteristic, purely Asian plants had already appeared, especially from halophytes (saltweed). In general, the Kyrgyz steppe in the Semipalatinsk and Semirechensk regions turned out to be completely different from either the Ishim and Barabinsk steppes, or the steppes of southern Russia. In this year, at least (1856), the Kyrgyz steppe had not yet burned out at the beginning of August, and its vegetation remained in full splendor of its various flowering herbaceous plants, among which purely steppe Central Asian forms predominated in the complete absence of any forest vegetation. But in the Kyrgyz steppe there were often more or less extensive salt marshes with their own unique vegetation. Sometimes real small mountain groups and ridges rose, consisting mainly of porphyries and also covered with steppe vegetation. At the foot of these mountains, water springs and small springs sometimes appeared, but I did not encounter any flowing waters from the Irtysh itself over a large area to the Ayaguz River. The first mountain ridge on my road, crossing the entire horizon with a low but rather monotonous wall, was the Arkalyk ridge, stretching from east to west, about sixty miles from the Irtysh. Already four miles before reaching the Arkalyk picket, I drove into a mountain gorge consisting of siliceous shale, raised by green porphyry (Grunstein) or diabase. Having traveled thirty miles beyond Arkalyk, I only reached the fifth picket on my road, Arkatsky, late in the evening of August 6, and spent the night here in my carriage, with the intention of exploring the mountains adjacent to the picket the next morning, August 7. The night was fresh, by morning it was only +7.5° C. The Arkat picket was located to the right of the road, at the foot of a hill, and was semi-surrounded, although not particularly high, but very sharply defined granite mountains, collected in two groups; one of them - to the west of the picket - was called Arkat, the other - to the southwest - Burkat; the latter consisted of an oblong ridge of granite peaks most remarkable in their shape, more or less like pointed caps or caps. I found these romantic rocks consisting of coarse-grained granite with a mattresslike separation, as on Lake Kolyvan or on the Brocken (in the Harz), but piled up in disorder, like piles of packs, and sometimes hanging over the cliffs in a barely stable balance. Occasionally they came across shabby coniferous trees. I climbed the Arcata Mountains on horseback, and climbed the highest rocks on foot, clinging to the bushes. Their height, determined hypsometrically, did not exceed 800 meters. The mountains on the left side of the Kopalskaya road (to the southeast of the picket) had a completely different composition. I found their tops to be composed of talc slate, raised on the north-eastern side by violet porphyry. At the foot of these mountains there was a salt lake that dried up in the summer; on its dirty edge grew naiads (Potamogeton perfoliatus) and some saltworts (for example, Statice caspia and St. suffruticosa), but there were no fish in it. But about thirty miles east of Arkat there was a lake rich in fish and therefore called Balyk-kul. The granite Arkat and Burkat mountains with their sharp profiles were an exception on my way to the Semirechensky region. On the next five stages to the city of Ayaguz (118 versts), the mountains had dome-shaped shapes and rounded outlines, characterizing porphyry uplifts. 54

Such dome-shaped mountains were especially noticeable between the Usunbulak and Ingrekeevsky pickets. Here the entire stretch went through hilly terrain. These mountains were called Ingrekeya and were raised by green porphyries (diabases). Beyond the Ingrekeevsky picket towards Altynkalatsky the steppe becomes smoother. About six versts beyond the Altynkalat picket, our road crossed the bed of a dry river, which the Cossacks called Gorka. This waterless river, the first one I encountered at a distance of 220 versts from the Irtysh, was the Ashchi-su, or Chaganka, the left tributary of the Irtysh. The upper reaches of Ashchi-su are located in the Chin-Gistau ridge, the jagged ridge of which turns blue far from the Altynkalat picket. I made the last stretch from Altynkalat to Ayaguz (30 versts) late in the evening of August 7; since the sun had already set when I left Altynkalat. The evening dawn has disappeared; the night was warm and magnificent: the stars shone very clearly on the cloudless horizon, but quiet and even, as if with a dry shine, and not flickering with multicolored lights, as on the cloudless sky of Italy. That’s why they seemed very small. In the east, following a light glow, the moon rose. It seemed so small on the horizon, as if it were at the zenith, its disk was sharply outlined, its light was bright: all this revealed the extraordinary dryness of the air; there was no trace of dew. I arrived in Ayaguz after ten o’clock in the evening, having thus traveled two hundred and seventy miles along the typical Kyrgyz steppe. This move greatly expanded my understanding of what the Russian people mean by the term steppe. Born in the neighborhood of the black-earth Russian Don and Volga steppes, on that outskirts of black-earth Russia, for which Russian scientific terminology coined the name forest-steppe, I was accustomed to understand by the name of steppe vast treeless plains covered with black earth and overgrown exclusively with grassy vegetation. This was the character of the Don and Volga steppes that were close to me and familiar to me from childhood. No mountain heights are ever profiled on their flat horizon. Traveling hundreds and even thousands of miles across black earth Russia in my childhood and youth, I could not imagine what a mountain was, since I saw mountains only in pictures and was ready to treat them as artistic fiction, and not as reality. What our Great Russian people meant by the name of mountains was, on the one hand, descents into hollows or ravines, washed by prehistoric diluvial currents or modern spring waters in our boundless Sarmatian plain, and on the other hand, an ascent to the other side of these hollows and ravines. Thus, the so-called mountains crossing our Great Russian steppes have a negative relief, that is, they do not consist of elevations above the level of the steppe, but, on the contrary, of depressions in which forest vegetation nestles, while the flat surface of the steppe itself is overgrown exclusively with herbaceous vegetation in an unusually luxurious spring and at the beginning of summer and scorched by the scorching rays of the sun by autumn. In the five winter months, this entire surface is covered with a deep layer of snow, which, with its melting in the spring, gives new life to our steppes. I encountered a completely different type of steppe in Asian Russia in the vast space between the Urals and Altai, which makes up the southern part of the West Siberian Lowland. The Siberian steppes have in common with the southern Russian chernozem steppes the fact 55

that throughout their entire space there are no hills, that they are also very rich in herbaceous vegetation and that their flora is very similar to the flora of our steppes. But the significant difference between the two lies in the fact that although the Siberian steppes are rich in beautiful meadow spaces, these spaces are very often interspersed with more or less extensive coppices (kolkas) consisting of deciduous trees (birches, aspens, poplars, etc. .) and that these pegs are not hidden in hollows, but grow on the very surface of the steppe. There is also a significant difference in the soil of those and other steppes in that although the soil of the Siberian steppes is fertile, it cannot be classified as typical chernozem soil. In relation to their irrigation, the Siberian steppes also have their own characteristics. The majestic rivers that irrigate the West Siberian Lowland flow from afar, since they originate mainly in the Urals or Altai, and, upon their exit into the lowland, without encountering those hollows washed by diluvial waters that abound in the Sarmatian Plain of European Russia, they flow through the very lowland surfaces, digging shallow channels in soft and loose soil. At the same time, they constantly press themselves (according to the Bzra law) to their right bank and, washing it away, make it steep and mountainous, so that from a distance it looks like a hill, limited, however, by a straight line on the horizon. Beyond Omsk, in the so-called Baraba, I met a third type of steppe that was new to me. Despite its flat nature and the intermittency of its meadow spaces with deciduous coppices (kolkas), the Barabinskaya steppe is characterized by the absence of flowing waters and the predominance of more or less extensive freshwater lakes. Finally, I encountered the fourth and completely unexpected character of the steppe beyond the Irtysh during my move between Semipalatinsk and Ayaguz. The Kyrgyz steppe that I crossed here had only one thing in common with the steppes of our Sarmatian chernozem plain, namely the complete absence of forest vegetation and the abundance of grass, unusually luxurious in the spring and early summer, completely burning out in the fall, and in the winter months covered with a snow veil so light that cattle, breaking the snow with their hooves, find pasture for themselves during these winter months. But the most striking difference between the Kyrgyz steppe and our southern Russians is that on its horizon very often mountainous stone hills rise, which consist either of rounded dome-shaped porphyry hills, or of sharply defined granite ridges. The Kyrgyz steppe is extremely poor in flowing water, but in its rocky mountainous uplands there are springs and springs, and on the very surface of the steppe there are also lakes, but almost always with brackish water. The very nature of the vegetation, often consisting of luxurious grasses and shrubs, is completely different from that in our steppes, since in the flora of the Kyrgyz steppe it is not European forms that predominate, as in our Siberian steppes, but purely Asian ones. Thus, this fourth type of steppe is even more different from our Central and South Russian ones than both Siberian types. What, after all, does a Russian mean by the name steppe? Apparently, vast plains, rich in grassy vegetation and not yet touched by culture. At the same time, the concept of the steppe is not contradicted by the presence of hard rock mountain groups and ridges on it (as is seen in the Kyrgyz steppe), nor by the growth of coppices consisting of deciduous forest species on it, as is seen 56

in the Ishim and Barabinsk steppes. Irrigation is a necessary condition for the existence of the steppe: a waterless steppe ceases to be a steppe and becomes a desert. But the nature of steppe irrigation can be very different. The steppe can be irrigated by rivers flowing either along its completely flat surface, or in more or less deep hollows. Finally, the steppe may not have flowing water at all, but be covered with fresh or salt lakes. But it is even more necessary that the steppe be covered in winter with a continuous snow cover, which constitutes an indispensable attribute of the steppe, since the melting of this cover restores the vegetation cover that serves as the main characteristic of the steppe. I return to my journey of 1855. The city of Ayaguz (later Sergiopol) was located on the right bank of the river of the same name, which here was only 10 meters wide, but I was happy about this insignificant river, since it was the first running water I encountered for two hundred and seventy miles from the Irtysh, and, moreover, it already belonged to the Lake Balkhash basin. This city was originally built thirty versts higher on the Ayaguse River, crossing it with a caravan road, but soon after the city was founded there, the caravan road moved away from it and began to cross the river thirty versts below. Then the city was moved to this, that is, to its current location, but the caravan road again moved to its old location. However, the city did not want to swing further, like a pendulum, from side to side and remained in its second place. During my visit, it was as pitiful and insignificant as I have ever seen in any Russian city. It was built on one, lower bank of an insignificant river, fordable everywhere, and consisted of a clay fortification with bastions and curtains, which was already falling apart and inside which were some government buildings (barracks, a hospital and an unfinished brick church). Actually, the city consisted of one wide street with such low adobe adobe houses that you had to bend down to talk to the residents standing at the windows of these houses. There were no shops at all in the city: the only one that existed for a short time closed, because, as the bankrupt shopkeeper assured, no one wanted to pay money for goods, and everyone demanded their release for nothing!.. On the other side of the river rose rocky hills, on which In the evenings, wolves howled and you could even see their eyes sparkling in the darkness. I stopped in the city in a small but clean and well-whitened house of a wealthy Cossack and stayed the whole next day, spending two nights here. Such a day turned out to be necessary mainly for the analysis and storage of my rich geological and botanical collections. The day was hot: at 7 o’clock in the morning it was 15° in the shade, at two o’clock in the afternoon 21.5°, and at 9 o’clock in the evening another 19°. My main excursion on August 8 was directed up one of the constituent branches of the Ayaguz River, where six miles above the city there were limestone scraps, and three miles away there was a brick factory where bricks were made for the construction of a church and the house of the city commandant (this commandant was a Cossack esaul). The vegetation of the hills I visited was very poor, but apparently there was no shortage of mineral wealth in the vicinity of Ayaguz: I was given samples of beautiful graphite found about forty versts from the city at the tops of a river flowing into Ayaguz, and samples of coal lying about versts away from the city. seventy from it in the same direction. On August 9, early 57

in the morning, after the second night spent in Ayaguz, I set off towards the city of Kopalu. The first four stages (more than 100 miles) went along the Ayaguz River, through which we ford more than once. This current was accompanied by a fairly flat steppe; there were no mountains in sight. Trees grew along the river, mainly silver and variegated poplars (Populus alba and P. euphratica). At the fourth station from Ayaguz, Malo-Ayaguzskaya, we parted with the Ayaguz River and after two stages (about 60 versts), made already at night, we reached at dawn on August 10 the Arganatinsky picket station that interested me. This picket was located in the gorge of a small mountain group, consisting of rocks of black siliceous shale, steeply raised by porphyry. A spring of clean water flowed through the gorge past the picket. The road climbed up this gorge. I stopped at the picket in order to mount a horse and, accompanied by two Cossacks, take an excursion to the reeds bordering Lake Balkhash, visible from the picket in good weather. Unfortunately, when we left the picket and made several miles towards Balkhash, clouds gathered from all sides, and heavy rain began to fall, soaking us, as they say, to the bones. The excursion was not a success and we had to return to the picket line. I, having boarded the tarantass, decided to continue my journey to Kopal. After two stages (65 versts) I reached the Lepsinsky picket and drove out onto the Lepsu River. This was the first significant river in Semirechye. When leaving for Lepsa, the rain had already stopped and I could make a good collection of interesting plants of the Semirechensk flora. The river was about 40 meters wide and had a fast current; We crossed it by ferry. Beyond the crossing was the Lepsinsky picket. Behind Lepsa there was a vast sandy steppe, and trees grew along its banks: thalas (Salix viminalis) and poplars (Populus laurifolia). This area was alive with rich ornithological fauna. Here we saw steppe chickens for the first time: this is what the Cossacks called the most characteristic Central Asian bird, which, by the way, is also characteristic of the nature of Semirechye; in taxonomy it is called Syrrhaptes paradoxus, ay us saj or hoof. Moreover, we saw many bustards and shot with success partridges (Perdix daurica) and steppe hazel grouses (Plerocles arenarius). On this day (August 10) I crossed the second significant river of Semirechye, Baskan, at the Baskan picket, and reached the third Aksu river, at the Aksu picket, after two stages from Lepsy (65 versts), where I spent the night. What gave incredible charm to the part of Semirechye that we passed that day was that towards the sources of the Lepsy River, in the southeast, a gigantic snowy ridge stretched out in front of us in all its grandeur - the Semirechye Alatau [Now called the Dzhungar Alatau. (Ed.)], which from the low-lying Balkhash steppe rises far beyond the limits of eternal snow even more sharply than the Alps from the Lombard Plain. On August 11, after spending the night at the Aksu picket and driving another distance (23 versts) to the Karasu picket, I began to climb the mountain to the high spur of the Semirechensky Alatau. This entire pass, known at that time under the name Gasfortov (since it was built by the Governor-General himself), was located between the stations of Karasuyskaya and Arasanskaya, separated from each other by twenty-seven versts. About five miles the road climbed up the mountain through a narrow gorge, consisting of wild cliffs of clay shale, raised very steeply. After two hours of very steep 58

ascent, we reached the top of the ridge, which, however, hardly exceeded 1,300 meters in absolute height and, in any case, did not yet have alpine vegetation. After several miles of travel across the plateau and a seven-mile gentle descent, I finally saw in front of me the winding ribbon of the Biyon River, and behind it the interesting Arasan settlement. Biyon has the character of a fast and foaming mountain river rushing through stones and rocks. Washed by it and protruding from it, they consist of granite. A lot of these rocks were piled up beyond the river and, apparently, brought here by it, but, in any case, not from afar, since these same granites come to the surface half a mile from the village. The village consisted of two dozen houses, of which one, built right above the spring, was very neat and even beautiful. The Arasan pool was divided into 4 baths, each 6 meters long and 4 meters wide. The water in them came out from the clean bottom from under the cleared stones. Gas bubbles burst out of it in three places with force. I found the temperature of Arasan at +26.5° C. The smell of hydrogen sulfide was very little sensitive. There is no doubt that after clearing, the temperature of the source dropped somewhat, and the gases escaping at its bottom began to be less retained. In front of the house there was a garden in which the trees had not yet grown. But what added charm to the whole area were the arable lands of the Kopal inhabitants, unusually rich in their harvest of wheat and oats and the fertility of the soil. These arable lands stretched from the city of Kopala itself across the entire Dzhunke plateau to the Biyona River, which provided abundant irrigation to these arable lands. If we take into account that many of the Kopal residents at that time cultivated up to twenty dessiatines per tax, then one can imagine what a flourishing Russian colony in Semirechye Kopal was already at that time, founded 15 years earlier in an area whose fertility and convenience for the founding of a sedentary Russian agricultural colony were first appreciated by the famous Russian traveler G.S. Karelin, who was the first to penetrate the northern part of Semirechye in 1840. I did not stay overnight in Arasan and by the evening of August 11 I had already reached Kopal through the beautiful and fertile Dzhunke plateau, which is at least thirty miles wide here. Kopal at that time was already a very decent town, consisting of 700 houses, with a wooden church in the square and several beautiful wooden houses of the most prosperous Cossacks. In one of these houses, which served as an inn, I found refuge for myself, since there were no hotels in Kopala. The next day, in the morning, I went to the head of the Kopalsky district, Colonel Abakumov, who received me especially warmly and cordially. He was an outstanding personality who also had merits for science. While still a young Cossack officer, Abakumov accompanied the highly talented naturalist, traveler Karelin, when he made his first trips in 1840 to the northern part of Semirechye, in the Semirechensky Alatau mountains, and under his leadership became a passionate hunter and naturalist. When Karelin settled in Semipalatinsk and stopped traveling from there anywhere, Abakumov, who was his assistant during his journey, settled in the newly founded Kopala and began to travel from there to the gorges, and to the peaks of the Semirechensky Alatau, and to the Balkhash steppes , collecting ornithological, entomological and botanical materials in an as yet unknown country, first for Karelin, and 59

after his departure, on his recommendation, he entered into relations with foreign naturalists, to whom he began to deliver his collections. Quite a few plants and animals were rediscovered by Abakumov, and some of them received his name, such as one of the spring longhorned beetles or woodcutters (Dorcadion abacumovi). However, in the last decade, the aging Abakumov, with his promotion in rank and the consolidation of his first role in the already flourishing city, became heavier, stopped going out hunting and on excursions and only sent out the most capable of his former Cossack companions for natural-historical booty . It is clear how my arrival inspired and revived the local veteran of detailed natural-historical investigations and discoveries; It is also clear with what pleasure he placed his entire team at my disposal. He spent the day of August 12 with me on excursions close to Kopal, and the next, August 13, he arranged for me to climb the Semirechensky Alatau to the eternal snows of this ridge, but he himself did not dare to accompany me, fearing to reveal his only weakness in front of me, without which he would have been the ideal leader of such an interesting region as the Kopalsky district: this weakness - the same one that the vast majority of the most talented figures of our provincial outskirts suffered at that time - was alcoholism, due to which Abakumov was in a state of complete insanity. On August 13, at dawn, I, accompanied by six selected Cossacks, was already on the way to the mountains. Having crossed the Kopalka River ford, we began to climb towards the southwest, where the ascent was most gentle. All along my route I took rock samples. At the very beginning of the ascent, I came across a vein of grindstone, discovered here by Abakumov and already used by the Kopal residents instead of what had previously been ordered at an expensive price from European Russia. This whetstone turned out to be a rather soft diabase with pyrite crystals. On our further path we followed steeply raised (at an angle of 70°) layers of metamorphic schist. After almost four hours of climbing on strong and healthy horses, we reached the crest of the ridge and turned east along it. It turned out that the high ridge along which we followed separated the wide Kopal plateau from the deep valley of the mountain river Kora, one of the constituent branches of the significant Semirechye river - Karatala. This entire Kopalsky ridge stretched from west to east and bore not only stripes, but also clearings of never-melting, that is, eternal snow. But beyond the deep valley of the Kora River there was still a ridge parallel to Kopalsky, and this ridge had already crossed the boundaries of eternal snow in several of its peaks. In particular, its two peaks were completely whitened by eternal snow, which descended from one of them quite low on its northern side to the head of the transverse valley, where the left tributary of the Kora flowed noisily. The basin in which this tributary originated was surrounded by steep snow slopes and resembled a glacier, but, unfortunately, I could not explore it, because the distance to it was too great, and this research would have to be devoted to several days. The view of the Kora River valley was amazing. It reminded me of the beautiful valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen. The height of the ridge along which I followed seemed to me at least 1,500 meters higher than the Kopal Plateau, but it rose even more above the deep Kora valley. A wide and high-water river, through which, as they said, it is very difficult, and sometimes completely impossible, to 60

ford, appears from above as a narrow, silvery ribbon, which, however, despite its distance, fills the air with the wild roar of its foamy waves, rapidly jumping on stones. The foam and spray of this river have that particularly milky color that is characteristic of rivers generated by glaciers. Here and there along the river one can see dark green stripes of long wooded islands, the scale of which can be measured by the dark and slender centuries-old Tien Shan spruce trees (Picea schrenciana) growing on them, which received their scientific name in honor of Karelin’s contemporary traveler Alexander Shrenk, who arrived in 1840 to Semirechensky Alatau and Lake Balkhash. The same spruce trees stick out along the cliffs and slopes of the majestic Kora Valley. Beyond the river, mountains quickly rose, first covered with Siberian fir (Abies sibirica), then with bushes, then bare and overgrown with alpine grasses, finally disappearing under the snow mantle. In some places, horizontal and vertical paths were visible in the snow. Upon examination through the telescope, the horizontal paths turned out to be deep cracks, and the vertical ones - traces of overthrown avalanches. No matter how much the charming valley beckoned me, it was impossible to even think about descending into it, and I decided to follow along the ridge, moving from one hill to another and trying to reach the limit of eternal snow. We followed on horseback until granite rocks piled wildly one on top of the other blocked our path. Here we were forced to leave the horses, and I set off on foot with three Cossacks along the path along which a herd of wild goats (Gapra sibirica) rushed in fear before us, jumping from one rock to another with extraordinary ease. We also had to jump over deep transverse cracks or go around them, descending somewhat into the Kora valley, where the blocks of rocks were not so huge and the cracks were more accessible to the transition, facilitated by strong trunks and branches of the Cossack juniper (Juniperus sabina) growing in them. Thus, I reached the limiting point of my ascent - one of the peaks of the ridge, on which in the depression there was a clearing of never-melting (eternal) snow. Here I decided to make a halt in order to measure the altitude at which we were, which could have been hardly less than 3,000 meters. I made my measurements using a water boiling apparatus, since the barometer I had could not withstand travel and was broken in Siberia. I set to work on my apparatus, but no matter how hard I tried to light the alcohol poured from the bottle the Cossacks had in their hands, it did not burn, because, as it turned out, it was half drunk by one of the Cossacks accompanying me and diluted with water. Subsequently, I learned from Abakumov that Karelin, in the presence of the Cossacks, poisoned his entire supply of alcohol necessary for scientific purposes with the most powerful poison and gave this alcohol in the presence of the Cossacks to a dog, which immediately died, and that only in this way could he wean the Cossacks from theft they contain alcohol, which is so necessary for scientific purposes. For me, the matter was irreparable that day, and on my first ascent I suffered an unfortunate failure. I had to be content with a complete collection of rocks along the way, a rich collection of alpine plants [Here is a list of plants of the family I collected in the alpine zone of the Kopal chain. Ranunculaceae: Anemene narcissiflora, Ranunculus hyperboreus, R. altaicus. Trollius asiaticus, Isopyrum grandiflorum, Aconitum rotundifolium; family Pa61

paveraceae: Papaver alpinum; family Cruciferae: Draba stellata, Erysimum cheiranthoides; family Droseraceae: Parnassia laxrmnni; family Sileneae: Dianthus aipinus, Alsine venia; family Geraniaceae: Geranium albiflorum; family Leguminosae: Oxytropis amoena, Ox. fruticulosa n. sp., Ox. algida n. sp., Ox. platysema, Ox. oligantha n. sp., Hedysarum obscurum; family Rosaceae: Potentilia opaca, Pot. nivea; family Crassulaceae: Umbilicus alpestris, Sedum erwersii; family Saxifragaceae: Saxifraga sibirica; family Compositae: Rhinactina Hmonifolia, Erigeronuniflorus, Richteria pyrethroides, Leontopodium alpinum, Doronicum altaicum, D. oblongifolium, Saussurea pygmaea; family Pyrolaceae: Pyrola rotundifolia; family Primulaceae: Primula cortusoides, Pr. algida, Androsace septentrionalis, Cortusa matthioli; family Gentianeae: Gentiana aurea, G. barbata, G. frigida; family Borragineae: Muosotis silvatica, Eritrichium villosum; family Scrophulariaceae: Gymnandra borealis; family Labiatae: Dracocephalum altaiense, Dr. peregrinum; family Liliaceae: Allium platyspathum.] and a small number of Coleoptera insects. Alpine flora luxuriously covered the rocks of the tops of the Kopalsky ridge with its wonderful flowers. The flora of the entire Kopalsky ridge had a completely alpine characteristic; among the plants that made it up, there were also European (both Alpine and northern), to an even greater extent Altai, and partly local Alatau, a significant part of the forms of which I later found in the Tien Shan [Among the plants I collected on August 13 on the Kopalsky ridge were already known from the alpine flora of Sweden, Switzerland and other European countries: Anemone narcissiflora, Ranuncuius hyperooreus, Papaver alpinutn, Draba stellata, Dianthus alpinus (in another modification), Alsine verna, Hedysarum obscurum, Potentilla opaca, P. nivea, Erigeron uniflorum, edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum), common in the Alps, Primula cortusoides, Cortusa matthioli, Gentiara aurea, Dracocephalum peregrinum. But in this flora I also encountered several plants common in our northern Russian (Sarmatian) plain: Pyrola rotundifolia, Androsace septentrionalis and our common forget-me-not (Myosotis silvatica), and from plants of the Siberian plain: Trollius asiaticus and polar Gimnandra borealis. In total, the most plants in this zone were Altai, namely: Isopirum grandiflorum, Erysimum cheiranthus, Parnassia laxmanni, Geranium albiflorum, Sedum ewersii, Saxsifraga sibirica, Doronicum altaicum, Primula algida, Eritrichium villosum, Dracocephalum altaiense. All other species belonged to the Central Asian flora of the local alpine zone and later turned out to be partly widespread in the Tien Shan. Of these plants of the local Alatau flora, on that day I found for the first time the following names: Oxytropis fruticolosa n. sp. p, Oh. algida n. sp., Oh. oligantha n. sp.]. The spring that came out of the ground near our rest stop, 60 meters below the snow glade, had +1.5°, and the air temperature in the shade was +9°, but the heating of the sun was very strong, and, of course, the snow that had not melted at this time of year needed already recognized as eternal, which was easy to verify from their addition. When we, after collecting alpine herbs, set off from our rest stop, the day was leaning towards evening, and it was already about 6 o’clock in the afternoon. Dusk found us halfway down the descent, which was very steep because we were going straight in the direction of Kopal. When we entered the coniferous forest area, it was already completely 62

dark, and we, stumbling and falling, had to lead our horses, making our way between rocks and felled trees. Finally, we came to the woodcutters’ path, which passed through the gorge in which the first Russian detachment that came here spent the winter in 1841, when they occupied the Kopala area for the first Russian settlement in the Semirechensky region. Already very late in the evening, lights and barking dogs announced to us our safe return to Kopal. Losing the habit of riding and being overtired from climbing too hard did not remain without consequences for me. I still spent the day of August 14th somehow, putting in order my rich collections from August 13th, but the next day I was already in bed. For the next three days I could not move, and only on the morning of the 18th I hardly got into the tarantass in order to walk to Arasan. The warm baths had the most beneficial effect on me: the unbearable pain stopped, and on August 19 I was happy to make my first excursion five miles from Arasan. The following days - August 20, 21, 22 and 23 - I already made daily excursions from 15 to 20 versts in all directions from Arasan, along the Biyona River down its course and up into the mountains, into the Keisykauz gorge, to the Kopal arable lands, etc. d. During these excursions, I became acquainted with the fantastic-looking piles of rocks along the Biyonu River, as if heaped one on top of the other, so that they could provide shelter for many people in their spaces, as well as with a river so abundant in water that it was easily ditches (irrigation canals) to irrigate extensive arable land, as well as with the interesting fauna of the rocky banks of Biyon, which included many turtles (Testudo horsfieldi) and birds, especially rock partridges (Caccabis chukar) and steppe sandgrouse (Pterocles). Observation of the local grain crop convinced me that this remarkably fertile area, having given rise to a fairly strong Russian colonization, would immediately become one of the strong strongholds of our rule in Central Asia. Grain crops here consisted of wheat, oats, rye, eggs, barley and partly corn and sorghum, but millet did not grow satisfactorily. The sowing took place around May 20, the first watering of the fields was in the early days, and the second around June 20, the harvest began in early August, and ended during my stay in Arasan. This year the tithes produced an average of 12 quarters of wheat and 20 quarters of oats. Gardening also developed here with success. The peach trees and grapevines planted in the orchards grew very quickly, not to mention the apple trees, which were already bearing fruit. On August 24, I felt so good that I decided to continue my journey in the direction of the Verny fortification. Having left Arasan early in the morning, I made my journey to Kopal without fatigue at three o’clock and, a little before reaching Kopal, I saw a dry tornado. In Kopala, I had no other business than to see and say goodbye to Colonel Abakumov, who was so attentive and helpful to me. I left Kopal at 4 o’clock in the afternoon for a further, highly interesting journey for me, preceded by Abakumov’s most favorable orders for my entire further journey through the Kopal district. The road went straight to the west, along the northern foot of the Karatau or Kopalsky ridge, separating the fertile Dzhunke plateau from the deep valleys of the Kora and Karatala rivers, and after the first stretch to the Ak-Ichke picket (25 versts) I began to climb the mountain and cross the lowered continuation of the Karatau . The sun had soon set, the distant snowy peaks 63

of the Semirechensky Alatau in the east lit up pink (Alpengluhen), and in the west the evening dawn disappeared behind a low patterned ridge, and finally only the two-horned moon remained in the sky, illuminating the high mountain cliffs with its pale light, passing by which our road passed. In this somewhat fantastic light, I was struck by an unexpected phenomenon, which I felt for the first time in my life: the rocks began to shake, and landslides constantly fell with a crash from the mountain peaks; it was quite a strong earthquake. For us, fortunately, everything worked out well, and at 9 1/2 o’clock in the evening we arrived unharmed at the Sarybulak picket, which was a little over 50 miles from Kopal, and I spent the night in a clean and spacious room at this picket. Leaving the next day (August 25) early in the morning from Sarybulak, I drove about five miles to the Karatala River, one of the most significant rivers in Semirechye, which, having just burst out of the mountain valley that was constricting it, rushed through rocks and stones, breaking into many branches and forming numerous rapids. Fording across the river was difficult here due to the extraordinary speed of the two main branches of the Karatal. For the convenience of the crossing, the road went up Karatal about twenty versts to the newly founded Karabulak picket, which at that time was not yet completely completed and consisted of a group of temporary yurts. What struck me at this picket was that usually all the pickets that had existed for many years were located on a completely bare surface, and no trees were planted near them, but here I saw that there was a whole garden near the unfinished picket. But I was soon to be disappointed: this garden consisted of quite large trees brought from the Karatal Gorge and stuck into the ground in the form of a garden only on the occasion of my passage, which was explained by the fact that before my arrival in Kopal there was a rumor that an auditor was coming from St. Petersburg, who pays special attention to the grass and trees growing everywhere, which is why he is called the “Minister of Botany.” This rumor was based on the fact that I was named in an open sheet given to me by the Russian Geographical Society, Master of Botany, and was further strengthened by the fact that Abakumov, after my first visit to Kopala, made an order, which was subsequently quite successful, that the pickets be surrounded by trees. The former picket road from Kopal to Vernoye went out to Karatal at the Karatal picket, located eight miles from the current Karabulak picket, up the Karatal river, in the river valley itself. The picket was moved to Karabulak, and in its former place on the right bank of the Karatal there remained a settled Cossack settlement - a farm, in an area rich in hayfields, which Kopal lacked. Near this farm, settled settlements of the so-called Cholo-Cossacks arose on both banks of the river. The name Cholo-Cossacks here meant people from Tashkent who founded settled settlements in the steppe, taking Kirghiz women as wives. At the end of the forties, such Cholo-Cossack villages began to appear in Karatal. These villages consisted of carefully whitewashed huts with flat roofs and stoves, adapted for the winter stay of the Cossacks who built them, who acquired Kyrgyz wives in the same way that the Romans kidnapped the Sabine women. The Cossacks called these villages ”kurgans” and highly praised the skills of their inhabitants not only in field work, irrigation and cattle breeding, but also in gardening and 64

construction. At the head of one of these unauthorized settlements (mounds) stood the elderly patriarch Chubar-mullah, who was pointed out to me as the only person who knew where interesting historical objects were found in the Karatal valley. But no less interested in these items were the Karatal CholoCossacks themselves, since I had some reason to think that most of them were not Tashkent Uzbeks at all, but exiled settlers fleeing from Siberia, who lived for a long time in Tashkent and finally formed in the late forties and early fifties years, an agricultural colony on the very outskirts of our Asian possessions at that time, on the Karatal River, under the shadow of the legal Russian advanced agricultural colony - Kopala. In order to find the ancient historical objects of the Buddhist cult, which I was told about in Kopala, and at the same time resolve my perplexities regarding the Karatal Cholo-Cossacks, I decided to head from the Karabulak picket to a distance of eight miles from there up the Karatal valley on the left bank of the Kurgan River. or the village of Chubar-Mullah, taking with him from the picket five workers with crowbars and a Cossack translator who was well acquainted with Chubar-Mullah. Chubar-Mulla’s farm was already a very gratifying phenomenon in its appearance: it consisted of two dozen well-whitewashed houses with flat roofs, beautifully arranged stoves and chimneys, and was surrounded by green trees with which they were lined and between which there were forest trees of local flora Karatal valley, and even more fruity: apple trees, apricot trees, as well as grape vines. The gardens contained vegetables and corn. Already approaching the Cholo-Cossack village, I found the area of the autonomous Karatal colony very lively: I constantly met Kirghiz and Cholo-Cossacks on bulls and camels, and beautiful herds of cattle and characteristic Kyrgyz sheep with their heavy fat tails and herds of light horses. In order to reach the “mound” of Chubar-mulla, when we caught up with him, we had to move to a ford across the river, since the farm was located behind it. The ford across Karatal was very difficult. The wild river here split into several branches, and, despite the dry season, these branches, probably due to the melting of the eternal snows, were noisy and high-water streams, rich in whirlpools and rapids. Their islands are picturesquely overgrown with thawed trees, bird cherry, sea buckthorn, tall willows and poplars. We wandered across the river in zigzags, diagonally through the manes of rapids, past huge stumps, deliberately thrown here so that the waves would not carry away the horses and the riders crossing them. Beyond the river we turned sharply and soon found ourselves in front of the nearby dwellings of the village. The Cholo-Cossacks greeted us with noticeable distrust and when asked where we could see Chubarmullah, we received evasive answers. Then I sent my very smart translator to find him and arrange a date for me with him. I instructed the translator to explain to the elderly Cholo-Cossack that I came from afar, from the capital, to look at how people live on the new Russian lands, that I look with joy at how people from whom the Russians have been living for almost ten years are settling on these lands. , they saw nothing but good things, that with their own labor they had built for themselves good permanent dwellings, warm in winter, and thanks to their knowledge of gardening, they planted gardens and vegetable gardens, sow grain and keep good livestock, from which it can be concluded that 65

they lived for many years in “Tashkent” - as they call it, where they learned a lot and good things, that the time of their migration from Tashkent is well known to me, but where they came from and when they settled in Tashkent I will not ask them what my visit to them ”Kurgan” can bring them nothing but benefit, since it will further strengthen their quiet stay with their families on Russian lands, where the local authorities accepted them to live and where they have already lived for many years, have not done anything bad to anyone, and The Russian resettlement to new lands brought considerable benefits. Beyond the river we turned sharply and soon found ourselves in front of the nearby dwellings of the village. The Cholo-Cossacks greeted us with noticeable distrust and when asked where we could see Chubar-mullah, we received evasive answers. Then I sent my very smart translator to find him and arrange a date for me with him. I instructed the translator to explain to the elderly Cholo-Cossack that I came from afar, from the capital, to look at how people live on the new Russian lands, that I look with joy at how people from whom the Russians have been living for almost ten years are settling on these lands. , they saw nothing but good things, that with their own labor they had built for themselves good permanent dwellings, warm in winter, and thanks to their knowledge of gardening, they planted gardens and vegetable gardens, sow grain and keep good livestock, from which it can be concluded that they lived for many years in “Tashkent” - as they call it, where they learned a lot and good things, that the time of their migration from Tashkent is well known to me, but where they came from and when they settled in Tashkent - I will not ask them what my visit to them ”Kurgan” can bring them nothing but benefit, since it will further strengthen their quiet stay with their families on Russian lands, where the local authorities accepted them to live and where they have already lived for many years, have not done anything bad to anyone, and The Russian resettlement to new lands brought considerable benefits. Beyond the river we turned sharply and soon found ourselves in front of the nearby dwellings of the village. The Cholo-Cossacks greeted us with noticeable distrust and when asked where we could see Chubar-mullah, we received evasive answers. Then I sent my very smart translator to find him and arrange a date for me with him. I instructed the translator to explain to the elderly Cholo-Cossack that I came from afar, from the capital, to look at how people live on the new Russian lands, that I look with joy at how people from whom the Russians have been living for almost ten years are settling on these lands. , they saw nothing but good things, that with their own labor they had built for themselves good permanent dwellings, warm in winter, and thanks to their knowledge of gardening, they planted gardens and vegetable gardens, sow grain and keep good livestock, from which it can be concluded that they lived for many years in “Tashkent” - as they call it, where they learned a lot and good things, that the time of their migration from Tashkent is well known to me, but where they came from and when they settled in Tashkent - I will not ask them what my visit to them ”Kurgan” can bring them nothing but benefit, since it will further strengthen their quiet stay with their families on Russian lands, where the local authorities accepted them to live and where they have already lived for many years, have 66

not done anything bad to anyone, and The Russian resettlement to new lands brought considerable benefits. After negotiations with the translator, Chubar Mullah came to me, and the reason why he did not immediately decide to show himself to me soon became clear: he was an old man of about 80 years old with obvious traces of etched brands on his face. Our explanations no longer took place through an interpreter, but in Russian, which he spoke like a Russian, but with a slightly Tatar accent, easily explained either by the fact that he was a Kazan Tatar by origin, or by the fact that he had a long stay in Tashkent, after his escape from hard labor, he became accustomed to Tatar speech: although I did not ask him any direct questions, especially relating to the time preceding his conviction, it became clear from our conversations that, having settled in Tashkent back in the thirties of the 19th century, he found himself there they earn a piece of bread by doing farming, gardening and general agricultural work. The rich Tashkent Uzbeks had quite a few such Russian workers who fled from Siberia to Tashkent, and naturally, they all knew each other, and he was the oldest among them in years. In 1842, these Russian people, who had been living in Tashkent for a long time, heard rumors that a flourishing Russian agricultural settlement of Kopal had arisen in Semirechye, and Chubar-mullah, a brave and enterprising man who had suffered from homesickness for many years in his exile in a foreign land, decided to bring in fulfillment of the irresistible desire that arose in him to look at this new rich outskirts of the Russian land and, if possible, settle in it in order to at least die on his native land. He stocked up on three camels, loaded them with Tashkent goods - raisins, sear, pistachios and Tashkent fabrics, traveled unhindered to Semirechye, sold his goods here at a profit, stocked up on Russian goods in Kopala, with which he returned to Tashkent; on the road, he met especially favorable hospitality and temporary income from the Russian Cossacks on Karatal and, having taken a fancy to the still free places there, convenient for irrigation and agriculture, he decided to settle on them together with his fellow countrymen, comrades - fugitives from Russia, under the name of Tashkent immigrants - Cholo-Cossacks. Upon returning to Tashkent, he assembled a large caravan of several dozen camels and no less number of Cholo-Cossacks with a large number of Tashkent goods, of which the most popular was raisins, since from it the Kopal Cossacks smoked vodka, the import of which to them from Russia was certainly prohibited. Since then, these Russian Cholo-Cossacks finally settled in Karatal, started families here, getting Kyrgyz women as wives, some by kidnapping with their consent, others with the payment of kalym. The second generation of these Cholo-Cossacks, descended from mixed marriages with Kyrgyz women, was already from 10 to 17 years old, and their initially distrustful fathers (“immigrants from Tashkenia,” as they called themselves) gradually dared to speak to me in their native language, that is, in -Russian. One of them told me an incident that happened to him during the construction of the Russian consulate in Ghulja: he was invited, on the recommendation of his kindred Kirghiz, by our consul Zakharov to lay stoves. They had a long conversation with the consul in Kyrgyz and Uzbek, but still could not understand each other, and the Cholo-Cossack stove maker, unable to bear it, asked the consul in Russian: “What kind of stove 67

does your honor need - Russian or Dutch?” The consul “deigned to laugh,” and the Cholo-Cossack built him a stove the likes of which the Chinese had never seen, and for which he received both great gratitude and good payment. Field work was, of course, known to Chubar-mulla from an early age, but he learned how to make irrigation ditches and grow fruit trees in Tashkent. When my relations with the Karatal Cholo-Cossacks were completely established, and all their distrust towards me disappeared, they, with the pleasure and curiosity of the Russian people, undertook to show me the place where several years ago the engineers who were building a road here accidentally found some interesting objects . According to the stories I heard in Kopala, these were, among other things, some round clay medallions, on which each depicted a seated figure with crossed legs and a crown on his head, and then other objects molded from clay, about the shape and the meaning of which I could not form any idea. Behind the village of Chubar-mullah, high mounds, often found in Siberia, containing the so-called “Chud” graves, which are so common, were visible, but the CholoCossacks took me not there, but away from the village, onto a ridge coastal to the river, towering meters above it 100 and consisted of rocky cliffs of shale, placed on an edge, stretching from west to east and having a natural dip at an angle of 80?; On these rocks and against these cliffs leaned human structures made of slabs of the same rocks, but laid horizontally and separated from each other by mounds of clay. Sometimes all this took the form of small mounds. With the help of my workers and Cholo-Cossacks, I dug one of these mounds across its entire height and width with a transverse ditch. The mound I dug did not turn out to be a grave. There were no bones or objects found in the graves, and I came to the conclusion that these human structures were the dwellings or cells of Buddhist hermits or monks during the Dzungar rule of the 17th century. I no longer found medallions with the image of Buddha, because we ended up on a mound, the predatory excavation of which was hastily carried out by engineers, but we found other objects that we were told about, in hundreds of copies. These were small objects from 8 to 10 centimeters in height, carefully molded from clay. They were similar in appearance to small crowns in the shape of a monomachian cap with relief decorations on their upper, conical part and with a Tibetan inscription in a circle. Obviously, these were some kind of objects of Buddhist cult, made by handicraft by monks living in cells on Karatal. Since the cells were built of heavy stone slabs supported by wooden pillars made of very fragile wood (poplar), this wood rotted and all the cells collapsed, and during my visit they were already likened to more or less shapeless piles of stones, between which one can occasionally it was possible to discern something similar to corridors. By sunset I had to finish the work, giving gifts to all my employees. I spent the night in a Cholo-Cossack farm, enjoying the most cordial hospitality of the ex-convicts, who had long ago turned into the most peaceful and hardworking settlers of the newly acquired Russian land, the consolidation of whose possession they served very diligently and quite consciously. The next morning I parted, after lively conversations with the ex-convicts I met for the first time in my life (who, undoubtedly, had committed very serious crimes at some point in their lives), carrying with me the warmest, most humane feeling 68

towards them. On August 26, I continued my journey from Karabulak; For eight versts the road continued along Karatal, but at the ninth verst it turned south, began to climb the mountain, and after a distance of twenty-four versts from Karabulak it reached the Dzhangyzagach picket. Having traveled another eighteen miles further, first past diorite mountains, and then past a mountain made of porphyry, I moved through the pass into the valley of the Koksu River, the light ribbon of which, shining in the rays of the sun, appeared in front of me, bordered by a row of fresh, tall poplars. Here I left my crew at a halt, and I went on horseback seven miles downstream of the Koksui where, as I heard, there was a rock with some figures or inscriptions. After two versts, the rather wide Koksu valley noticeably narrowed. The bottom of the valley was like a wonderful park, consisting of poplars, birches, bird cherry, sea buckthorn and willow, intertwined with Dzungarian clematis (Olematis songarica). The river, wide and fast, sometimes divided into several branches, sometimes joined into one channel, decorating the park with its silver, aquamarine ribbons. On both sides the mountains were piled high with steep and bold cliffs of conglomerate rocks. At the fifth verst we moved over a granite ridge, and having descended from it, after driving seven versts, on a meadow slope towards the river we found many individual granite rocks and on one of them those crude, one might say, childish images of animals that we were told about. It is remarkable that Spassky found exactly the same figures of deer and wild goats on the banks of the Yenisei and depicted them in his “Siberian Bulletin” back in 1820. Apparently these images replaced inscriptions and had a conventional hieroglyphic character, but in any case they belonged to the “Chud” bronze period and proved that in prehistoric times the same tribes moved from the banks of the Yenisei, skirting Altai, where they left their traces in the so-called ”Chud” mines and penetrated into Semirechye. I returned to my crew after sunset. In the distance in the east, in the moonlight, the snowy peaks were barely visible. From here we drove eighteen to twenty miles at night to the Koksu picket, located at the very exit of a narrow, wild gorge and consisting of several beautiful little white houses. Here a Cossack village arose again, and a good bridge was built across the river. The Koksu settlement was of great interest to me on my way, firstly, because it was the third locality of Semirechye, in which I found Russian colonization already strengthening in Central Asia, and, secondly, because, being here near the snowy mountains, I had the opportunity from here to undertake the second ascent to Semirechye to the limits of eternal snow. Peering on the morning of August 27 at the terrain surrounding me, I saw in front of me two mountain groups that reached the limits of eternal snow. One of them resembled in its outline one of the Swiss peaks of the Rhone basin - “Dent du Midi”, and even on its southern slope had snow stripes; The Kirghiz called it Kuyandy. Another group, stretching parallel to the first, was separated from it by the wide valley of the Koktala River and represented a high ridge, the peaks of which on its northern side were covered with wide stripes of eternal snow. I chose to climb this ridge, which the Kirghiz called Alaman, since the Kuyanda mountain group, bearing even more eternal snow than Alaman, seemed to me inaccessible from the south, and the mountains stretching southeast of Kuyanda, extending far 69

beyond the snow line and having peaks covered with a continuous snow mantle, they were located in the second line beyond Kuyandy and were separated from it by a deep gorge. Moreover, the main peak of Alaman was so located that the view from all sides was the most extensive and for the student of the country’s geography the most instructive and extended far beyond the Chinese borders and beyond the main river of Semirechye - Ili. The Kyrgyz Sultan Adamsart volunteered to take me to the top of Alaman, accompanied by one horseman, and I took with me only two Cossacks from the Koksu village. We covered fifteen miles on the Sultan’s beautiful horses along the road from the Koksu picket to the Tersakan picket, and then forded the fast Koktal River and began to climb Alaman. Despite the efforts of the Sultan’s beautiful horses, the ascent took four hours. The road went through rocky gorges along a stream falling like a waterfall. Around noon we reached the top of the ridge near a snow clearing, above which a pile of syenite rocks of colossal size still rose steeply, the gaps of which were filled with coarse-grained snow; all around was alpine vegetation of the Altai type in full bloom. At the top of the Alaman ridge I spent four hours collecting plants [Here is a list of plants I collected on that day (August 27) in the alpine zone of the Alaman ridge. From the buttercups (Ranunculaceae): Ranunculus altaicus and another, already Tien Shan, beautiful and original type of buttercup with white-gray flowers, belonging to a special genus identified by the botanist Meyer - Callianthemum alatavicum; Aconitum rotundifolium; from cruciferous plants: Drabahirta, Chorispora songorica: from silenaceae (cloveaceae): characteristic alpine species Melandryum apetalum; from the family Alsineae: Cerastium trigynum; from legumes: a new species that I rediscovered that day, which later received the name Oxytropis cana n. sd.; from the family Rosaceae: Altai species Sanguisorba alpina, Potentilla fragiformis; from saxifrages (Saxifragaceae): Saxifraga sibirica and S. flagellaris; from the Asteraceae (Compositae) Central Asian Aster flaccidus, alpine Erigeron uniflorum, Tien Shan Waldheimia tomentosa; from primroses (Primulaceae): Androsace villosa and septentrionalis; from gentians: Gentiana falcata, G. aurea, G. prostrata G. frigida; from borage (Borragineae): Eritrichium villosum; from the family Scrophulariaceae: Gymnandra borealis; from Lamiaceae (Labiatae): Dracocephalum peregrinum: from Liliaceae: Allium platyspathum; from sedges (Cyperaceae): Carex nigra. The nature of this zone has, of course, great similarity with the nature of the vegetation of the alpine zone of the Kopal chain, and indeed the entire Semirechensky Alatau.], rock samples and in the production of hypsometric observations, which were successful because my bottle of alcohol, this time in the care of Adamsart , was not drunk. My observation gave 3,000 meters for one of the peaks of Alaman. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon we began to descend from Alaman along another straighter and more eastern road, along steep cliffs, past terrible abysses. Along the gorge, the steep slopes are overgrown with Cossack juniper (Juniperus sabina), below the distribution zone of which honeysuckle (Lonicera xylosteum) and bird cherry (Prunus padus) appeared. When we reached half of the descent, the sun was already beginning to disappear in the west under an even horizon. Adamsart rode to the side, quickly jumped off his horse, threw himself on his knees, took off his conical hat 70

and, turning to the west, said his prayer for several minutes... It was already completely dark when we reached the end of our descent and headed for our overnight stay in the villages of Adamsart. Having galloped quickly about six versts, we saw lights and heard the barking of dogs and the talk of the Kirghiz who met us, in a crowd scurrying around a large yurt, which, as if by itself, emerged from a number of other yurts and was moving towards us. When we entered the yurt, located in the meadow, we found rich Tashkent carpets already laid out there, prepared for our overnight stay. Soon a friendly light lit up in the middle of the yurt, which, as I learned, did not belong to the Sultan, whose residence was much further away, but to the richest of the inhabitants of this village. The company that surrounded the hearth consisted, in addition to those who arrived with me, of the owner of the yurt, two most honorable Kirghiz of the village and two Cholo-Cossacks. First of all, kumys appeared, then we drank tea, and then the usual expression of hospitality was served lamb. The Sultan performed his prayer, then we were given beautiful Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands), and we all washed our hands and began to eat our dinner, after which the owners of the yurt and the inhabitants of the village left, and the Sultan and I lay down on the silk pillows prepared for us. The fire went out. Through the upper opening of the yurt we saw the shining stars. Under the dull and monotonous chanting of the Kirghiz, who were guarding the herds surrounding us, sleep very soon took possession of us. Only after midnight I was awakened by a terrible alarm: I heard the screams of people, the desperate barking of all the dogs of the village and, finally, the frightened voices of all the domestic animals of the village: the neighing of horses, the roar of bulls and camels, the bleating of sheep - in a word, such a wild vocal concert as I only heard it once in my life. Everyone who was spending the night in the yurt ran out of it, except for me and the Sultan, who was sleeping soundly next to me on his silk pillows and barely woke up after me. A few minutes after that, a loud shot was heard near the yurt, and I could recognize the cause of the alarm, since all the Kirghiz, recognizing the night guest, shouted: “ayu”, “ayu”; it was a bear that had climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, which was pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. a crowd of people scurrying around a large yurt, which seemed to spontaneously emerge from a number of other yurts and move towards us. When we entered the yurt, located in the meadow, we found rich Tashkent carpets already laid out there, prepared for our overnight stay. Soon a friendly light lit up in the middle of the yurt, which, as I learned, did not belong to the Sultan, whose residence was much further away, but to the richest of the inhabitants of this village. The company that surrounded the hearth consisted, in addition to those who arrived with me, of the owner of the yurt, two most honorable Kirghiz of the 71

village and two Cholo-Cossacks. First of all, kumys appeared, then we drank tea, and then the usual expression of hospitality was served - lamb. The Sultan performed his prayer, then we were given beautiful Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands), and we all washed our hands and began to eat our dinner, after which the owners of the yurt and the inhabitants of the village left, and the Sultan and I lay down on the silk pillows prepared for us. The fire went out. Through the upper opening of the yurt we saw the shining stars. Under the dull and monotonous chanting of the Kirghiz, who were guarding the herds surrounding us, sleep very soon took possession of us. Only after midnight I was awakened by a terrible alarm: I heard the screams of people, the desperate barking of all the dogs of the village and, finally, the frightened voices of all the domestic animals of the village: the neighing of horses, the roar of bulls and camels, the bleating of sheep - in a word, such a wild vocal concert as I only heard it once in my life. Everyone who was spending the night in the yurt ran out of it, except for me and the Sultan, who was sleeping soundly next to me on his silk pillows and barely woke up after me. A few minutes after that, a loud shot was heard near the yurt, and I could recognize the cause of the alarm, since all the Kirghiz, recognizing the night guest, shouted: “ayu”, “ayu”; it was a bear that had climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, which was pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. a crowd of people scurrying around a large yurt, which seemed to spontaneously emerge from a number of other yurts and move towards us. When we entered the yurt, located in the meadow, we found rich Tashkent carpets already laid out there, prepared for our overnight stay. Soon a friendly light lit up in the middle of the yurt, which, as I learned, did not belong to the Sultan, whose residence was much further away, but to the richest of the inhabitants of this village. The company that surrounded the hearth consisted, in addition to those who arrived with me, of the owner of the yurt, two most honorable Kirghiz of the village and two CholoCossacks. First of all, kumys appeared, then we drank tea, and then the usual expression of hospitality was served - lamb. The Sultan performed his prayer, then we were given beautiful Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands), and we all washed our hands and began to eat our dinner, after which the owners of the yurt and the inhabitants of the village left, and the Sultan and I lay down on the silk pillows prepared for us. The fire went out. Through the upper opening of the yurt we saw the shining stars. Under the dull and monotonous chanting of the Kirghiz, who were guarding the herds surrounding us, sleep very soon took possession of us. Only after midnight I was awakened by a terrible alarm: I heard the screams of people, the desperate barking of all the dogs of the village and, finally, the frightened voices of all the domestic animals of the village: the neighing of horses, the roar of bulls and camels, the bleating of sheep - in a 72

word, such a wild vocal concert as I only heard it once in my life. Everyone who was spending the night in the yurt ran out of it, except for me and the Sultan, who was sleeping soundly next to me on his silk pillows and barely woke up after me. A few minutes after that, a loud shot was heard near the yurt, and I could recognize the cause of the alarm, since all the Kirghiz, recognizing the night guest, shouted: “ayu”, “ayu”; it was a bear that had climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, which was pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. and then the usual expression of hospitality, mutton, was served. The Sultan performed his prayer, then we were given beautiful Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands), and we all washed our hands and began to eat our dinner, after which the owners of the yurt and the inhabitants of the village left, and the Sultan and I lay down on the silk pillows prepared for us. The fire went out. Through the upper opening of the yurt we saw the shining stars. Under the dull and monotonous chanting of the Kirghiz, who were guarding the herds surrounding us, sleep very soon took possession of us. Only after midnight I was awakened by a terrible alarm: I heard the screams of people, the desperate barking of all the dogs of the village and, finally, the frightened voices of all the domestic animals of the village: the neighing of horses, the roar of bulls and camels, the bleating of sheep - in a word, such a wild vocal concert as I only heard it once in my life. Everyone who was spending the night in the yurt ran out of it, except for me and the Sultan, who was sleeping soundly next to me on his silk pillows and barely woke up after me. A few minutes after that, a loud shot was heard near the yurt, and I could recognize the cause of the alarm, since all the Kirghiz, recognizing the night guest, shouted: “ayu”, “ayu”; it was a bear that had climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, which was pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. and then the usual expression of hospitality, mutton, was served. The Sultan performed his prayer, then we were given beautiful Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands), and we all washed our hands and began to eat our dinner, after which the owners of the yurt and the inhabitants of the village left, and the Sultan and I lay down on the silk pillows prepared for us. The fire went out. Through the upper opening of the yurt we saw the shining stars. Under the dull and monotonous chanting of the Kirghiz, who were guarding the herds surrounding us, sleep very soon took possession of us. Only after midnight I was awakened by a terrible alarm: 73

I heard the screams of people, the desperate barking of all the dogs of the village and, finally, the frightened voices of all the domestic animals of the village: the neighing of horses, the roar of bulls and camels, the bleating of sheep - in a word, such a wild vocal concert as I only heard it once in my life. Everyone who was spending the night in the yurt ran out of it, except for me and the Sultan, who was sleeping soundly next to me on his silk pillows and barely woke up after me. A few minutes after that, a loud shot was heard near the yurt, and I could recognize the cause of the alarm, since all the Kirghiz, recognizing the night guest, shouted: “ayu”, “ayu”; it was a bear that had climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, which was pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. climbed into the herd, which was grazing a few steps from our yurt, pushed far forward from the entire village. Frightened by the shot of my escort Cossack, the bear made a quick retreat, stealing only one ram. I learned from the Kirghiz that the day before at the same hour the same village was attacked by another bear, which, however, did not manage to get away from the persecution so cheaply. The Kirghiz surrounded him on all sides and killed him. The trophy of their victory yesterday - a beautiful bear skin - was brought and spread in front of me and Sultan Adamsart. On the morning of August 28, I quickly rode on a Kyrgyz horse to the Tersachan picket fifteen miles from the village, got into my carriage, delivered from the Koksu picket, where it remained during our trip to Alaman, and continued on my way along the picket road to Verny. After one journey of thirty-eight versts I reached the Altynemel picket. This picket is remarkable in that it lies at the foot of the greatly lowered Semirechensky Alatau, directly opposite the Altyn-emel mountain pass, through which the caravan road went to Gulja. The second stage of this day from Altyn-emel to Kuyankuz was another twenty-seven miles. The road ran in an arc across the steppe, avoiding the continuation of the Altynemel Ridge, and brought me, after sunset, to the Kuyankuz picket, where I stopped for the night. On the morning of August 29, I quickly covered a distance of twenty-seven versts from the Kuyankuzsky to the Karachekinsky picket. The road for the first nineteen miles went to the southwest, crossing a porphyry ridge, from the top of which I first saw with delight in the foggy distance the gigantic ridge shining with its eternal snow - the 74

Trans-Ili Alatau. The Karachekin picket was located in a hollow, irrigated by a stream in the middle of a low group of hills. The distance from Karachekinsky to Changildiy picket was thirty-five versts. Until halfway, the road still went along the undulating steppe, through porphyry hills, overgrown with juzgun bushes (Calligonum leucocladum), still covered at this time of year with their pink flowers, but from halfway along the road the steppe became smoother and sandier and acquired a completely gray color, as its vegetation the cover consisted partly of various wormwoods (Artemisia maritima, A. olivieriana, A. annua), but especially of small gray grass loved by livestock - “bed-field”, called ebelek by the Kirghiz (Ceratocarpus arenarius), which covered here thick and continuous carpeted sandy spaces; In some places on this carpet stuck out huge stems of half-dried thorny grasses (eryngium macrocalyx), which still retained their blue heads and constituted the favorite food of camels. By evening, the colossal Trans-Ili Alatau, which closed our horizon in the south, was covered with a translucent fog of clouds, the sun went out on the low and flat western horizon of the Balkhash plain, and I stopped for the night at the Changildi picket. On August 30, early in the morning, I left this picket, which was only eight miles from the Ili River, but since the place convenient for crossing this largest river of Semirechye was located much lower along its course, the distance to the Ili picket was twenty-five versts. Here, in the middle of the Ili Lowland, I felt like I was in a completely different, unique climatic plant zone that serves the Kyrgyz nomads for their wintering grounds. The flora and fauna of this zone had a character completely unfamiliar to me. Many low and tall shrubs and grasses, characteristic of this zone, appeared in front of me, among which I was struck by the remarkably beautiful appearance of barberry, covered at this time of year with clusters of large and round pink berries and twice or even three times taller than a human being [This beautiful tall shrub was discovered by the travel scientist Lehmann during his trip to Bukhara and described for the first time under the name Berberis jntegerritm by the botanist prof. Bunge.]. There were an abundance of small shrubs. These were: silver ”acacia” (Halimodendron argenteum), two types of lycium (Lycium turcomanicum and L. ruthenicum), curlews (Atraphaxis spinosa and A. lanceolata), combs (Tamarix elongata, T. hispida), heliotrope (Heliotropium europaeum), Stellera stachyoides, etc. The fauna also presented striking features. Not to mention the wild boars, tigers, leopards and porcupines, hiding in the abundant reed thickets of this zone, turtles (Testudo horsfieldi) and various lizards and snakes, as well as insects and arachnids, of which I first saw phalanges here, amazed me with their abundance. scorpions and karakurts, whose bites, however, are not as dangerous in the fall as in June. There were also especially many beetles from the family Tenebrionidae (Blaps, Prosodes, Pimeliini). Trees also appeared closer to the river: variegated poplars (Popolus euphratica and P. pruinosa), as well as silver jida (Elaeagnus angustifolia). The closer we got to the Ili picket, the busier the area became. We constantly encountered long caravans of camels, or rows of carts and carts with soldiers and the first settlers in the Trans-Ili region. At the picket itself (Ilisky) there were no buildings built yet: it all consisted of yurts. Somewhat above the picket stood a large and clumsy longboat on the river. It 75

was built on the western shore of Lake Balkhash, and I saw its builders, who only a month ago brought it to the Ili picket. They traveled across the lake for about two weeks, delayed by contrary winds. The lake, according to their stories, was generally eight meters deep, but in some places this depth decreased to four. In the middle of the lake they came across a rather high island, visible from afar. They climbed along the Ili River with a towline to the Ili picket for three hundred miles over the course of two months. The width of the Ili River at the picket is from 300 to 400 meters. Our crossing of the Ili turned out to be quite difficult and took a lot of time. Although the current against the Ili picket is not particularly fast, there are many dangerous whirlpools in it. My carriage was somehow transported on a skiff, but I myself was forced to swim across with the Cossacks on horseback. At the same time, the horse of one of them began to drown; The Cossack was saved only because we swam in a crowd, one next to the other, and he managed to deftly get onto his neighbor’s horse, but his horse disappeared under the water and surfaced only much lower down the river. Having crossed the river, I got back into the tarantass, and I still had two more stages to reach Verny (70 versts). The first stage, to the Almaty picket, first crossed the characteristic Ili zone, in which at that time there were many Kyrgyz villages with their herds and herds that had descended from the Alpine zone. Originating from the eternal snows of the Zaliysky Alatau, the high-water tributaries of the Ili, bursting out of the mountain gorges onto the wide steppe foothills with still turbulent streams, reach the river, having lost the mass of their waters, diluted into ditches for irrigating the fields of the hot Ili zone (having no more than 300 meters of absolute height) , already narrow and very low-water streams. We crossed one of these streams to a ford about eight versts from the picket and barely recognized in it that wonderful Talgar River, from which the peak of the Trans-Ili Alatau (Talgarnyntal-choku), which feeds it with its eternal snows, received its name. We crossed another river, an insignificant stream, about eight versts before reaching the Almaty picket. This was the river (Almaty) that breaks out of the mountain gorges near Verny itself. During our entire journey from the Ili to Almaty picket, we saw the colossal Trans-Ili Alatau in front of us. This ridge stretches from east to west for more than 200 miles, rising in its middle to a gigantic height. In the very middle of it rises a three-headed mountain, with more than 4 1/2 thousand meters of absolute height. At the very top of this mountain the snow does not stick to the dark, steep cliffs, but on the neighboring peaks there is a lot of snow, at least so much so that for a hundred miles the middle of the high ridge seems covered entirely with eternal snow, and only sixty miles to the east and west from of the main peak (Talgarnyntal-choku), the ridge of the Trans-Ili Alatau drops below the snow line. As we approached the Almaty picket, the day was already leaning towards evening, and the entire foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau disappeared into the shell of dry fog that covered it, behind which all the contours of the ridge were hidden, which appeared to be a monotonous dark gigantic wall up to a height of 3,000 meters; but its entire snowy ridge from 3 to 5 thousand meters, where there was no longer fog, and where the atmosphere was completely cloudless and transparent, was illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, which 76

gave the snow a charming pink tint, and was visible with extraordinary clarity in all its smallest contours . Nowhere in Eurasia have I been able to see higher mountains so close, since in the Swiss Alps, the Caucasus, Turkestan and even in the higher Tien Shan, gigantic snow ridges are visible only from high absolute heights and nowhere reach a height of 4,000 - 4,500 meters above the viewer, which is the ridge of the Trans-Ili Alatau, directly rising above the Ili lowland. On our last stretch from the Almaty picket to Verny (35 versts) it was already completely dark, and when we began to approach Verny, dark night fell. All the more impressive was the appearance to me, quite unexpectedly, throughout the wide expanse of the newly founded fortification, of the cheerful multi-colored lights of the illumination lit that day, which presented Vernoye to me in a completely enchanting form. I knew that houses in Verny, except for the hastily built house of the bailiff of the Great Horde, did not yet exist, and yet shiny multi-colored scales indicated the beautiful facades of many of these non-existent houses. When I woke up the next day in the spacious yurt that had been prepared for me and came out of it, there were no houses or house facades. It turned out that in the evening a complete illusion occurred from a cleverly invented illumination. Only a few of the wealthiest settlers managed to build the foundations of their houses and prepare timber for them. This material consisted of magnificent, arrow-straight timber trees of Tien Shan spruce (Picea schrenkiana), brought here from the Almaty Valley. The settlers complained only about the fragility of this forest, which was greatly cracked; but this happened because, instead of first drying the trees after cutting them in the damp zone of forest vegetation, the settlers directly transported the trees to the zone of unusually dry foothills, where at that time not a single tree grew, but luxurious gardens, in which this flourishing city is now drowning in, began to divorce only much later. When I arrived, the bailiff of the Great Horde, and therefore the commander of the entire Trans-Ili region, was the educated Colonel Khomentovsky. He was brought up with success in the Corps of Pages and, given his talents, would have been an outstanding person if he had not had that shortcoming that paralyzed so many of our best outlying figures at that time - alcoholism. Khomentovsky greeted me very warmly, and he and I very soon agreed on our Peterhof camp memories. He told me that he had orders from the Governor-General regarding the convoy for me, and expressed confidence that, given my military education, I would be better able to maintain discipline in the convoy directly subordinate to me than any of his officers. He warned me that at the eastern tip of Issyk-Kul I would probably not find anyone, because, due to a long and bloody feud between two neighboring tribes of the Kara-Kirghiz-Sarybagish (subjects of the Kokand Khanate) and the Godesses (subjects of China), the latter fled from Issyk -Kul to the east, and the first ones had not yet dared to occupy the ancestral goddess lands, that is, the eastern half of the Issyk-Kul basin. Of course, it was possible to stumble upon wandering gangs (baranta) of one side or the other, but Khomentovsky considered all this tribal feud among the Kara-Kirghiz to be a favorable circumstance for my journey, the obstacle to which was only the late season. My expedition (1856) to Lake Issyk-Kul was equipped in two days. I received at my disposal ten escort 77

Cossacks, two Kirghiz, three pack horses and a camel. We left on September 2 in the evening; When leaving Vernoye, we met a cheerful round dance of the first Russian migrants from peasants who had just arrived in Vernoye. My detachment consisted of only 14 people (except for me and ten Cossacks - from my serf servant and two Kyrgyz), but we were joined by two more Cossacks from indefinite leave and one young man who had not yet reached service age, who wished to go with us to the mountains to hunt tigers. In addition, we were accompanied by three officers (Colonel Khomentovsky, artillery captain Obukh and another artillery officer with his escorts, who were traveling to the Kyrgyz villages wandering on the Issyk River), so that our entire caravan consisted of 30 people. We headed straight to the east along the foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau, first in daylight, and then, when the last rays of the setting sun had gone out, for another two hours in the moonlight and, having traveled only up to twenty-four miles, we stopped for the night on the first significant river (Talgar) , which emerges from the mountain range east of Almaty. The place chosen for the night was where the Talgar River bursts out like a stormy stream from the valley to the foothills. On September 3, I got up much earlier than sunrise and, accompanied by one Cossack, went to the nearest hill in order to enjoy the charming picture of the morning flicker (Alpengluhen) that opened before us through the wide notch of the Talgar valley of the snowy Talgar group. At a time when the low foothills closest to us with their soft, rounded outlines were still barely protruding from the night cover, towering at the head of the Talgar valley, a sharply outlined jagged snow ridge with a three-headed giant (Talgarnyntal-choku) was already shining with its eternal snows in the bright purple rays of the sun, which had not yet appeared from behind the distant horizon. When, finally, a bright light appeared over the mountains, I turned my attention to the nearest area of our overnight stay. When reaching the foothills, Talgar seemed to me wider, faster and noisier than the Biyona River in Semirechensky Alatau. Its banks are overgrown with trees and shrubs [In my diary for September 3 on Talgar the following are noted: hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida), irgai (Cotoneaster sp.), sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), meadowsweet (Spiraea crenata and hypericifolia), rose hips (Rosa gebleriana), Atrophaxis lanceolata, and from herbs: steppe sage (Salvia silvestris), Berteroa incana, Cichorium intybus and parasitic Orobanche amoena.]. The boulders of the river consisted of syenite, diorite and diorite porphyry. We all left camp no earlier than 10 am. The day was very hot. We with difficulty ford through Talgar and, having quickly traveled twelve miles along the same foothills, reached the second significant river from Verny in this foothills, Issyk, on which we settled down for half a day at about 11 o’clock in the morning, when it left the mountains. In this place, the foothills were rounded and did not have any rock outcrops. The boulders of the river consisted of porphyry and a small amount of diorite. The Issyk River, when leaving the mountain valley, is somewhat narrower than Talgar, but just as fast, and its valley is denser than the Talgar valley, overgrown with trees, among which the main role was played by: apple tree, apricot tree and hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida). The Issyk Valley serves as one of the best entrances to the best landscapes of the Trans-Ili Alatau. 78

They told me so much about the waterfall located in the Issyk valley, and about the beautiful alpine “Green Lake” (Dzhasyl-kul), which is easiest to reach along the Issyk valley, that I decided, leaving my detachment at the place for half a day, to do it, accompanied by three guards Cossacks and three hunters on an excursion to the valley. We left around noon. At first the valley ran straight south, between rounded hills. The forests of apple trees and apricots became denser and denser. Soon, to the right of us, an entrance to a side valley opened, into which I decided to go with my companions, since it was extremely narrow and picturesque. Tall but rounded mountains bordering it rose on both sides, one after the other, like curtains. They are also overgrown with dense thickets of apple trees and apricots. Despite the autumn season, everything in it was fresh and green, like in a beautiful garden. The apple trees were covered with ripe apples, but the apricots were already gone. The climb along the valley was quite steep and difficult. The Cossack hunters who accompanied us were not deceived in their expectations, and when we left the area of fruit trees into the area of \u200b\u200bconiferous forests, consisting of slender spruce trees, and then juniper (Juniperus sabina), we actually scared two tigers out of the dense thickets of juniper. Everyone rushed to pursue them, but, of course, without any chance of success, and, having traveled about three miles into the mountains, I decided to turn back with my escorts to the Issyk valley. The Cossack hunters left us, wanting to track down the tigers and continue the hunt that, in their opinion, had begun so successfully. I and my escorts returned to the Issyk valley and began to climb it. The mountains became higher and closer, and slender spruce trees (Picea schrenkiana) appeared on their slopes ahead of us. Finally, at the fifth mile, sheer cliffs and stone screes appeared. The rock that made up the mountains bordering the valley turned out to be red quartz-free porphyry. The peaks of the mountains forming the valley, which then turned into a narrow gorge, were, however, rounded and dome-shaped. In the screes and boulders there was also almost nothing except porphyry, and only occasionally pink and white and black syenites were found. Four times we had to cross the ford of the furious Issyk to go around the steep cliffs rising on one side or the other. The fords were deep and extremely dangerous, since horses in the most rapid places of the turbulent stream, stumbling over pitfalls, could easily be knocked down and carried away by the foaming waves. In one place, such a wave overturned one of our horses, which had tripped over an underwater rock. Fortunately, the Cossack who was sitting on it managed to jump onto a rock that was not flooded by the waves of a stormy stream, and we soon managed to pull the horse, stuck between underwater rocks not far from the shore, out of the water. Finally, at the end of the wild gorge, a waterfall appeared, descending like a wide silver ribbon. The whole of Issyk, like Giesbach (in Switzerland), rushed down a long slope with ledges into a deep gorge, and only its top broke through a waterfall through a rocky notch, picturesquely bordered by dark green spruce trees sticking out from rocky porphyry cliffs, partly covered with dark green juniper. We couldn’t get to “Green Lake” on this trip, since there were still a few miles of difficult climb left to get to it, and the sun had already disappeared behind the high mountains. I visited Lake Dzhasyl-kul only the 79

following year, 1857, and on that day I hurried to return to our camp (at the exit of Issyk from the mountains), which we reached by moonlight. I found the officers who were traveling with me here spending the night after they had made a tour of the Kyrgyz villages. I was in no hurry to leave the next day, since the transition on that day would be the easiest for me. Having become convinced during the pursuit of tigers, as well as during our four crossings across Issyk, that Cossack horses were completely unsuitable for mountain crossings, I decided at all costs to change all my horses for my two-week expedition with fresh ones from such Kyrgyz of the Great Horde, which could be were considered mountaineers, since during the summer season they kept their herds at the most inaccessible heights of the Trans-Ili Alatau. According to the instructions of Colonel Khomentovsky, I could find such villages on the Turgen River, which was only fifteen miles from Issyk. On September 4, getting up quite late in the morning after the tiring journeys of the previous day, I learned about the sad outcome of the tiger hunt, at the beginning of which we tried to take part. Chasing the tigers, three hunters finally attacked their tracks, which diverged in one place, since, obviously, both tigers ran along different paths. One of the two older and experienced hunters with a dog went along the upper path, and an equally experienced old Cossack went along the other with a young one who had never been on a tiger hunt before. Both parties did not lose sight of each other. Unfortunately, a Cossack, walking along the lower path without a dog, noticed a tiger hiding in the bushes, too late to have time to shoot at him. The tiger rushed at the hunter so quickly that he knocked the rifle out of his hands with a blow of his paw. The experienced Cossack, without losing his presence of mind, stood in front of the tiger, who in turn also stopped and lay down in front of the hunter, like a cat that lies down in front of a mouse when it stops moving. The young Cossack hurried to the rescue of his comrade, but his hands were so numb with fear that he could not fire a shot. Then the older Cossack demanded that he hand over his rifle to him, but the young Cossack was not able to do this either; the old man turned around and took two or three steps to take his rifle from the young man. At that moment, the tiger rushed at its prey and, grabbing the Cossack by the shoulder, dragged him forward with a strong movement, as he noticed that the third Cossack, walking with the dog along the upper path, was quickly running across his path. The tiger had already run across the intersection of the paths, but the dog managed to catch up with him and cling to his back. Then the tiger, having abandoned his prey, ran a little forward and began to spin in order to throw off and tear apart his little enemy, which he finally succeeded in, but then he was hit by two fatal shots from the hunter pursuing him; however, he still had enough strength to go down to the stream, drink in it and breathe his last breath on its bank. But the victorious shooter had no time for the tiger: he rushed to the aid of his comrade, whose one arm was chewed off above the elbow, and two fingers of the other were badly damaged. Both Cossacks carried their comrade in their arms to the place where they left their horses, and then, with their help, reached our overnight stay on Issyk. With difficulty they transported the victim to Vernoye, where only upon my return from two trips to Issyk-Kul I visited him in the hospital 80

and found him recovering, although his arm had already been taken away. The trophy of their hunt, a beautiful tiger skin, was given to me, and the amount I gave to the hunter who killed the tiger was generously given by him to his injured comrade. I return to my journey. On September 4 at 10 o’clock in the morning, having said goodbye to Khomentovsky and the artillery officers, only accompanied by my escort Cossacks, I quickly crossed the ten-verst space between Issyk and the next significant river to the east - Turgen. We got to Turgen at the place where this river came out of a mountain valley onto the foothills, in which it washed out a deep hollow. Its bed was covered with boulders of porphyry and syenite, the current was fast and noisy, its waves foamed, jumping over underwater rocks; there were many alluvial islands littered with boulders on the river; The width of the river is the same as Talgara, and when it came out of the mountains, the ford was very difficult for our weak horses. The village in which we could hire fresh horses was found five miles below the place to which we went; it belonged to the rich bai Atamkul, who was famous as one of the bravest warriors of the Great Kyrgyz Horde. I managed to get 15 beautiful horses, accustomed to mountain travel, for two weeks with two guides, two rams per horse, but the horses could only be collected by late evening, and I stayed overnight in a yurt, which the hospitable Atamkul put up for me. The camel given to my expedition by Khomentovsky was unanimously recognized as suitable for mountain travel. On September 5, I set off with my convoy at 7 o’clock in the morning. An hour’s drive south of the Atamkul villages, up the Turgen, the hollow of this river has already turned into a valley. Its lateral hills had a rounded outline and consisted of dark schistose clays, sandy sediments and yellowish clays with boulders of predominantly porphyry. These boulders were piled up in places, like erratic stones, high above the level of the current river. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to investigate the reasons for the location of these boulders at higher elevations and, not having yet had the opportunity to verify the existence of glaciers in the Tien Shan mountain system, I could attribute the presence of these boulders at significant heights only to the fact that the river initially flowed through the valley more a wide channel and at a higher level, but, gradually breaking through a deeper channel in the loose rocks of the foothills, she parted forever with her former high channel, leaving on her old banks whole ridges of boulders, which she could not bear from their high, no longer accessible to her level. When Turgen entered the valley, a stream flowed into it on the right side, through which we moved. After an hour’s drive from this stream, the first outcrops of rocks appeared on both banks of the river, consisting of corrugated rock on the right bank, while on the left bank, high above the river level, there were still a large number of ridges of boulders. Along the slopes of the valley grew shrubs of cherganak (Berberis beteropoda) with its black, round and tasty berries, buckthorn also with black berries and curly grass (Atraphaxis spinosa), still covered with pink flowers, and closer to the bed of the Tala River (Salix purpurea and S. fragilis ). Nevertheless, the herbs encountered belonged to the cultural zone of the Trans-Ili region and had a European character [In my diary on September 5, recorded in the Turgen valley: Berteroa incana, Geranium pratense, Trifolium 81

repens, Epilobium palustra, Aster tripolium, A. sedifolius (Galatella punctata), Achillea millefolium, Salvia silvestris, Veronica beccabunga, Plantage major - all common plants of the European flora.]. The Turgen Valley gradually became narrower and more picturesque and was further overgrown with apple trees, apricots, poplars, hawthorn and maple, which later received my name, and slender spruce trees appeared on the mountain slopes descending into the valley. Twice we were forced to ford the river, avoiding steep cliffs. After three hours of travel, the valley, heading towards the southeast, suddenly split into two; the smaller branch of the river came directly from the south, that is, from the transverse valley, and the larger one from the east, from the longitudinal one. We turned to the latter and here first encountered outcrops of gypsum, and then a dark modification of porphyry. Our road went for a long time along the valley upstream of the river, but then little by little it moved away from it, going uphill. After four hours of travel, the road that departed from the river began to climb a mountain pass. The climb was very steep. Granites also appeared in small outcrops, but then porphyries appeared again. Beyond the pass we descended onto another river, also one of the sources of Turgen, the left bank of which was covered with spruce trees. Then we climbed the mountain again, but this second pass also led us to another of the Turgen rivers, flowing first to the east, and then bending in an arc first to the north, and then to the west, making its way along the valley through which we could see to the northwest was the entire ridge of the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, covered with continuous eternal snow, while the mountains of the porphyry ridge through which our pass went bore only stripes of eternal snow. The passes we passed were already in the zone of alpine vegetation, and the hollows of the upper Turgen rivers were in the zone of coniferous forests. From the same high river, which bent to the west in a complete arc, we climbed the last and highest pass, which the Kirghiz called Asyntau. Beyond this pass we descended to the Asy (Asy-su) River, flowing east along the continuation of the same longitudinal valley along which we climbed Asyntau, and stopped here for the night. The thermometer here showed +7° C at 8 pm. Our overnight stay turned out to be at 2,390 meters of absolute altitude, but it was 500 meters lower than the last pass, and for all that, the vegetation near the overnight stay had an alpine character [Migration of plants of the alpine zone to the lower zones (forest and cultural) along mountain streams that preserved for a long time their low temperature due to the speed of their flow is a phenomenon that I have repeatedly noticed on the northern slope of the Trans-Ili Alatau, and it is explained by the transfer from the alpine zone by the waters of streams of seeds of alpine plants, which find convenient development conditions where the soil is constantly irrigated by always equally cold streams. ]. On this day, we made at least 60 versts of a very difficult journey from the Atamkul villages, accessible only to the horses of the Kyrgyz mountaineers. On September 6, there was frost in the morning. We left our overnight stay on the Asy River at 8 o’clock in the morning and went down its longitudinal valley to the east. After a quarter of an hour of travel, we forded the river, and two hours later, when the valley suddenly widened, we evaded Asy-su in the place where there was a Kyrgyz grave near its bank, in 82

the form of a conical turret, built of mud brick, with a window, surrounded by a balcony. Moving away from the river, we began to climb up the mountain along an inclined plane overgrown with a dark spruce forest. After a quarter of an hour of ascent, we entered a wild gorge through which a stream flowed into the Asy; the right side of the gorge is overgrown with spruce trees, and the left side with juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina). The gorge was rocky; the outcrops we encountered consisted first of metamorphic rocks, and then, like the entire ridge we climbed, of syenite. The climb was so steep that our camel was exhausted, and in the second hour of the climb we had to take an hour’s break. It’s not for nothing that the Kyrgyz called this pass Jamanbastan (bad scare). After our halt, we climbed for another hour and a half until we reached the alpine zone, and then reached the top of the pass. In the depression on its northern side we could see the remains of snow that had not completely melted throughout the summer season, and at the end of the climb snow fell on us in the form of grains from a running cloud, but when we got to the top, from which a picturesque ridge of rocks rose, a gusty wind cleared away the clouds, and a vast view of the entire southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau opened up before us. To our right it extended as a continuous ridge of snowy peaks without any indentations; In front of us, mountains rose, on which only spots and stripes of eternal snow were visible, and to the left the entire ridge quickly descended and smoothed out at the place where our guides pointed to the lowest of the passes of this ridge, calling it Santash. The top of our pass had high-alpine vegetation. The space between them and the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau was very wide and filled with several parallel ridges, which from the enormous height at which we were located looked like vegetable beds. The descent from the mountain pass was steep and fast, along a spring that our Kyrgyz called Chin-bulak and whose gorges were overgrown with spruce trees on one side and lined with syenite cliffs on the other. Leaving the spring, we went down to the southeast, and then to the south and, crossing onto a large granite ridge, we emerged at dusk into the valley along which the Jenishke River flowed to the east. Having forded this river, we stopped for the night on its right bank, between dense thickets of poplars and cherganak (Berberis heteropoda), intertwined with clematis (Clematis songarica). Several diorite rocks stuck out above us. The cliffs of the left bank seemed to me in the twilight like some kind of ruins of an old fortress with loopholes. On the morning of September 7, I became convinced that these cliffs consisted of completely horizontal layers of weakly cemented sandstone, containing a mass of large and small boulders, between which the main role was played by porphyries, and then diorites and syenites. There were quite a few caves in this conglomerate. Having left our overnight stay at 8 o’clock in the morning, we followed for about an hour down the Dzhenishka River, and then began to climb to the southeast to a new pass. The place where we left the river was remarkable in that its valley turned into a kind of gorge, constrained by steep cliffs. These rocks already consisted of a very hard conglomerate, under which I found real crystalline rocks, namely very coarse-grained granite, which was, however, highly weathered. Separating from the river, we began to cross light ridges, where we met a large wolf, but we 83

could not catch up with him. After walking these ridges for about two and a half hours, we finally saw the valley of the most significant of the rivers originating [in the Trans-Ili Alatau, namely Chilika, limited in this place by rather high but gentle hills, covered with grassy vegetation. Above the place where we reached Chilik, this river from its very headwaters flows from west to east along the most significant of the valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau, separating the northern of its two parallel chains from the southern. Chilik appeared to us where we saw it for the first time, as a very high-water, wide and noisy river, rushing violently through the rapids of the rocks it had piled up. Its banks were overgrown with dense forest, consisting of poplars (Populus suaveolens), tala species (Salix purpurea and S. fragilis), sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), blackberry (Berberis heteropoda), argay (Cotoneaster sp.) and other shrubs. We wandered in this thicket for more than half an hour before we found a ford across the river. In one place, a huge deer (Cervus canadensis asiaticus), “bugu” in Kyrgyz, with its huge, branched horns, jumped out almost from under my horse. The ford was wide, deep and extremely dangerous; Only our familiar Kyrgyz mountain horses could withstand the crossing. Between the huge boulders, carried away by the rushing river, there were many conglomerates and breccias. Beyond Chilik we headed southeast across a fairly smooth steppe plateau, very slowly but gradually rising in the direction of our path. We walked along this high steppe for about five hours without encountering any flowing waters, but we did meet here many light and beautiful wild goats (Capra sibirica), running through these steppes in small herds. The Kirghiz call this plateau Uch-Merke (three Merkes), after the name of the three Merke rivers, which cut incredibly deep valleys in the high plateau. As it rose to the south, the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau seemed to merge with it, and I saw for the first time on the distant horizon, with the brilliance of the sun’s rays, what for many years had been the goal of my thoughts and aspirations - the continuous snow chain of the Tien Shan, which my guides called Mustag. The gigantic ridge was sharply separated from the closer southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, on which only stripes of eternal snow were visible ahead of me; but soon a gusty wind covered the mountain ridge closest to us with clouds, and when the same wind scattered these clouds, the tops of this ridge were already covered with fresh snow. After 5 hours of travel from Chilik, our path along the plateau was suddenly blocked by a deep hollow dug in it by the first Merka. The depth of this characteristic valley, cut into the plateau no less than 300 meters below its level, gave me a visual idea of the height of the plateau. The sides of the valley along which we had to descend into it were very steep and consisted of those characteristic conglomerates from which, apparently, the entire plateau was composed and which contained huge boulders of porphyry, syenite, diorite and other crystalline rocks, quite weakly cemented with sandstone. The valley was half a mile wide; at its bottom flowed a fast and quite significant, high-water river, on the bank of which there was not a single tree. We made an hour’s halt here, and then climbed to the other side of the valley along the same steep and rocky slope, consisting of the same conglomerates, again to a flat plateau, interrupted by a deep valley, and after an hour of travel along it we reached the second Merke, which was digging through 84

here is a valley almost as deep as the first. On the edge of the river valley stood a Kyrgyz cemetery. Here, between the graves, we noticed a grave digger - a light gray small Tien Shan bear (Ursus arctos leuconyx). Having scared him off, we chased him. He ran with extraordinary speed, descending without looking back into the valley of the second Merke and funny somersaults on the steep descents. Having the best horse, I followed on his heels, and my escort Cossacks gradually fell behind me. Only one of them separated and with extraordinary quickness descended into the valley along the shortest path in order to keep up with the bear. The Cossack’s maneuver was quite successful. When I descended to the bottom of the valley, hot on the heels of the bear, I noticed a Cossack standing in front of us with a gun in his hands, completely ready. The bear ran a hundred paces ahead of me very quickly, but when he noticed a Cossack ahead of him, he walked very slowly, with a heavy gait. I happened to have neither a rifle nor a pistol, and I could only look with curiosity at the outcome of our persecution, especially since the rest of the Cossack escort was far behind us. Finally, the bear caught up with the Cossack, but he, instead of firing a shot, backed away and let him pass by. The bear walked ponderously and quietly past his timid enemy, and then, looking back, began to run with incredible speed. I rode up to the Cossack and asked him why he didn’t shoot at the bear, being in such a favorable position for the hunter, and received the answer: “yes, I was completely ready and took good aim, but when I looked at the bear close up and thought: what if he “He’ll eat me,” and his hands dropped, and he walked past me, and let’s go.” On the bank of the second Merke, we were pleased to notice a group of tala trees (Salix purpurea and S. fragilis) and between these trees we settled down for the night on the very bank of the river. Half a mile below our bivouac, the second Merke burst into a wild gorge, breaking through ledges and forming low waterfalls or rapids through the rocks, consisting of hard and ringing porphyry. On September 8, we rose at seven o’clock in the morning from our overnight stay on the second Merka and climbed up a steep slope from the valley onto the plateau. Following it three quarters of an hour to the southeast, we reached the valley of the third Merke. This valley was as deep as the second valley, it was half a mile wide and the slopes, although steep, were covered with turf. One verst below the place where we forded the river, the third Merke made its way through the gorge in the same way as the second. But from our crossing we turned not down, but up the river. After an hour and a half of travel, the valley turned into a narrow gorge with steep porphyry cliffs and slopes covered with spruce forest. Avoiding this gorge, we climbed to its right bank and made a two-hour detour, and then emerged again into a widening valley, the slopes of which were already covered with turf. Three hours from the overnight stop, the third Merke split into two branches, one of which flowed from the south and the other from the southwest. We followed the first one, and an hour later we entered a spruce forest, partly covering the slopes of the valley, which consisted of diabase. After a five-hour journey from our overnight stay, the river forked again. After this fork, we drove along the western branch and began to climb steeply up the mountain, following one of the upper streams of the third Merke, but after half an hour we stopped for an hour’s rest, due 85

to the extreme fatigue of our camel. Here the outcrops consisted of metamorphic limestone, with veins of calcareous spar. We had already left the forest zone since the beginning of the climb; the shrubs were subalpine: juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina), four types of currants (Ribes diacantha, heterotrichum, atropurpureum and rubrum), Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) and a thin, delicate breed of euonymus that I discovered, which later received my name (Evonymus semenowi). Then we walked through meadows with highalpine vegetation [Here is a list of plants I collected in the alpine zone of the Tabulgatinsky pass on September 8, 1856: from this family. Ranunculaceae: Kashmiri Anemone Falconeri. It is remarkable that on the Tabulgatiya Pass on that day I found another Western Himalayan plant: Carumindicum (as defined by Regel and Herder), apparently brought from Kashmir by Mr. Royle and described by the botanist Lindley. On the same day (September 8) I also collected: European forms: Moehringia lateriflora, Cerastium alpinum, Aster alpinus, Erigeron uniflorum, Gentiana aurea and Veratrum album, polar form Gvmnandra borealis, Altai Doronicum oblongifolium, and from local Central Asian ones: Chrysanthemum pulchrum, Eritricmum pectinatum, Nepeta densiflora.] and finally reached the top of the mountain pass, on which snow lay before the beginning of July, but melted at the end of this month, and not in August. The height of this passage was at least 2,500 meters, but still it seemed to me lower than Asynyn-tau. My guides called this mountain pass Tabul-Ghaty. Its outcrops consisted of granite. From here two rivers flowed in different directions: one to the south, into the Issyk-Kul basin, the other to the north, to Merka, belonging to the Ili River basin. Both bore the same name Tabulga-su. We descended along a very steep descent into the valley of southern Tabulga-su, overgrown with slender spruce trees. Starting from the pass over the ridge during our descent, I could constantly enjoy the wonderful panorama of the entire Tien Shan between the meridians of the famous Musart mountain pass and the western tip of Lake Issyk-Kul. Unfortunately, I could not navigate this magnificent panorama, since my guides (Kyrgyz of the Great Horde), well familiar with the Trans-Ili Alatau, were completely unfamiliar with the Tien Shan. To the left of our meridian, in the middle of a vast group of snow giants, a pyramid-shaped mountain stood out with the boldness of its outlines, the slopes of which were so steep that in some places the snow could not stick, and for all that the pyramid seemed snow-white, especially since it was from its very base, located among other giants of the mountain group, was already located in the zone of eternal cold. To the left of this highly individualized mountain there was another one, rising in a more gentle cone, but inferior to it in height, perhaps only because it was further away. To the right of our meridian to the southwest, special attention was drawn to a three-headed giant, similar in shape to the Dent du Midi of the Valais Alps, but completely covered with snow. Having descended from the Tabulgatinsky pass, we chose an overnight stay at the exit of the Tabulga-su river from a valley transverse to the axis of the ridge, along which we descended from the pass into a longitudinal valley, that is, parallel to the axis of the ridge, separating a low foothill from it. The place I had chosen for the night was perfectly protected on one side by foothills, on the other by forest thickets, and was 86

located right on the bank of a fast river rushing through the rocks, to the sound of which one could fall asleep so sweetly. From here the Tabulgaty mountain pass, located 1,010 meters above us, seemed like a point to us. Since we arrived at our overnight stop no later than 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was still high, I left my guards to pitch a tent, light a fire, make tea and prepare us a modest dinner, which consisted of crackers soaked in water and fried in fat tail fat ( since I never took any canned food on my trip), and galloped with one Cossack to the nearest hill of the foothills, from where I could have an unobstructed view of Issyk-Kul, the length of which extended to the west-southwest for more than 150 miles. From the south, this entire blue basin of Issyk-Kul was closed by a continuous chain of snow giants. The Tien Shan seemed like a steep wall [P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky considered the Kukgei Alatau ridge, bordering Issyk-Kul from the north, to be the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, and called the Tien Shan the high Terskey Alatau and the high mountain nodes located behind it (Ak-Shiirak, Khan-Tengri, etc. .). This must be kept in mind when reading P.P.’s further story about his journey through the Tien Shan. (Ed.)]. The snowy peaks with which it was crowned formed an uninterrupted chain anywhere, and since their snowless bases, beyond the distance in the southwest, were hidden under the horizon, the snowy peaks seemed to directly emerge from the dark blue waters of the lake. Returning to my tent, I fell asleep especially well under the impression of the pictures of nature I had seen that day and to the sound of the river falling in waterfalls. On September 9, we left our overnight stay on Tabulga-su at 7 o’clock in the morning and headed towards Issyk-Kul. For more than an hour we followed a longitudinal valley stretching from east to west parallel to the Tyupa River and separated from it by a low mountain ridge. No river flowed through this valley, since Tabulga went across this ridge. On the north side of the valley was the round hill that I climbed yesterday to view the lake. After an hour of travel, the ridge bordering the valley from the south smoothed out, and after a slight descent we found ourselves in a wide steppe valley, along which the Tyup and Dzhargalan rivers, parallel to each other, flowed to the west - the eastern high-water tributaries of Issyk-Kul; of them, the first (Tyup) collects all the rivers flowing from the north, originating on the snow line of the southern chain of the Zaliysky Alatau, which we crossed the day before in the Tabulgatinsky pass, which no longer reaches here. The second of the mountain tributaries of Issyk-Kul, Dzhargalan, collects all the rivers flowing from the south and originating in the forward range of the Tien Shan. We walked along the Tyup-Dzhargalan plain directly to the west, along the foothills of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, at some distance from them, but closer to them than to Tyup. The Tyup-Daargalan valley was at least twenty miles wide, and behind it a gigantic ridge was already rising, the front mountains of which in some places had snow stripes on their peaks, and the back giants made up a continuous row of snowy whites. The steppe or plain of Tyup-Dzhargalan is very little elevated above the lake, and therefore, after walking along it for an hour, I stopped at a transverse stream for hypsometric measurements. It was at nine and a half o’clock in the morning. The thermometer showed +10°C, the weather was a little cloudy and slightly 87

foggy with low east and high west winds. Continuing further, we very often crossed transverse streams, tributaries of the Tyup, of which there were at least 25 along the entire length. The mountains, as their protrusion intruded into the valley, seemed either closer or further from us. The steppe was treeless, and its grass vegetation had the steppe character of the piedmont plain of the Trans-Ili region and the European Sarmatian plain. Tea grass (Lasiagrostis splendens), steppe sage (Salvia silvestris), honeycomb (Mediago falcata), yarrow (Achillea millifolium), iris (Iris gueldenstaedtiana) and aster (Galatella punctata) were the dominant plants throughout the steppe. In some places there were swampy areas overgrown with tall reeds (Phragmites communis), between which we noticed traces of wild boars everywhere. We constantly scared away the beautiful Semirechensk pheasants (Phasianus mongolicus), which the Cossacks could not shoot with their rifles loaded with bullets. After three hours’ journey from the stream where we stopped, we approached a mountain ledge jutting into the valley, and almost blocking our road, which was supposed to go around it. The mountain consisted of fine-grained granite. Climbing onto it with one of the Cossacks, I saw the entire lake and the wide mouth of the Tyup ahead of us. From here it was no more than eight miles to Issyk-Kul. We soon left the road, heading straight to the lake, and an hour and a half later we reached its shore. The place where we came out to the lake jutted out into it in the form of a peninsula or, better said, a spit between the mouths of Tyup and Dzhargalan. The entire peninsula, on sandy soil, is densely overgrown with only one shrub - sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides). The lake water looked beautiful in its clarity and light blue color, but it was brackish and undrinkable. The surf of the waves was strong. There were no boulders on the sandy shore, except for pieces of weak conglomerate formed by the lake itself and not rounded into boulders or pebbles. The shells I found on the shore belonged to a new species of the freshwater genus Limnaea (L. obliquata). The width of the Tyup was greater than the width of the Rhone at its confluence with Lake Geneva. To the west, the lake seemed endless. On its northern side, about 20-30 versts, a high mountain ledge jutted into the Kungey valley [P.P. called the northern coast of Issyk-Kul, and not a ridge, Kungey, just like Terskey - the southern coast of the lake, and not a huge ridge, bordering the Issyk-Kul basin from the south. (Ed.)] and came close to the lake, contributing to the formation of beautiful bays in it. There were no islands on the lake at all. On the bank of the Tyup, five or six versts above its mouth, stood a remarkable structure, clearly visible from the road. It was a mullah (Kyrgyz grave). The building was solidly built of gray mud brick, had a dome and two thin towers like minarets, connected by a high wall with narrow windows like loopholes. We reached Issyk-Kul at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and would have willingly stayed here until the next day, but it was too dangerous to spend the night on the shore of the lake. A bivouac on the peninsula would be the most uncomfortable. Our lights would be visible from everywhere from both coasts of Issyk-Kul (Kungey and Terskey), and it would be too easy to cut us off from communication. The Kara-Kirghiz might already have known about our arrival at Issyk-Kul, because in the morning we saw one horseman from a distance. The path made to the mullah with fresh 88

footprints proved that this mullah was often visited. On our road we met a large number of remains of torn yurts; Obviously, barants and massacres took place here this spring between both Kara-Kirghiz tribes. Since victory remained with the more predatory Sarybagish, they could spend the night on Kungei behind a mountain ledge. Any passing baranta would have noticed our lights. Therefore, I decided not to stay here for the night and go back to where I was before. The Cossacks cheered up, and the three Kirghiz accompanying us, who were pulling our camel and pack horses with effort, galloped off at a trot. We soon reached the mountain ledge we had passed, which jutted out onto the road. Having climbed the mountain, I could once again take a farewell look at the wonderful surface of Issyk-Kul. A light stream silvered along it under the dying rays of the sun, which soon drowned in the haze of the evening fog. Soon it was completely dark. We had to either spend the night in some side gorge, or return at night to our previous overnight stay. Despite the fatigue of people and horses, we chose the latter. The night was dark, moonless and even starless: the sky was covered with dark clouds, and the outlines of the mountains disappeared in the fog. In a close crowd, like a Kyrgyz baranta, we rode at a fast trot for about four hours. Often we had to ford numerous streams flowing from the mountains. We soon completely lost the road or path and had to cling to the mountain slopes in order not to completely lose our way and not lose our direction in the wide Tyup steppe. Finally, our camel, tired of the forced march, stopped. There was nothing to do. We climbed the slope of the mountain and got off our horses. The wind was extremely strong and piercing, the temperature dropped below 0°. At first it was drizzling lightly, and then it started snowing in large flakes. Without unsaddled the horses, having unsaddled only the camel, we lay down on the damp ground, wrapping ourselves in whatever we could find. The Cossacks were so tired and chilled that I did not allow them to pitch a tent for me. There was nothing to light fires with, and our resting place was too open and dangerous. Tired, I fell asleep a little, but woke up an hour later under the impression of a piercing and unbearable cold. It was the dead of midnight. The clouds cleared a little, and the stars began to shine here and there. I decided to wake up the Cossacks and seek refuge from the cold in a new crossing. The rested camel was loaded again. I went ahead with one Cossack and, fortunately, soon found the road. After about three hours of difficult travel, we finally reached the Tabulga-su gorge, well protected from the east by a mountain and from the west by a grove. With joy, I heard the welcoming sound of a familiar stream. Through patches of soft snow lying here and there, we reached the ford and, crossing the stream, spent the night at our previous accommodation, pitching a tent there and lighting a huge, but invisible fire. On September 10, we left our overnight stay at 10 a.m. and headed along the valley to the east. The mountain cliffs that bordered the valley to the north consisted of dense gray limestone with traces of fossils: shells, corals, encrinites and orthoceratites of the Carboniferous system. We forded the Tabulga-su and soon reached the Tyup River, into which it flows. The Tyup flows here from east to west and only at the junction with the Tabulga makes its way through the ridge and goes into another parallel valley. The valley along which we followed upstream for three 89

or four hours was picturesque and attractive. Its width is about a mile; the bottom is overgrown with willows (Salix viminalis); the river is quite wide and fast; spruce trees grow on all slopes, on which there are also a lot of bird cherry (Prunus padus) and blackberry (Berberis heterepoda), in a word, the vegetation is very rich. The mountains that bordered the plain were not high, but had beautiful undulating outlines; their tops were covered with snow that had fallen yesterday. The mountain cliffs were extremely interesting. The limestone came out here in such small outcrops that it was impossible to notice its strike, but it rested on dense, somewhat metamorphosed sandstone, the strike of which was from northwest to southeast, with a deviation of 40° from the meridian, and a dip of 45° to the south. -west. All this was broken through by conglomerates and breccia, consisting of huge blocks of the same limestone, sandstone and red porphyry, firmly cemented with a finer-grained mass. Apparently the intruding rock here is red porphyry, which forms stocks in the sedimentary rocks. Further on, the same limestones stretched along the valley. Finally, the valley ended with an expansion of up to four miles, forming an area very convenient for settlement. From here we turned to the north-northeast, crossed an easy pass and entered a wide valley with a meridional direction, in which there was no river, but only a small lake and swamp. On the left, that is, western, side of the valley there was sandstone with the same strike and dip as before. Then we headed straight to the north and climbed somewhat uphill to the lowered continuation of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau; We walked through it for three or four hours and finally reached the Jalanash (Uch-Merke) plateau. Ahead, a row of poplars (Populus suaveoleris) appeared before us, marking the course of the Karkara River. Here we hoped to meet the villages of the goddesses, but did not find them, and therefore turned to the north-northeast, so that Karkara remained to our right, and in the evening we went out to the river, which our guides called Chirik-su and on which we spent the night. The valley of this river was treeless here, limited by high mountains and directed from south to north. The night was cold, and by morning it was -2° C. On September 11, we left our overnight camp at 10 a.m., forded on the left bank of the river, climbed to a hill and headed west-northwest along the steppe plateau. To our right, Chirik-su was constantly visible, from which our road slowly diverged. After three hours of travel, we again approached the river, which we found here twice as wide. It was enlarged and slightly changed in direction by the latitudinal confluence of the Karkara River into it from the left, at the confluence with which the connected river receives the name Kegen-su. The ridge visible across the river stretched from east-northeast to west-southwest, approaching the Kegen current from its right side. After three hours of our further journey to the west, the Kegen River flowed along the longitudinal (relative to the direction of the ridge) valley of the Trans-Ili Alatau, which gradually turned into a gorge; Due to its inaccessibility, we had to go around this gorge and go out to the Kegen River where its valley expanded again. The rock outcrops here consisted of red porphyry. After an hour and a half of travel along the valley, we again reached its entrance to a wild gorge, due to the complete inaccessibility of which we had to finally leave the flow of the river and climb onto the high plateau of Jalanash, 90

through which it makes its way. After an hour of travel, we descended into the deep valley of the third Merka that blocked our path and drove out onto our old road. Deep in the valley we spent the afternoon in a grove on the river bank. The rock outcrops here consisted of the same limestone which we found at Tabulga-su and which contained the characteristic fossils of the Carboniferous system, namely Rhynchonella and Productus with longitudinal grooves. The strike of this limestone was not clear, because it came to the surface only as flat rocks. Above it, as on all Merk and throughout the surrounding plateau, there were deposits of weakly cemented sand with many huge and small boulders of porphyry, syenite, granite, diorite and conglomerates of the same rocks. We got to the second Merke along the same road, but having crossed its deep valley and leaving again on the plateau, we turned to the right, that is, more to the north-west, and reached the first Merke much lower than before, and closer to its confluence with the Kegen. The descent to the first Merka was very long, because its valley here was even deeper. The rocks bordering it consisted of red porphyry. From the descent into the valley one could see the confluence of Merke with Kegen, which, having accepted all three Merke, made its way through the wild gorge; here its flow, like the Imatra, had the character of a continuous waterfall, as a result of which the Kirghiz characterized it by the name Ak-Toga. The place where we stopped at the first Merka was overgrown with a beautiful growth of trees and bushes, while higher up, where we crossed the valley of this Merka on the way to Issyk-Kul, there was no forest vegetation on it. The undergrowth in which we spent the night that day consisted of thalas (Salix viminalis), poplars (Populus suaveolens), argay (Cotoneaster sp. and G. multiflora), rose hips (Rosa platyacantha) and blackberry (Berberis heteropoda). The night was not cold. On September 12, we left our wonderful overnight stay early in the morning, climbed an extremely long and steep climb onto the Jalanash plateau and followed at a distance of almost fifteen miles, first parallel to Ak-Togoi, and then gradually moving away from it. To our left was the breakthrough of the Chilika River through the same plateau, to the right, Kegen, which had already broken out of the wild gorge (Ak-Togoya), was still flowing in a very deep valley. When we looked into this valley, we were happy to see Kyrgyz villages in it and headed towards them in the hope of speeding up our return to Vernoye with the change of several completely tired horses, and especially a camel. Three hours later, after an endless descent and a dangerous crossing through the wide and rapid Kegen, which had already taken the name Charyn and here had the width of the Aar near Interlaken, we finally reached the villages. Several hours passed with us in the first plentiful dinner since our departure from Verny, which consisted of a whole ram, and in negotiations with the Kirghiz, who finally delivered us six horses and a camel for a reasonable price, and we set off at five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun was already setting to the west. For a whole hour we climbed the hill bordering the valley and reached the plateau. At a trot we galloped along it for fifteen miles, separating us from the ridge stretching ahead of us from west to east, which the Kirghiz called Turaigyrtau. The sun had already set when we began to climb this ridge and were forced to stop for the night halfway up the climb on a 91

stream flowing from it. On September 13, we set off very early in the morning. The road went steeply uphill through a wild transverse gorge between black, bold and steep cliffs sticking out from everywhere. The entire ridge consisted of diorite porphyry and rose, as it turned out from my subsequent measurement in 1857, to 2,000 meters of absolute height. When we climbed to the top of the mountain pass, we again saw in front of us a high steppe valley about fifteen miles wide, stretching from west to east. In vain we looked for villages. To our left we could see the Chilika gorge, and behind it a junction connecting the first chain to the second. Beyond the descent I noticed a porphyry conglomerate that made up its outskirts and in some places was exposed as if in layers strongly inclined to the north (at 40°) and extending from west-north-west. to the e.n.-w. I haven’t seen any other breed here. The steppe valley was all covered with sandy sediments and countless boulders from the same mountains. It was full of marmot holes and rich in salt licks. The plants, of course, were all burnt out and dried up, only some saltworts (Salsolaceae) stood fresh. We descended into the steppe at the foot of the next ridge and here we saw numerous herds and villages. Without wasting time, we headed there and reached them about three hours later. Here again there was a delay until the night and the next day. The village in which we stopped was located on a spring at the foot of a round but oblong hill of red porphyry. On September 14 at 7 o’clock in the morning we left the village and headed to the west and northwest diagonally through the Seyrektash mountains, further following longitudinal valleys. These mountains are almost the same height as the one parallel to them. Turaigyrtau ridge. Their rocks are much flatter and rounded and consist entirely of red rather than diorite porphyry. In one place I came across a large vein of quartz; the rest was quartz-bearing porphyry. When we began to descend from the mountains, in the northwest we saw the Chilik Current, marked by a strip of trees; Apple trees grew in the gorges of the mountains on the northern side. In the north one could again see a wide steppe valley of a plateau twenty-five to thirty miles wide, and behind it the parallel ridge of Boguty. However, this ridge, almost as high as the previous one, no longer crossed Chilik and did not continue further to the west, while the previous two were connected to the high ridge of the Trans-Ili Alatau by a special junction behind Chilik. Having descended from the mountains, we drove out to the Chilik valley and, having traveled about fifteen versts, stopped on its bank for a rest, wading with difficulty through all its wide and fast branches. The Chilik flows here towards the west and north-west, cutting out a very wide and deep hollow in the steppe, the cliffs of which are very steep and consist of sandy sediments filled with boulders of porphyry, diorite, syenite, granite and conglomerate. The trees were dominated by narrowleaf willow, poplar, hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida), sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) and wild rose (Rosa gebleriana). We followed Chilik parallel to the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau directly to the west and after an hour and a half we saw the first auls on a spring flowing from the mountains. Here we changed horses and set off further in the evening. After walking for another hour and a half, we arrived at a new village and spent the night here. On September 15, we set off from an overnight stay on the second 92

key from Chilik at 7 a.m., two hours later we crossed the Kara-Turun River and another hour later we arrived at the village of Dzhainak. We stayed here for an hour and a half and at 11 1/2 o’clock in the morning we set off again. At about three in the afternoon we crossed Turgen near a number of “Chud” mounds, and at sunset we reached the Issyk River, where we spent the night about four versts below our previous overnight camp. On September 16 at 10 o’clock in the morning I returned safely to Vernoye. Khomentovsky was very happy about my safe return, especially since in my absence such events arose in which I could be useful to him. His relations with the neighboring KaraKirgi tribe of Sarybagish in the southwest continued to be strained, and the latter more than once, although not with the same audacity, continued their predatory raids on the new Russian Trans-Ili region, which was not yet firmly organized. In particular, Khomentovsky was infuriated by the plunder ten miles away from the Faithful Russian trade caravan heading to Tashkent, as well as the Kara-Kirghiz baranta, directed against our faithful subjects - the Kyrgyz of the Great Horde. The brave Khomentovsky quickly decided to undertake a campaign against the Sarybagish villages, which were located in large numbers to the west of Issyk-Kul - in the upper reaches of the Chu River, in order to clear them away, that is, to take away their herds and herds to replenish the losses caused to the Russian subjects by their raids. Khomentovsky’s strong detachment, which left Verny shortly after the start of my journey to Issyk-Kul, consisted of three hundred Cossacks and one company of infantry mounted on horses, two mountain cannons, several rocket launchers and many Kyrgyz of the Great Horde. The detachment safely crossed the high pass and descended into the valley of the Chu River, below the Kokand fortification of Tokmak. Here he found countless masses of Kara-Kirghiz on their nomads, destroyed their villages and, having captured their nearest herds, set off on the return journey. But the Kara-Kirghiz, who at first fled, gathered in countless numbers and began to pursue our troops, who were greatly stretched during the difficult ascent to the pass, rushing to attack them with extraordinary courage, despite the fact that rocket launchers, never seen before, as well as shots from our Cossacks caused great devastation among the Sarybagish. The losses of the detachment extended to 17 people killed and seriously wounded; when the wounded, laboriously transported on horses, stopped and fell into the hands of the Kara-Kirghiz, the bitterness of these latter was so great that they cut them into pieces. Nevertheless, the impression made by Khomentovsky’s campaign was very strong, since the number of killed and wounded by the Sarybagish was large. Khomentovsky considered it particularly important to determine this impression and therefore decided to immediately organize a new reconnaissance detachment for this purpose. He suggested that I take this detachment, consisting of less than a hundred Cossacks and several Kyrgyz guides, at my disposal in order to go to the Chu River, and if I did not find the Sarybagish there, penetrate to the western tip of Issyk-Kul and return through the mountainous mountains known to me. passages of the Trans-Ili Alatau to Vernoye. We, among 90 people, left Verny on September 21, at 11 o’clock in the morning. That day we followed to the west, along the foot of the northern chain of the Zailiysky Alatau, 93

twenty-seven versts, to the Keskelen River emerging from the snowy mountains - a significant tributary of the Ili River. The weather was cloudy and turned rainy. Having driven forty miles along the foothills of the Zailiysky Alatau to the west of Verny and descended into a deep hollow that crossed our path, we heard desperate screams there. The Kara-Kirghiz baranta robbed a small Uzbek caravan that was going to Vernoye. When we rode to the aid of the caravan, the Sarybagish fled without having time to rob the caravan: we caught them at that moment when they were already taking off the Uzbeks’ shoes in order to rob them of the money they kept in their boots. Without wasting time in conversations with the Uzbeks, I, with part of my Cossacks, rushed to pursue the baranta. This pursuit lasted for two hours and ended with the barantachs, having abandoned their outer clothing, still managing to gallop away from us. At the end of the pursuit, only three stragglers remained ahead of us, but on our side, most of the pursuers fell behind due to the fatigue of the horses, and only my Cossack translator remained with me, since we had the best horses. And we, like the pursued Kara-Kirghiz, were already driving at a pace, at a distance of two hundred meters from each other. I didn’t want to shoot at the unarmed, and therefore I decided to return to the place that I had designated as our bivouac, which was all the more necessary since the pursued ones were allowed to fall on the dry steppe with the wind blowing in our faces. We avoided meeting the fiery wall by descending into the deep hollow we encountered, and then settled in for the night. On September 22, the weather cleared up a little: the fog cleared and even mountains with their snowy peaks appeared. Having walked about thirty versts to the southeast to the Chemolgana River, we were forced to make a long stop here in anticipation of fresh Kyrgyz horses, since the Cossack horses on which we left Verny turned out to be unsuitable for our long and difficult hike. By evening the weather deteriorated again, and the rain continued until late at night. On September 23, we left Chemolgan early in the morning on fresh Kyrgyz horses in the middle of impenetrable fog. Our road was difficult because we had to cross a frequent network of deep hollows with steep cliffs crossing the foothills. After four hours of travel, we reached the Uzun-Agacha River, where we made a midday halt. The autumn vegetation of the steppe, although already somewhat faded, was not completely dry; the pink flowers of tall mallows (Althaea officinalis and Lavatera thuringiaca), light blue of chicory (Cichorium intybus), pale yellow of sophora (Sophora alopecuroids) and dark blue of steppe sage were especially striking. (Salvia silvestris). The very common licorice root (Glycyrrhiza aspera) was still blooming. During our halt, the weather completely cleared up: at two o’clock in the afternoon it was +8° C. We set off and after about twenty miles we reached the Kara-Kasteka River. Here, in clear weather, a majestic picture of a sunset awaited us. To our left rose the majestic ridge of the Trans-Ili Alatau, sharply outlined in the dark azure, at the western end of which the high rounded peak of Suok-Tyube rose separately: snow-white stripes illuminated by pink light shone on it at sunset. When in the far west the purple sunset had completely faded, over which two or three golden clouds still hung for some time, the pale golden crescent of a young moon was revealed to the left, high above the mountains. The night that 94

followed was cool, but we drove for another three hours in the weak moonlight to our overnight stay at the foot of Suok-Tyube, on Kaeteka. On September 24 at seven o’clock in the morning it was +8° C, and the weather was completely clear. Following the Kastek valley from north to south, we began to climb the Trans-Ili Alatau. For four hours we followed upstream Kastek, between granite rocks. Finally, Kastek split into two branches, one of which came from the southeast, the other from the southwest. We followed the first one in order to exit through a high pass onto the Chu River, somewhat lower and further from the Kokand fortress of Tokmak. Climbing along this branch, we finally reached the top of the pass. From this peak, where the cold temperature justified its name Suok-Tyube (cool mountain), we saw the entire valley of the Chu River, forming here several branches glistening in the sun. To the left, the flow of the Kebina River was also visible, emerging from the longitudinal valley of the Trans-Ili Alatau, dividing its northern and southern chains and flowing into the Chu River at the exit from this valley. Beyond the Chu River stretched a very high mountain range, the peaks of which were covered with snow. We descended from the mountain pass in no more than an hour and, coming out to a very abundant stream of water that flows into the Chu River and called Beysenyn-bulak, we stopped for the night. When we woke up the next day (September 25), the temperature turned out to be 1.5° C. The night was very cold, and my tent was frozen over. The morning was foggy; nevertheless, we left the bivouac at 7 o’clock in the morning. Of course, there was no time to waste. It turned out that there were no Sarybagish in the Chu Valley. Obviously, frightened by their bloody battle with the Russians, they fled, in all likelihood, to Lake Issyk-Kul, where I decided to go out to them with my entire detachment, following up the Chu River through the wild Buam Gorge. In essence, for my rather large detachment, consisting of 90 horsemen and 20 pack horses (fortunately, we did not have a camel), a journey of eighty miles through an almost roadless gorge, in which or beyond which we had to meet embittered enemies , since almost all the Cossacks of my detachment had already participated in Khomentovsky’s campaign, it could seem like a crazy undertaking, and it was not easy for me to maintain cheerfulness and self-confidence among the Cossacks. The thick fog was very favorable to us: if any patrols were undertaken from Tokmak, then we could cross the wide Chu valley unnoticed and enter the narrow gorge during the day. That’s how it was done. While we were descending into the Chu valley, the snow was falling in flakes, but towards the end it turned into rain, and as we descended into the valley it stopped completely. The Chu River, where we came upon it, flowed through a spacious valley six miles wide, and its flow was accompanied by woody vegetation consisting of tall poplars (Populus euphratica). We crossed a wide valley running diagonally from east to west in a south-southeast direction. and entered, unnoticed by anyone, into the wild Buam gorge, from which the river breaks out into its wide valley near the porphyry Boroldai hill. When we entered the gorge, it soon narrowed so much that it was impossible to follow further along the right bank of the Chu, on which we were, because stone cliffs of enormous height fell into the river completely vertically. We were all forced to ford the stormy current of the river to its left bank, along which we 95

continued our journey, but then the same obstacle forced us to cross again to the right bank. The day was already approaching evening, the sky was covered with gloomy clouds, and soon dark night came. Only from time to time the full moon appeared between the clouds, somewhat illuminating our path. Our forward movement was extremely difficult because our path could not follow continuously along the very bank of the river, since in some places the coastal cliffs fell into it completely vertically, and we had to climb the side walls of this stone corridor, characterized by the name. Buam (Bom among the Altaians), along dangerous paths that go around steep cliffs from above. Of course, we had to make these rounds on foot, leading our horses, unloading our pack horses and carrying their packs in our hands. In some places, instead of these detours, we walked, where possible, into a ford at the foot of the cliff, against the rapid flow of the river through the rocks that fill its bed, with every minute danger for each of us of being carried away by its furious waves. Thus, with incredible difficulty, we walked until three o’clock in the morning and finally reached a cramped hollow, in which we decided to stay until dawn. This place was located on the very bank of the river between two high “bomas”, on the tops of which I set up guard pickets on both sides. This precaution was necessary, because if the KaraKirghiz, moving along the tops of the mountain cliffs, had noticed our bivouac at the bottom of the gorge, they could easily destroy our entire detachment, covering it from above with huge stones and rocks hanging over it and easily pushed down from above. The guard Cossacks were supposed to raise the alarm in case of impending danger, warning us with rifle shots. I tried in vain to fall asleep in my tent to the sound of the waterfalls formed by the Chu River. The night I spent in the Buam Gorge was perhaps the most disturbing in my life. I was responsible for the lives of almost a hundred people and for the success of the entire enterprise. My anxious state was soon justified: two signal shots rang out one after the other. The Cossacks immediately rushed to their saddled horses, and I, grabbing a pistol, jumped out of my tent and quickly rushed up the steep path of the front boma to the Cossack guard in order to find out about the cause of the alarm. It turned out that the Cossacks heard a continuous shower of small stones above them. Since the moon illuminated the mountain cliffs with full brilliance, the Cossack noticed that high above him, two Kirghiz were making their way with difficulty along the mountain cliff, leading their horses, under whose hooves small stones were crumbling, falling with a slight noise into our gorge. I stood with the Cossack for a long time, examining the movements of the Kara-Kirghiz through binoculars, and finally became convinced that they did not have any hostile intentions towards us, but on the contrary, having noticed a large Russian detachment camping for the night, they walked around it in fear, at the risk of their lives , along inaccessible steep slopes, following the Buam Gorge in the direction of Lake Issyk-Kul. The only danger that we could expect from them was that they would not warn the Kara-Kirghiz who were on Issyk-Kul about the approach of the Russian detachment and thereby prepare a hostile meeting for us. That is why, having returned to my tent by dawn, I raised the entire detachment, and we set off again on September 26 no later than five o’clock in the morning. For two hours the journey was still 96

as difficult as the day before; but then the walls of the gorge began to move apart, and it turned into a valley with softer slopes. Very soon after entering this valley, we came across a small Kara-Kirghiz village, consisting of five yurts. The men, as soon as they noticed us, rode off on their horses, and only one old man, who did not have a horse, rode off on a bull and hid in a small mountain gorge. Only women and children remained in the yurts, who had nowhere to go, and with despair and deathly pallor on their faces they rushed towards us, begging for mercy. I hastened to calm them down, gave them small gifts and explained to them through an interpreter that we had no hostile intentions, but were going to visit their supreme manap Umbet-Ale, with whom I wanted to be a tamyr (friend). From these women we learned that Umbet-Ala with all her family is located near the Kutemaldy tract on the banks of the Issyk-Kul. We hurried there as quickly as possible and soon found ourselves in the midst of a countless mass of Kara-Kirghiz herds and herds. We had to send four Cossacks forward in order to clear a path among this mass of animals for our detachment. I ordered these advanced Cossacks to repeat, when meeting with the Kara-Kirghiz, the same thing that was said to the women in the first aul we met, that is, that we were going without any hostile intentions, straight to visit Umbet-Ala. The Kutemaldy tract was located at the turn of the Chu River, which, under the name Kochkara, emerged from the Tien Shan gorge onto the plain, which is part of the Issyk-Kul basin, but before reaching the lake about fifteen miles, it turned to the left and broke through the Buam gorge. At this turn, the Kutemaldy stream, fed by swamps, flowed into the Chu River. The entire flat space between the Chu turn and the shore of Issyk-Kul was occupied by countless Kara-Kirghiz yurts. Obviously, almost the entire Sarybagish tribe gathered here in camps near the village of Umbet-Aly. Finally, we reached his village. Here a beautiful yurt awaited us, hastily prepared for those who declared themselves guests of Umbet-Aly. Rich carpets were spread out in the yurt, and when I sat down on them, the manap’s brother and uncle entered the yurt with some other honorable persons and declared that Umbet-Ala himself was not at home, since he allegedly had gone thirty miles into the valley of the Kochkara River to prepare a baiga, that is, a funeral feast for the killed sarybagish. We had to explain to the manapa family and the honorable Sarybagish the reason for our arrival. I told them that I had come from afar, from the capital of Russia, to see how Russian settlers lived on the distant border; It was only then that I learned about the clash that had taken place, and, in my opinion, good neighborly relations should be established between the Russians and the Kara-Kirghiz who built the city on the lands of the Great Horde, which were subject to Russia, and that the neighbors should not lead barants, who could so easily turn into war (jou). , that the Russians were the first to never attack and will not attack the Kara-Kirghiz, but that if the latter carries out any baranta not only against the Russians themselves, but also against their subjects - the Kirghiz of the Great Horde, then retribution will be immediate, as it happened ; but that the Russians do not want to continue any hostile actions, unless the Kara-Kirghiz themselves give a reason for this with a new baranta or robbery of trade caravans. That is why I came to Umbet-Ala, in order to try to become 97

his Tamyr, and I ask you to give him my gifts, for which the Umbet family gave me three beautiful horses; Thus, Umbet-Ala, according to Kara-Kirghiz custom, became my Tamyr. The day passed in conversations and treats and my exploration of the western end of the lake. The relatives of Umbet-Aly invited me to the upcoming baiga, but I refused, considering, on the one hand, it was impossible for myself to attend the funeral feast for those killed in the battle with the Russians, and on the other, fearing some kind of conflict between the Cossacks and the Kara-Kirghiz. The reason for my refusal was that the larger Russian detachments, supposedly standing at the mountain passes and waiting for us, might be alarmed by the duration of our absence and, coming after us, enter into some clashes with the Kara-Kirghiz they met. At night we took all possible precautions: all our horses were saddled and did not leave the hands of the Cossacks who were sleeping in turn; There were guards stationed around the yurt built for me. Although I was convinced that the Kara-Kirghiz would treat the custom of hospitality, sacred in their eyes, impeccably, these precautions were still not superfluous, especially since they reassured the Cossacks, who had so recently witnessed the brutal anger of the Kara-Kirghiz against our wounded. The next day, September 27, I got up at five o’clock in the morning and left the villages of Umbet-Aly, accompanied by my translator, another Cossack and two Sarybagish guides. I wanted to achieve one of the main goals of my visit to the western tip of Issyk-Kul, namely, to understand the hydrographic relationships between this lake, the Chu River and the Kutemaldy River, which Humboldt already knew from the information he collected in 1829 in Semipalatinsk from Bukhara and Tashkent merchants . During my stay in Berlin (1853), geographers believed that Lake Issyk-Kul had a drainage, but some considered this drainage to be the Chu River, and others, according to information disseminated by Humboldt, the Kutemaldy River, which supposedly comes out of Lake IssykKul. cul and flows far into the steppe. We rode in three quarters of an hour on beautiful horses, given to me by the Umbet-Aly family, from his village to the place where the Chu River, flowing along the Issyk-Kul plateau from south to north, abruptly changes its direction to the west and invades the Boam Gorge. The question that interested me keenly was soon clarified. The main component branch of the powerful Chu River originates under the name Kochkara in the Tien Shan, emerges from its transverse valley onto the Issyk-Kul plateau, but, without following the natural slope to the lake, turns directly west into the Buam Gorge. To the east of this turn, I saw a swampy area, from which a small river, Kutemaldy, no more than six miles long, flowed into Issyk-Kul along its natural slope. The Sarybagishi who accompanied me explained to me the name of the river by the fact that it is so shallow that whoever decided to sit in the middle of it would only wet his butt (Kutemaldy means wet butt). The Kara-Kirghiz said, however, that during floods water often flows through the river from Chu to Issyk-Kul. At the same time, when I first saw the Kutemaldy River, it did not come out directly from the Chu and was no more than 12 meters wide, and the flow was quite calm, since its fall at a distance of five miles hardly exceeded 12 meters. I reached the mouth of the river and, turning along the shore of the lake, returned to the village of Umbet-Aly, fully convinced that Lake Issyk-Kul 98

has no flow and that it currently does not feed the Chu River, and that this powerful river is formed from two main branches: Kochkar, originating in the eternal snows of the Tien Shan, and Kebin, flowing from the eternal snows and from the longitudinal valley of the Trans-Ili Alatau. It goes without saying that if we imagine the level of the lake rising by only 15 to 20 meters, then the Chu River would become the drainage of Issyk-Kul; but whether this ever happened, I put off all thoughts until my trip to the lake basin the following year, 1857. My main goal was achieved, and the safety of the people entrusted to me required my urgent return to Vernoye, being content with the preliminary results I had obtained. Returning to the village of Umbet-Aly, I raised my entire detachment and, having said a friendly farewell to my hospitable Tamyrs, set out on the way back “to Russia,” as the Cossacks said, after a plentiful midday Kara-Kyrgyz treat. We drove 15 versts along the northern coast of Issyk-Kul (Kungey) and then began to climb diagonally to the east-northeast to the difficult ascent of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Here again, as at the eastern end of the lake, I admired with delight the wondrous beauty of the high ridge rising behind the lake. We had our first overnight stay, from September 27 to 28, on the southern slope of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau and here, out of precaution, we did not light fires, since we could not consider this overnight stay safe. After the hospitality shown to us at home, the Karakirghiz could still consider it permissible to make some kind of attack on us outside their borders, which the Cossacks themselves feared, although I was convinced of our inviolability in the eyes of the Karakirghiz. On September 28, we left our dangerous overnight stop very early and quickly began to climb the steep slope. On the road we met a huge wild boar, which we managed to kill. A few hours after that, we reached the high Durenyn pass, which, according to my hypsometric measurement, turned out to be 3,000 meters in absolute height and at this time of year was already completely covered with snow. The descent from the pass into the longitudinal valley of Kebina, which separates both chains, took place very quickly, and before sunset we had already reached the forest zone, consisting of magnificent tall spruce trees (Picea schrenkiana). The Cossacks, who felt completely safe, were delighted, set up my tent near the waterfall, lit magnificent fires not from tezek (dung), as is done in the steppe areas, but from dry tree branches and made an excellent dinner from the huge wild boar Already in the evening, secretly from me, they sent two Cossacks to Vernoye on the best horses with clockwork for vodka, and by the morning vodka was received, despite the fact that the distance to Vernoye through the second snow pass was at least 90 miles. On the morning of September 29, we slowly descended into the Kebin valley and made a halt on the river itself, at the place where we found a trace of the resting place of some Kyrgyz barant. It was funny to look at one of our guides - a Kyrgyz from the Great Horde. He picked up particles of droppings and brought them to his nose, and then suddenly, turning pale, announced that the baranta had left this place no more than two hours ago, that it consisted of Kara-Kirghiz tribes most hostile to us, who left their bivouac when they noticed that we are descending from the mountains, that the baranta is located somewhere in a gorge not far away, and that, moreover, it is numerous. It goes 99

without saying that the Cossacks did not share the Kirghiz’s fear. In Verny they already knew about the place where we were, and it was not difficult to defend ourselves from an attack by the Kirghiz in a beautiful wide valley, and besides, the attack itself seemed completely incredible to us. On this day, September 29, we crossed the high Keskelen pass, the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, which also had at least 3,000 meters and was heavily covered with snow on its northern side. When descending from this pass we had a very funny and quite safe ride through the snow with our horses. On the night of September 30, we spent the night very high on the Keskelen River, and on September 30, having descended along the river valley to the foothills, we settled down at our last overnight stop, about thirty versts before reaching Verny. On the morning of October 1, we quickly made the last move and safely returned to Verny, where we were solemnly greeted by the city population. Two intellectuals of this young colony, which had such a brilliant future ahead of them, were especially happy about our success - Colonel Khomentovsky and artillery captain Obukh. This latter was a very handsome and talented person, unfortunately, not alien to the common vice of the best people of our young colony - alcoholism. Subsequently, he was the first with the famous traveler N.A. Severtsov to enter the ramparts of the fortress during the capture of Tashkent, but were hit here by an enemy bullet. The autumn of 1856 was approaching. It was already impossible to make further trips to the interior of the Tien Shan this year, and I had to postpone them until the beginning of the next summer, 1857; but my first goal was achieved: I saw the Tien Shan in all the splendor of its external appearance, almost 200 miles long, along the entire Issyk-Kul basin, the banks of which I reached at its two ends - eastern and western. That is why I decided to leave Verny in early October and take two more autumn trips: one to the Katu area, in the Ili Plain south of the Semirechensky Alatau, beyond the Altynemel Pass; another in the same direction to the Chinese borders in the city of Gulja. The first trip could not encounter any obstacles, but the last one was extremely difficult, because the Chinese authorities did not allow any Russian citizens to cross their border, except for the Russian Cossack mail, which three times a year went from Kopal to Gulja to the Russian consul who had a permanent residence there. I was attracted to the Katu area by rumors about some volcanic phenomena that supposedly took place there, according to Chinese information. From Verny, I safely traveled in my tarantass along the Kopalsky tract to the Altynemel picket, and from there, with two Cossacks, I made a trip through the Altynemel pass to the Katu area that interested me. Here, in the low mountains, slightly smoking, I actually found deposits of ammonia and sulfur, but this whole phenomenon turned out to be produced by the combustion of underground rich layers of coal, and therefore, the phenomenon was not volcanic, but only pseudo-volcanic. Having examined the interesting area of Katu, I returned to the Altynemel picket, and from there in my tarantass I moved along the large highway to Kopal, where I arrived on October 17 in the hope of undertaking, with the help of Colonel Abakumov, a trip to Gulja with the autumn mail going there - to the Russian consul Zakharov. Unfortunately, this mail had already left Kopal two days before my arrival, but the brave Abakumov invited 100

me, taking two Cossacks, to cross the Semirechensky Alatau by the shortest route and try to catch up with the mail, which was traveling rather slowly in a roundabout way through Altyn-emel and the border Borokhudzhir. There was nothing to lose, and on the same day, October 17, I set off with two Cossacks on my risky journey. Abakumov gave me a beautiful horse, which I saddled with my officer’s saddle, and provided me with full weapons and a Cossack costume, which I donned. One of the Cossacks who accompanied me knew Kyrgyz and Kalmyk well and could serve as a reliable translator for me. At the same time, Abakumov provided me with an order to the Cossack centurion sent to Gulja with mail, who was instructed to immediately become at my disposal. On the same day, October 17, along paths familiar to my companions, we crossed the Semirechensky Alatau pass, partly covered with snow, spent the afternoon on the Tulku-Bulak river, the flow of which was accompanied by beautiful trees bird cherry and willow, and spent the night on Alaman-su, after a huge nonstop moving eighty miles. On October 18, leaving my overnight stay, I was met with great disappointment: we did not find our mail anywhere, but the worst thing was that all day we did not find any Kyrgyz villages, which were extremely necessary for us, since we did not have any food with us. supplies, except for a small amount of crackers. The Kirghiz migrated from the foothills due to the onset of cold weather. All evening we climbed the hills, trying to at least somewhere discover the presence of a Kyrgyz yurt, but to no avail. We had to spend the cold night from October 18 to 19 in the open air without any food and with meager feed for the horses. The next day, October 19, we wandered around hungry again, and only in the evening, having climbed a hill, to our general joy, we saw several Kyrgyz yurts in a small depression. In one of these yurts, already on the third day of our hunger strike, we found shelter and food. The next day, October 20, at dawn, we headed the most direct route to the Chinese picket Borokhudzhiru and, to indescribable joy, we saw our mail just arriving there, which consisted of a Cossack centurion and eight Cossacks. I conveyed the order of Colonel Abakumov to the officer and joined his detachment as an accompanying Cossack with my two other Cossacks. From Borokhudzhir our path lay directly east through the Kuldzha province between the Iren-Khabirgan ridge, associated with the Semirechensky Alatau, and the Ili River through the ancient city of Khorgos. Our Cossack postal detachment, which consisted of twelve people from the time I joined it, was accompanied by a Chinese detachment consisting of twenty horsemen armed with bows and arrows, and an officer. We spent the night on Chinese pickets, which, in contrast to the Russian ones, were surrounded by green trees. At night we were placed in the picket yards on felts we had spread, which were wrapped and covered over all of us, lying closely next to each other, since the nights were very cold. Of course, the officer and I occupied the middle place. Observant Chinese noticed some of my features in comparison with other Cossacks, namely thin underwear, gloves and not a Cossack, but an officer’s saddle. When asked about me by the head of the Chinese detachment, the Cossacks answered that I was a demoted mandarin, a relative of their officer. The head of the Chinese detachment suggested that, after leaving the mail, I should not take the slow 101

route, but go with him about forty miles to the northeast to the Talkinsky Pass and visit his house there, where he wanted to show me to his family. I willingly agreed to this proposal and went with him, accompanied by only one Cossack translator. In the evening, we were amazed by an extraordinary sight: a meteor of dazzling brilliance appeared in the sky and with a noise broke up into several fiery pieces that fell, but to all our considerations, on the northern slope of the Talkinsky Pass. The house of the Chinese officer was incomparably closer to the place where the aerolites fell. We were met by the officer’s wife and children with cordial curiosity. The interior of the room consisted of a very spacious and bright room, since the frames of the huge windows with beautiful frames were covered with thin Chinese paper, which let in light well; a huge stove with benches (kan) occupied part of the room; A huge cauldron was immediately built in which brick tea was brewed and milk was added to it. This is the tea that the hospitable hosts treated me to. The Chinese ladies paid special attention to my black gloves, believing that this was the color of the skin on my hands, and they were extremely surprised when I took off these gloves. We found them dressed only in long shirts, similar to ladies’ night dresses, but then they dressed up in silk kurmas. However, we could not stay long with our hospitable hosts, because we needed to catch up with the mail before it arrived in Gulja. Consul Zakharov, of course, did not expect my arrival and was amazed when I, appearing to him in a Cossack uniform, made a statement about my identity. Rumors about my journey to Issyk-Kul had already reached him through the Chinese, who, having learned from the Kirghiz of the Great Horde about my visit to Lake Issyk-Kul, did not suspect that the same traveler about whom they told Zakharov had come to Gulja in the form of a Cossack . Zakharov greeted me with hospitable joy, especially since not a single educated Russian had ever visited him in Gulja. He showed me with pleasure his beautiful and well-built stone house and his garden, which slopes down to the Ili River, kept in perfect order by a Chinese gardener, and also showed me the map of Chinese Dzungaria and the Tien Shan that he had undertaken, with the help of one of the Siberian topographers, translated from Chinese. with all the contemporary Russian filming in the Balkhash basin applied to it. I stayed in Gulja for about a week with our hospitable consul and thoroughly became acquainted with the Chinese city, its shops, markets and temples. I left Gulja with return mail on October 27 and crossed the border again at Borokhudzhir on October 29. The weather was so cold that at our overnight stop on October 30, we woke up under our extensive felt completely covered in deep snow. From the border to Kopal we followed as quickly as possible, taking a shortcut through the familiar Alaman Pass. I stayed in Kopala only one day and said goodbye to my dear Abakumov, to whom I owed my interesting trip to Gulja, and after a three-day continuous journey along the postal route I returned to Semipalatinsk, where I stayed as before with the hospitable Demchinsky, and this time, staying with him for days five, had the joy of spending whole days with F. M. Dostoevsky. It was only then that his entire moral and financial situation finally became clear to me. Despite the relative freedom that he already enjoyed, the situation would still have been bleak if not for the bright ray that fate sent him in his cor102

dial relationship with Marya Dmitrievna Isaeva, in whose house and company he found daily refuge and the warmest sympathy . Still a young woman (she was not even 30 years old), Isaeva was the wife of a fairly educated man who had a good official position in Semipalatinsk and soon after the installation of F. M. Dostoevsky became friendly with him and hospitably received him in his home. Isaev’s young wife, whom he married during his service in Astrakhan, was an Astrakhan native who completed her course of study with success at the Astrakhan girls’ gymnasium, as a result of which she turned out to be the most educated and intelligent of the ladies of Semipalatinsk society. But no matter how F. M. Dostoevsky spoke about her, she was a “good person” in the highest sense of the word. They got together very soon. She was unhappy in her marriage. Her husband was not a bad person, but an incorrigible alcoholic, with the crudest instincts and manifestations during his insanity. She failed to raise his moral state, and only worries about her child, whom she had to protect every day from her father’s insanity, supported her. And suddenly a man with such high qualities of soul and such subtle feelings as F. M. Dostoevsky appeared on her horizon. It is clear how quickly they understood each other and got along, what warm participation she took in him and what joy, what new life, what spiritual uplift she found in daily conversations with him, and how she, in turn, served as a resource for him during his joyless stay in the city of Semipalatinsk, which did not represent any spiritual interests. During my first passage through Semipalatinsk in August 1856, Isaeva was no longer there, and I only became acquainted with her through Dostoevsky’s stories. She moved to live in Kuznetsk (Tomsk province), where her husband was transferred for unfitness for official duties in Semipalatinsk. A lively correspondence began between her and F. M. Dostoevsky, which greatly supported the mood of both. But during my passage through Semipalatinsk in the fall, the circumstances and relationships of both changed greatly. Isaeva was widowed, and although she was not able to return to Semipalatinsk, F. M. Dostoevsky thought about marrying her. The main obstacle to this was the complete financial insecurity of both of them, close to poverty. F. M. Dostoevsky, of course, had his literary works before him, but he still did not fully believe in the power of his powerful talent, and after the death of her husband she was completely depressed by poverty. In any case, F. M. Dostoevsky told me all his plans. We agreed that at the very beginning of winter, after my settlement in Barnaul, he would come to stay with me and then decide his fate completely, and if correspondence with her has the desired result and the means allow, then he will go to her in Kuznetsk, will marry her, will come to me with her and her child in Barnaul and, after staying with me, will return to settle in Semipalatinsk, where he will stay until his complete amnesty. These assumptions ended my meeting with Fyodor Mikhailovich and the journey of 1856, and I returned to Barnaul for the winter in early November 1856. CHAPTER THREE My stay in Barnaul in the winter of 1856-1857. to visit me by F. M. Dostoevsky. - My trip to Omsk and negotiations with G. I. Gasfort. - Arrival in Semipalatinsk and meeting with Dostoevsky and the artist Kosharov. - Moving through Kopal 103

and the Ili plain to Vernoye. - Trans-Ili region. - Second trip to the Tien Shan. - Political situation of the Issyk-Kul basin. - Departure. - Lake Dzhassyl-kul. The court of the biys and my participation in it. - Hospitality of Sultan Ali and his son Ables. - Sultant Tezek. - Merke. - Arrival at Sultan Burambai and the assistance we provided to him. Arriving in Barnaul after my trip to Semirechye in the late autumn of 1856, I no longer found you hospitable there. Apol. Poletiki. “Barnaul Alkibiades,” as I jokingly called him, left forever for St. Petersburg to seek his fortune there. Possessing quite significant capital, he decided to test the power of his remarkable talents and brilliant eloquence in the field of social activity that was about to arise in St. Petersburg, which he completely succeeded in no earlier than 1861, during the era of the rise of industrial enterprises, for which he felt more prepared than others. The winter of 1855-1857, which I spent in hospitable Barnaul, did not seem boring to me. I rented a fairly cozy furnished apartment with several rooms for 25 rubles a month. The day was spent in sorting out the rich botanical and geological collections I had collected, in detailed inspection and study of objects in the Barnaul museum, in using the local library and getting acquainted with the factory work; I spent my evenings in the hospitable, welleducated and always friendly Barnaul society. The winter season was enlivened by amateur performances in the beautiful building of the Barnaul theater. Many of the members of Barnaul society stood out for their remarkable stage talents. An absolutely first-class comedian was the mining engineer Samoilov, the elder brother of the famous artist, who even surpassed his younger brother in his natural stage talent and stood out even at the time when they were both brought up in the mining corps. In general, the vibrancy and culture of this beautiful corner. Siberia, nicknamed by me “Siberian Athens,” made staying there during the cold winter season of Siberian snowstorms especially attractive. The only depressing impression that made on me was that this entire intelligent, cultured society (belonging, with the exception of two or three gold miners, to the Altai mining administration) lived above the means provided by the extremely meager government salary, and, obviously, enjoyed incomes beyond it, not established by law and received without permission from the serf population of the Altai mountain district. But it is obvious that such self-reward did not take place here in the crude and so widespread form in Russian provincial backwaters, which Gogol so artistically depicted in his “The Inspector General,” and not in the equally common form in Russian provincial cities of additional allowances granted by tax farmers to all high-ranking officials provincial administration, except for those of them who had the “Aristidean disinterestedness”, rare in the half of the 19th century, to refuse tax-farmer salaries established by custom. In Barnaul, in the middle of the 19th century, the mining administration developed a form of self-remuneration from income from the serf population of the district, which was a consequence of the compulsory nature of serf labor. However, the system of “self-remuneration” of the ranks of the Altai mountain district, generated and supported by serfdom, which fell in the form of monetary duties, replacing natural ones, on the old-time peasant population assigned

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to Altai, was not particularly burdensome for the Altai peasants, who enjoyed prosperity and did not complain about their oppression mining administration, since the number of working days per year per peasant was very moderate, and the peasants, who, due to the nature and time of their agricultural activities, found it difficult to serve their work in kind, could, through mountain officers, supply deputies in their place [ This is how the Altai administration derived its self-reward from this replacement. In addition to 30,000 mining workers (male with teenagers) who sent work in the mines and were in the position of servants on estates, that is, not allocated land (except for estates) and who received their maintenance from the Cabinet, 150,000 peasants were assigned to the Altai Mining District males, richly endowed with 3,500,000 acres of comfortable and fertile land, for the use of which they were obliged to bear in-kind duties in relation to mountain mines and factories, both on foot and on horseback. These duties consisted mainly of transporting ores from mines to factories, cutting and transporting firewood, burning and transporting coal, and some auxiliary work in factories and mines. For all these works, the peasants were called out several times a year, but always for fairly short periods of time to those factories and mines where they had to perform these works with their horses. For peasants who lived near factories and mines, this kind of service was relatively unburdensome, but for peasants who lived far from the places where they were called (sometimes hundreds of miles away), they had to take time off from their agricultural work for a week, wasting even more time to move, it would be very ruinous. Therefore, the wealthy Altai peasants considered it a blessing that they were given the right to be replaced by peasants from villages neighboring the factories, and they were especially willing to accept the offer of mining officials, who took upon themselves to hire workers for them but at a much cheaper price than the one for which they could hire them yourself. It was these amounts of voluntary hiring that came into the hands of the mining administration, constituting its special income, the amount of which depended on such calculations, which were in the hands of the mining administration and, by their very essence, were not subject to any outside accounting or control. The basis of this calculation was the number of working days falling on the 150 thousand peasant population of the Altai mountain district, which was obliged to smelt 1000 poods of sereor annually for the Cabinet, and the number of working days depended on the number of ores delivered to the factories and smelted at them. Certainly, The richness of the ores mined in different mines was very different, and the very technique of the matter required mixing richer ores with less rich ones and refractory with fusible ones. Under such conditions, for each plant, before the beginning of the year, the amount to be smelted was determined, and for the mine, the amount of ore to be mined to obtain the required 1000 pounds of silver, as well as the amount of coal required, and then the total number of workers required for the entire annual production days, which was distributed among the peasant population of Altai with precise instructions for each peasant in which factories and mines his work was required. In general, despite the fact that the average content of ores was determined to be significantly lower than reality, and the number of ores from which 1,000 pounds of silver could 105

be extracted was greatly exaggerated, the calculation of the number of working days required for annual production also significantly exceeded The actual need, the natural service of the Altai peasants was moderate, and substitution turned it into money, which, if it was not needed for mining production, was turned into a special non-legalized income of the entire Barnaul mining administration, which was divided among all its members by the local authorities in accordance with their activities. ]. In January 1857, I was delighted by the visit of F. M. Dostoevsky. Having signed up in advance with the one who had finally decided to forever unite her destiny with his, he went to Kuznetsk in order to arrange his wedding there before the onset of Lent. Dostoevsky stayed with me for two weeks making the necessary preparations for his wedding. We spent several hours a day in interesting conversations and reading, chapter by chapter, his then unfinished “Notes from the House of the Dead,” supplemented by oral stories. It is clear what a strong, stunning impression this reading made on me and how vividly I was transported to the terrible living conditions of the sufferer, who emerged more than ever with a pure soul and enlightened mind from a difficult struggle, in which “heavy hammer, crushing glass, forges damask steel ”. Of course, no writer of such stature has ever been placed in more favorable conditions for observation and psychological analysis of the most diverse people in character with whom he happened to live the same life for so long. We can say that his stay in the “House of the Dead” made the talented Dostoevsky a great writer and psychologist. But this method of developing his natural talents was not easy for him. The pain remained with him for the rest of his life. It was hard to see him in fits of epilepsy, which at that time recurred not only periodically, but even quite often. And his financial situation was the most difficult, and, entering family life, he had to prepare for all sorts of hardships and, one might say, for a difficult struggle for existence. I was happy that I was the first to encourage him through a living word with my deep conviction that in “Notes from a Dead House” he already has such capital that will provide him with severe need, and that everything else will come very soon by itself. Enlivened by the hope for a better future, Dostoevsky went to Kuznetsk and a week later returned to me with his young wife and stepson in the best mood and, after staying with me for another two weeks, he left for Semipalatinsk. After Dostoevsky’s departure, my main concern was a timely move at the end of winter to Omsk for negotiations with the Governor-General and from early spring to ensure my firmly planned journey in 1857 into the depths of the Tien Shan, which I had already discovered for scientific research. At the same time, before moving to Omsk, I first contacted the artist Kosharov, who was in Tomsk as an art teacher at the Tomsk gymnasium, inviting him to accompany me during the proposed trip to the Tien Shan. Kosharov agreed, and we agreed to meet with him at the end of April 1857 in Semipalatinsk. Upon my arrival in Omsk, General Gasfort received me extremely cordially. He was extremely interested in the impression that the Trans-Ili region, which he had acquired modestly and almost unnoticed by the St. Petersburg authorities, made on me. Having already become sufficiently acquainted with me, G.I. Gasfort realized that my assessment of his activities in the region entrusted to him would not only be 106

completely impartial, but also quite competent, and most importantly, that, transferred to St. Petersburg into influential spheres, it could bring significant benefits the work he started. Therefore, I considered it my duty to express to Gustav Ivanovich quite frankly my opinion on issues that interested him. I told him first of all that I had no doubt that the Trans-Ili region occupied by him, well provided for by peaceful Russian colonization, would become one of the pearls of Russian possessions in Asia. At the same time, I took the opportunity to express some general views on our relations with the tribes of Central Asia. I found it completely abnormal that we, having already quite firmly owned the vast expanse of Central Asia, occupied by the numerous nomadic population of the Kyrgyz hordes and steppes, kept our state border not in front of this space, but behind it, along the old line of Cossack outposts, from the mouth of the Urals along and up its course, and then to Petropavlovsk and along the Irtysh to Omsk to Zaisan. Traveling through the lands of the Kyrgyz of the Middle and Great Hordes, I became convinced of how difficult it is to control this nomadic population from Omsk, and even more so to protect it from the raids and devastation of neighbors, non-Russian subjects, without having solid strongholds within the country and especially in front of it. In this regard, the beautiful and flourishing Kopal and new settlements served Russia a great service: the Lepsinskaya and Urdzharskaya villages in Semirechye and on the southern slope of Tarbagatai. But much more can be expected from the newly occupied Trans-Ili region. Here, with the help of our colonization, the strongest and most indestructible stronghold of Russian influence and dominion in Central Asia can already be built. At the same time, the existence of such a solid stronghold will soon allow us to carry out what seems absolutely necessary to ensure the possession and control of the Kyrgyz hordes and steppes, namely, the transfer of our state border ahead of them - from the long Ural-Orenburg-Siberian-Irtysh line to the short border line , through which it would be possible to connect Vernoye with our already existing fortifications on the Syr Darya (Fort Perovsky). That is why I consider the occupation of the Trans-Ili region and its lasting colonization to be no less a major service to Russia than the occupation of the Amur region - a service that will later be appreciated by history, but for now everything that will be undertaken for the scientific study of the newly acquired region will be a “beacon of science” , introduced for the first time into the very depths of the Asian continent. Gasfort really liked my ideas. In particular, he was pleased with the assessment of the significance of the occupation of the Trans-Ili region. My suggestions about drawing the state border ahead of our Kyrgyz regions, relying on Vernoye and Fort Perovsky, also seemed very tempting to him, but he lacked the enterprise and energy of Muravyov-Amursky to implement such a bold plan. However, Gasfort, as an experienced and brave military leader, was not afraid of any clashes that might occur with the neighboring khanates of Turkestan; but he turned out to be completely cowardly in relation to responsibility before the St. Petersburg authorities, afraid of losing his high official position, which he, unfortunately, valued more than the interests of his adopted fatherland, serving it, however, quite conscientiously. Therefore, he did not even dare to raise the issue of moving the state border forward of the Kyrgyz steppes 107

to the southern outskirts of our Central Asian possessions, but decided to continue strengthening our possessions in the Trans-Ili region and its colonization, since in this matter he did not encounter obstacles either from St. Petersburg or even opposition from the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. As for scientific research in the Trans-Ili region, attaching great importance to his reputation as an enlightened European, he treated it with great sympathy, and therefore easily agreed to all my petitions regarding my 1857 trip. However, despite all the favor of the Governor-General towards my research in the Trans-Ili region, I did not reveal to him in detail the plan of my travels and was content only with asking, in the most general terms, for permission to visit Lake Issyk-Kul and the neighboring mountains, without mentioning even the little-known name of Tien Shan. I suggested that he submit all the details of my equipment to my agreement with the local authorities, asking him only to order them to provide me with a convoy in sufficient number according to local circumstances to ensure my safety. The Governor-General gladly agreed to everything, setting me only one restrictive condition, namely, not to cross the Chu River, which did not bother me at all, since it was much more convenient for me to get to the Tien Shan by going around not the western, but the eastern end of the lake Issyk-Kul. After completely successful negotiations with the Governor-General, I could only gradually prepare for my journey in 1857, which could not begin before the onset of spring and was scheduled by me around April 20. At this time of year, the Irtysh was still covered with ice, and I had to travel the eightverst distance from Omsk to Semipalatinsk along the main Siberian border line, partly on a sleigh and partly on wheels. I left Omsk on April 21 in the evening by postal service. Outside the city, the road was almost dry, but in some places there were snow glades. The night and morning were cold and cloudy. Only by two o’clock in the afternoon of the 22nd the sun shone and it became warmer, but in some places the frozen bends of the Irtysh were still visible, on the banks of which high sandy ravines rose; All around lay the bare, monotonous steppe, in which organic nature had not yet awakened. On the morning of April 23, I was in the Chernoretskaya village. The weather was clear and quite warm. It was with difficulty that my cart was transported across the frozen Irtysh. In the Yamyshevskaya village I saw old cast-iron cannons and cannonballs, testifying to the former strategic importance of this fortress. On the morning of April 24, I was in Grachevskaya village. It rained in the morning, but by 11 o’clock the weather cleared up and it became hot. On the southern side of the Irtysh there was a dull steppe, but then a pine forest approached it from the north. On April 26, by the evening I had already reached Semipalatinsk on wheels. In Semipalatinsk I saw Dostoevsky in the best mood: hopes for a complete amnesty and the return of his civil rights were already undoubted; The only thing that weighed on him was the insecurity of his financial situation. In Semipalatinsk I found the tarantass that I had left there in the fall and moved in with the artist Kosharov, who had arrived from Tomsk. On April 27 we already left the city. The crossing of the Irtysh in a clumsy longboat took place with the help of horses tied to it with their tails. Coastal ice was scattered on the left bank of the Irtysh in picturesque piles. I rode beyond the Irtysh in my tarantass, drawn 108

by Kyrgyz post horses. Our path went through ridges, on which the gray-green grass of Asian wormwood species (Artemisia) barely made its way. Only in the evening we reached the Uluguz picket, from where we continued our journey at night, getting bogged down in salt licks, and only at dawn we dragged ourselves to Arkalyk. I fell fast asleep on the way in my tarantass and woke up on April 28 at 4 1/2 o’clock in the morning ten miles beyond Arkalyk. The morning was foggy, but, to my unspeakable joy, the nature of the surrounding nature had changed greatly. The snow shrouds and dirty salt licks disappeared, and the first flowers of the steppe spring flora appeared: first, golden Adonis vernalis and pale gray Physochlaena physaloides, and then bright yellow buttercups (Ranunculus polyrrhizus) and charming tricolor tulips (Tulipa silvestris, etc.). revitalizing the steppe, covering it in countless numbers. In places, beautiful yellow carpets of flowers appeared on the steppe, consisting of two types of thin, delicate goose onions (Gagea minima and G. bulbifera) and small buttercups (Ceratocephalus orthoceras). The steppe in rocky places was animated by a variety of birds, namely steppe hazel grouses (Pterocles), and in places rich in water - geese and ducks. Between the flower carpets, onto which I constantly jumped out of the carriage to collect interesting plants of the spring steppe flora, crawled a large number of beautiful spring beetles from the family of steppe woodcutters (Cerambycidae), namely, various species of Dorcadion, and between them a beautiful Dorcadion, named after Abakumov abacumovi. During the day, the picturesque Arkat mountain group appeared, which Kosharov copied, as well as the picturesque Kyrgyz cemetery we encountered [Here are the plants I collected on April 28 in the Arkat Mountains, in addition to the above mentioned: Gypsophila paniculata, Ceranium tuberosum, Caragana aurantiaca, Hedisarum gmelini , Spiraea trilobata, Sp. hypericifolia, Potentilla pensylvanica, Umbilicus leucanthus, Umb. spinosus, Seseli tanuifolium, Tanacetum fruticulosum, Artemisia maritima, Art. frigida, Saussurea crassifolia, Sauss. rigida, Glaux maritima, Atriplexcana, Obione verrucifera, Callidium foliatum, Suaeda salsa, Petrosimonia brachiata, Potamogeton perfoliatum, Allium subtilissimum, Triticum prostratum, Poalbulbosa, and from ferns: Polypodium vulgare and Asplenium septentrionale.]. We spent the night on Uzun-bulak. On April 29, on a cold, foggy morning, we reached Ingrekei, where we drank tea. About five versts beyond Ingrekei we forded the shallow river Ashi-su. On April 30, in the afternoon, we crossed the heavily flooded Ayaguz River in boats, without stopping in a bleak city that had no interest for me. But on my further journey the steppe appeared to me in luxurious decoration. In front of us were spread entire carpets of my favorite spring lilac anemones (Pulsatilla patens), gracefully drooping on their fluffy stems, as well as delicate pale lilac, translucent corydalis (Gorydalis ledebouriana and Cor. schangini) swayed by a light wind, and even more extensive and continuous carpets of tricolor tulips (Tulipa altaica and Tulipa silvatica var. tricolor). In some places, beautiful, huge leaves of rhubarb (Rheum leucorrhizum) came out of the ground [In addition to the plants already named, I found the following here on April 30. From cruciferous plants: Megacarpaea laciniata, Leptaleumfiufolium, Sysimbrium brevipes; from the clove family: Silene viscosa, Sil. altaica, Arenaria longifolia, Cerastium maximum; from the legume family: 109

Caragana frutex, Astragalus unilateralis, Astr. arbuscula, Astr. iagocephalus; Rosaceae: Rosa platyacantha; from umbelliferous: spiny Eryngium planum; from Asteraceae: Codonocephalum grande; from nightshades: Physochlaena physaloides; from the family Scrophulariaceae: Linaria odora; from the family Plumbaginaceae: Goniolimon callicomum; from Solyanaceae: Petrosimonia crassifolia; from cereals: Aristida pennata; in the Ayaguse River itself I collected the following aquatic plants: Myriophyllum verticillatum, Potamogeton natans and Pot. perfoliatus.]. On May 1st in the morning it was already hot in the steppe. Halfway to the Malo-Ayaguz picket, I saw the grave of Kozy-Korpech, famous in the Kyrgyz steppe according to folk legends. The top of it, unfortunately, was shot off by a cannonball. I could not find out who needed such an act of vandalism. The steppe was revived here by newly appeared plant forms [On this day (May 1), I found the following interesting plant forms in the Yaguz steppe: from legumes - licorice root (Glycyrrhiza aspera), Halimodendron argenteum, Astragalus buchtarmensis; from Asteraceae - Tragopogon ruber; from the Burashnikaceae - forget-me-nots (Myosotis silvatica), which covered vast areas with their bright blue carpets, and Rindera tetraspis; from the Iris tenuifolia, and from the Liliaceae - the wonderful and rare Fritillaria (Rhinopetalum) karelini.]. On this day we had to cross viscous salt licks interspersed with sandy areas. On some of these salt licks we saw real salt inlays of table and Glauber’s salt. There were thickets of saxaul (Arthrophytum ammodendron) on the sandy hills. The sands were enlivened by a myriad of turtles and lizards, among which were the round-headed ones (Phrynocephalus). On May 2, we arrived very early in the morning at the Arganatinsky picket, this time in completely clear weather, and climbed the Arganatinsky hill, from which the view was very extensive. In the west, in a slightly foggy distance, lay the surface of Lake Balkhash, and in the east, the snowy ridge of the Semirechensky Alatau, partly shrouded in clouds. I mounted a horse and went on an excursion through the low-lying Balkhash steppe. The Arganatin group and the surrounding steppe gave me a very interesting collection of plants [Here is a list of interesting plants that I collected on this day (May 2) in the Arganatin area: Thalictrum isopyroides, Meniocus linifolius, Farsetia spathulata, Astragalus stenoceras, Vicia subvillosa, Veronica cardiocarpa, Euphorbia rapulum . But what was most interesting for me was the discovery on that day in this area of three still completely unknown plant forms, which later received names: Astragalus arganatiacus, Astr. chlorodontus, Hedysarum semenovi. They were described b. F. Regel et. F. ab Herder, Enumeratio plantarum in regionibus ciset transilensibus acl. Semenovio anno 1857 collectarum (Bulletin Soc. Natur. Mose. 1864, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1870, 1872).]. Upon returning to the Arganatinsky picket, Kosharov and I again boarded the tarantass at about two in the afternoon and quickly reached the Lepsy River, on the banks of which there were many shrubs: boyarka (Crataegus sanguinea), honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) and one species of willow (Salix purpurea). We moved to Leps by ferry. The weather became cloudy, and finally it began to rain, but we arrived before dark along another Semirechye river - Baskan [The steppe between the Lepsa and Baskan rivers brought us new interesting prey, consisting of the following plants: Clematis Orientalis, Psilonema ttesycarpum, Lepidium 110

perfoliatum, Ruta sieversi, R. latifolia, Melilotus officinalis, Astragalus flexus, Hulthemia persica (berberifolia), Crataegus sanguinea, Tamarix Mxa, Saussurea coronata, Solenanthus circinnatus, Cystanche salsa, Suaeda physophora, Salsola affinis, Atraphaxis lanceolata, Salix purpurea, Populus su aveolens, Populus euphratica , Carex oederi, Hierochloe odorata, Crypsis aculeata.] and already at night to the third significant river - Aksu, through which fording was very difficult. On May 3, in rainy weather, we drove through the steppe through terrible mud to the rocky climb to the high spur of the Semirechensky Alatau through the Keisyk-Auz gorge and Gasfortov Pass. When we started the ascent on hard rocky soil, the weather soon cleared up completely and our entire path through the gorge, the pass and the descent to Arasan was decorated with luxurious vegetation, which no longer had the character of a low-lying steppe, but of a foothill zone (from 700 to 1,000 meters), was extremely attractive. I devoted the entire journey of that day to studying the flora of the foothill zone of the Semirechensky Alatau, in the evening I reached Arasan and happily swam in it at an air temperature of +16.5° C. Over the next four days (May 4, 5, 6 and 7), in magnificent sunny weather and a temperature of +17° C, I went on horseback to all of the side of Arasan and concluded a detailed study of the May flora of the beautiful cultural foothill zone of Semirechye at an altitude of 800 to 1,200 meters. On May 7, I already moved to Kopal. The hypsometric definition of 1857 gave me 1060 meters of absolute height for Kopal, and the foothills, which I visited from May 3 to 8 mainly for the purpose of studying the local flora, extended from 700 to 1,200 meters [Here is a list of plants that I found as part of the flora of this zone. From the buttercup family: Clematis songarica, Anemone biflora; from the smoke family: Corydalis schangini, Cor. capnoides, Fumaria vaillanti; from the cruciferous family: Arabis fruticulosa, Alyssum minimum, Draba muraiis, Corisporabungeana, C. tenella, Capsella procumbens, Cap. bursa - pastoris, Lepidium draba; from the violet family: Viola hirta, V. canina; from the family Cloves: Silene holopetala, Arenaria longifolia, Cerastium maximum, Cer. arvense; from the family geraniums: Geranium sibiricum, G. albiflorum, G. pratense; from the family balsamaceae: Impatiens parviflora; from the family legumes: Medicago falcata, Trigonella polycerata, Trifolium fragiferum, Glycyrrhiza aspera, Caragana frutex, Halimodendron argenteum, Astragalus cognatus, Astr. petraeus, Astr. arbuscula Astr. sieversianus, Astr. ellipsoideus, Astr. pallasi, Hedysarum songoricum, H. obscurum v. lasiocarpum, Sophoraalopecuroides; from Rosaceae: Prunus prostrata, Spiraea hypericifolia, Potentilla sericea, Pot. chrysantha, Rosa platiacantha, Rosa acicularis; from the family fireweed: Epilobium hirsutum; from the family Tamarixaceae: Myricaria alopecuroides, Tamarix pallasi; from currants: Ribes heterotrichum; from the family Umbelliferae: Schultzia crinita, Bupleurum exaltatum: from the family. honeysuckle: Lonicerahspida, Lon. microphylla; from the family Valerian: Valerianella plagiostephana, Val. petrophila; from the teasel family: Dipsacus azureus, Scabiosa olivieri; from the family Compositae: Aster trifolium A. (Rhinactina) Hmonifolius, Tanacetum fruticulosum, Artemisia juncea, Centaurea squarrosa, Acroptilon picris, Scorzonera tuberosa, Ligulariamacrophylla, Echinops ritro, Cousinia microcarpa: from the family. gentian: Ery111

thraea pulchella, Gentiana barbata: from the family. Convolvulaceae: Convolvulus lineatus, from the family. borage: Heliotropium europaeum, Nonnea picta and Asperygo procumbens, from the family. nightshade (potato): a plant species I rediscovered, which later received the name Physochlaena semenovi n. sp.; from the family norichinaceae: Linaria macroura, Scrophularia scopolii, Scrincisa, Dodartia orientalis, Pedicularis physocalyx; from the family Broomrapaceae: parasitic Orpbanchecernua; from the family Lamiaceae: Salvia silvestris, Ziziphoraclinopioides Dracocephalum nutans, Scutellaria orientalis; from the family Solyanaceae: Anabasis phyllophora, Nanophyton erinaceum; from the family amaranthaceae: Amaranthus paniculatus; from the family Berry: Diarthron vesiculosum; from the family Euphorbiaceae: Euphorbia chamaesyce, Euph. lucida; from the family hemp: Cannabis sativa, from the family. Cattails: Typhastenophylla; from the family orchids: Orchis incarnata; from the family irises: Iris guldenstaedtiana, Ir. glaucescens; from the family Liliaceae: Tulipa gesneriana, T. altaica, Gagea chlorantha, G. bulbifera, Fritillaria ruthenica; from the family cereals: Poabulbosa; from the ferns Woodsia ilvensis.]. My meeting with Abakumov was the most friendly. He took special pleasure in showing me his entomological collections. We left Kopal on May 9 along the upper Balykta road through the mountains to Karatal. After ten versts we reached granite outcrops and entered an area of beautiful spruce-fir forest. Upon leaving this zone, the ascent became steeper and steeper, and the vegetation took on a subalpine character [In the forest zone of the Semyargchen Alatau in 1857, I collected the following plants: Pulsatilla albana, Ranunculus polyanthemus, Ironius asiaticus, Paeonia anomala, Cerastium davuricum, Cer. arvense. Geranium pratense, Caragana frutexj Astragalus petraeus, Umbilicus alpestris, Ribes heterotrichum, Schultzia crinitaj Lonicera hispida, Rhinactina limonifolia, Matricaria ambigua, Alfredia niveai Serratula trautvetteriana n. sp., Pirola rotundifolia.]. We were unable to reach the top of the Aral-Jol pass, to which we were heading, as it turned out that it was still heavily covered with snow. At the highest point we reached, already in the alpine zone, I made a hypsometric determination, which gave me 2180 meters of absolute height. My botanical collection was especially happy that day. I found, among other things, four completely new forms of plants, namely a new breed of astragalus, which later received the name Oxytropis nutans n. sp., a new species of saffron, to which I, together with Dr. Regel, gave the name Crocus alatavicus n. sp., a new form of carnation (Dionthus alpinus var. semenovi n.), and, finally, a new breed of mystic grass (Pedicularis), later also named after me (Pedicularis semenovi n. sp.) [Here are the rest of the plants I collected after May 9 1857 in the alpine zone of Semirechensky Alatau (except for the four new forms named): Ranunculus hyperboreus, Ran. altaicus, Papaver alpinum, Glaucium squamigerum, Corydalis gortshakovi, Parryastenocarpa, Erysimum cheiranthoides, Chorispora sibirica, Viola grandiflora, Alsine verna, Astragalus petraeus, Hedysarum obscurum, Potentilla opaca, P. nivea, Umbilicus alpestris, Sedum ewersi , Sed. hybridum, Saxifraea hirculus, Sax. sibirica, Erigeron aurantiacus n. sp., Gnaphallum Ieontopodium, Doronicum altaicum, Dor. oblongifolium, Saussurea pygmaea, Primula algida, Androsace villosa, Androsace septentrionalis, Cortusa matthi112

oli, Gentiana aurea, G. rostrata, G. olivieri, G. frigida, Myosotis silvatica, Eritrichium villosum, Gymnandra borealis, Dracocephalum altaicum, Dr. nutans, Dr. peregrinum, Gagea liottardi, Lloydia serotina, Fritillaria daludiflora, Allium platyspathum.]. From our rest stop in the alpine zone, we went down and took the lower road, along which we reached Karatal. On May 10, in the morning, we with difficulty crossed the ford through the high-water Karatal and by nightfall we reached the Karasu picket. Here I spent the night and the next morning I took a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 1180 meters. The next day. On May 11, I used variable post horses to travel to Kuyankuz, in cloudy weather. And on this day [May 11], I managed to find during my excursion on Mount MayTyube two completely new species of plants from the genera Oxytropis semenovi and Astragalus semenovi, which later received names: Oxytropis semenovi and Astragalus semenovi. On May 12, after spending the night in Kuyan-kuza, I made a charming journey from there to the Ili picket, which took me the whole day, since I constantly got out of the carriage and walked almost the entire way, getting acquainted with the new world of Central Asian flora and fauna lowlands. The Ili plain in its luxurious spring decoration was likened to a blooming garden. The Ili tree barberry, first discovered by Alexander Shrenk, who was the first of the travelers to reach Lake Balkhash back in the forties, and named by Professor Bunge Berberis integerrima, was completely covered at this time of year with large clusters of yellow fragrant flowers. Of other deciduous tree species, three species of poplar (Populus euphratica, P. pruinosa and P. nigra), three species of willow (Salix songorica, S. alba, S. viminalis), three species of tamarix (Tamarix elongata, Tarn. pallasi and T. hispida), jigda species (Elaeagnus angustifolia), meadowsweet (Spiraea laevigata), and from shrubs: Halimodendron argenteum, Ammodendron sieversi, Prunus prostrata, Hulthemia persica, rose hips (Rosa gebleriana), Stellera altaica. But the most interesting of the tree species of the Ili Lowland turned out to be a beautiful species of ash, discovered by me (May 12, 1857) and still unknown to anyone, which in some places forms entire groves here; it was described subsequently (in 1868) by the botanist of the Botanical Garden Herder and named by him Fraxinus potamophila n. sp. In addition to this interesting tree, I managed to discover between May 12 and 14 in the Ili Valley more than ten completely new, at that time undescribed plants, which later received the following names from Regel and Herder: resin - Silene semenovi n. sp.; Acantophyllum paniculatum n. sp.; rake - Erodium semenovi n. sp.; Astragalus: Astragalus halodendron n. sp., Astr. iliensis n. sp.; mouse pea - Vicia (Opobus) semenovi n. sp.; bitterberry - Saussurea semenovi n. sp.; Lactuca (Streptorrhamphus) hispidula n. sp.; Kermek - Statice semenovi n. sp.; garlic Allium iliense n. sp. No less than these new, never-before-seen plant forms, I was struck among this original flora by a plant growing here in the shifting sands, in the thicket of tree groves, striking the eye with its tall and thick brown stem, devoid of leaves, equipped only with scales and vertically recessed into sandy soil. In this case, the root of the plant, which serves as a direct continuation of the stem, has the same appearance as it. But at the top, the stem ends in a long spike of densely crowded, beautifully colored purple flowers, spreading such a disgusting smell of carrion over a long distance that the plant could easily be 113

found in the forest thicket, but it was very difficult to dig it out of the ground, due to the excessive deepening of its roots. This plant, parasitic on the roots of Nitrara, was first found by me in Central Asia; it turned out, however, to belong to the European-African flora of the Mediterranean basin, where it was known to Linnaeus from the island of Malta and was named by him Gynomorium coccineum (from the family Cynomoriaceae) [Here I list all the plants I collected these days in the Ili plain and, therefore characterizing the lower hot steppe zone of the Trans-Ili region: Adonis aestivalis and var. parviflora, Delphinium c&mptccarpum, Berberis integerrima, Leontice incerta, Glaucium squamigerum, Hypecoum pendulum, Euclidium Syriacum, Malcolmia africana, Sisjmbrium heteromallum, Sisymbrium loeselii, Silene nana, Silene semenowi n. sp., Acantophyllum pungens and A. paniculatum n. sp., Erodium semenowi n. sp., Tribulis terrestris, Peganum harmala, Haplophyllum sieversi, Nitraria schoberi, Halimodendron argenteum, Astragalus iliensis n. sp. and A. haloden dron n. sp., Cousinia tenella and C. affini?, Amberboa moschata, Centaurea pulchella and C. Sguarrosa, Echenais sieversi, Lactuca viminea, Chondrilla juncea and C. brevirostris, Mulgedium tataricum, Androsace maxima, Traxinus potamophila n. sp., Cynanchum acutum, Amebia decumbens, Hyosciemus pusillus, Lycium Turcomanicum, Linaria odora, Dodartia orientalis, Veronica nudicaulis, Leptorrhabdos micrantha, Orobanche amoena, Astragalus cognatus and A. sptrtioides, Astragalus turcz;nir.ovi and A. filicaulis, Astra galus sesamoides and A. sphaerofhysa, Astragalus kruginosus, Vicia semenovi n. sp., Alhagi camelorum, Ammodendron sieversi, Prunus prostrata, Hulthemia persica, Rosa gebleriena, T. marix elongtta and T. pallasi, T. marix hispida, Sedum rhodiola, Eryngium macrocalyx, Sctndix pinnatifida, Crchrys herder n. sp., Karelinia caspica, Achillea trkhofhylla, Lelkrruntia royletn?, Scuiulleria orientalis, Lagochilus pungens, Eremostachys rotata, Statice otolepis and St. scnunovi n. sp., Chenopodium rubrum, Axyris amarantoides, Ceratocarpus arenarius, Agriothyjlum lateriflorum, Salsola lanata, Salsola brachiata and S. rigida, Girgenschnia oppositifolia, Nanophytum erinaceum, Atraphaxis spinosa and Atr. frutescens, Atraphaxis pungens, Polygonum amphibium, Stellera stachyoides, Elaeagnus angustifolia, The fauna of the Ili Plain was no less original than its flora. She was animated by countless turtles (Testudo horsfieldi) and various lizards, mainly from the genera Eremias, Scapteira and Phrynocephalus; and also a lot of insects crawling through the damp sandy clay places, mainly coleopterans: a lot of arachnids were also found here: karakurts, scorpions and phalanges. Among the Coleoptera, here for the first time I found a beautiful, smooth, metallic green breed of ground beetles from the genus Calosoma (breed Callisthenus): the curator of the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences Menetrke gave this new species the name Callisthenes semenovi, under which it was described in 1859 by our famous entomologist V I. Mochulsky; who processed my small entomological collection. Only in the evening of May 12 did I arrive, after my excursions so memorable for me, in Iliysk, where I found our Russian village already completely built from beautiful forest material, after its preliminary and gradual drying in the forest zone of the Trans-Ili Alatau. I stayed overnight in Ilisk so that the next day I could make another interesting excursion in the Ili 114

Valley, accompanied by the artist Kosharov, about forty miles down the Ili River. On the day of this excursion, May 13, the weather was completely favorable and when we set off at 5 o’clock in the morning, it was already +10° C. In Iliysk, a majestic river, up to 400 meters wide, still flows on low sandy banks along the plain, the absolute height of which on the banks of Ili does not exceed 340 meters, but which slowly rises south to Verny, located seventy miles from Iliysk, gradually turning into foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau; The Ili River itself flows past Iliysk directly from east to west, and already 7 versts below Iliysk its bed begins to crash into a stone bed. Thus, the high-water and rather fast river goes deeper and deeper into the hollow that it has washed between the rocks. As a result, following along the course of the Ili, we found ourselves fifteen or twenty versts below Iliysk, already in a rocky, although very wide, gorge. Here the majestic river flowed between large cliffy banks, which became higher and higher, but left a clear passage between their cliffs and the river bed. About 20 or 25 versts below Iliysk, the cliffs, rising more than a hundred meters above the river level and consisting of light red porphyry, become very picturesque, especially where they come close to the light, emerald green wide surface of the river. Numerous flocks of white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus) swam in it and flew over it. In the movements of the flocks of these huge birds, I noticed a curious and very cleverly organized discipline. Obviously, each flock had in front of it its own experienced and cautious guard birds, in accordance with whose movements and signals the entire flock was guided both on the water and in the air. The main goal of our excursion down the Ili was the Tamgaly-tash tract (written stones), located from Iliysk at a distance of thirty to thirty-five miles along the river. Indeed, in the wide gorge through which the river makes its way here, on a high cliff, we found huge letters of a Tibetan inscription, which I copied as best I could, with the help of the artist Kosharov. This inscription turned out to be not particularly ancient. It was drawn, apparently, in the middle of the 18th century, during the Dzungarian rule, when the temporary nomadic camps of Khan Amursana were located here, and was intended to designate the western borders of Dzungaria. In the evening we returned to Iliysk, having traveled back and forth at least seventy miles that day, and again spent the night in Iliysk. On May 14, when the weather was favorable, we moved to Vernoye, where I had to stay for two weeks for the final and thorough organization of my expedition into the depths of the Tien Shan, which was still inaccessible to anyone. The truth, to my extreme pleasure, presented itself to me in a more attractive form than in 1856. All the houses of the young fortification were more or less rebuilt, and a young garden had already been planted near the house of the bailiff of the Great Horde; These were the first trees planted on the foothills, where the now flourishing city of Verny is surrounded by green gardens. The settlers took my advice not to transport the timber to Vernoye immediately after cutting it, but to let it first dry in the forest zone, and complaints about the poor quality of local building material ceased. At my insistence last year, the Cossacks managed to transport beehives from Altai to Vernoye, and beekeeping began to gradually develop in the Trans-Ili region, to the surprise of the Kirghiz of the Great Horde, who told me that the Cossacks managed to bring such a fly that 115

makes sugar. In the early spring of 1857, new immigrants from Russian peasants arrived in Vernoye, who, on the instructions of the bailiff of the Great Horde, subsequently formed a flourishing village on the Talgar River, twenty-five versts from Vernoye. Satisfactory relations were very soon established between the new settlers from the peasants and the aborigines of the Trans-Ili foothills (Kyrgyz of the Great Horde), which was greatly facilitated not only by the peaceful agricultural character of the peasant settlers, but also by the peculiarities of the orographic structure of the region. The entire Trans-Ili region, rising gradually from the coastal Ili River (300-350 meters) to the Talgar Peak (5000 meters), is divided, according to my observations, by nature itself into five zones, located as if on floors one above the other. The lower - the first - of these zones has from 300 to 600 meters of absolute height, is located in a fairly wide strip on both sides of the Ili River and is characterized not only by its climate: very hot summers and mild and relatively warm winters, but also by a completely Asian, steppe flora [ Of the plants I collected on May 11-13 in this zone, more than 1/3 turned out to be typical Central Asian and only 20% of them move either to the northeast into Siberia, or to the northwest into the Sarmatian plain, and a few more into the hot Aral Sea -Caspian Lowland.] and fauna, in which there are very few European forms: forms of the Central Asian type, common with neighboring Turkestan, predominate here. It is clear that this zone could not attract Russian colonization and remained almost entirely in the hands of nomadic aborigines, constituting for them one of the most important conditions for their existence, since here they have their wintering grounds, where, with relatively warm winters and little snowfall, their herds find food for themselves throughout the winter. The second zone has from 600 to 1410 meters of absolute height and is characterized by its temperate climate both in winter and summer, reminiscent of the climate of Little Russia, as well as almost RussianEuropean flora, with a slight admixture of spring plants of the Asian type [During two weeks of stay in Verny I During my excursions I especially carefully studied the flora of this zone, which included the following plants: Chelidonium majus, Berteroa incana, Leptaleum filifolum, Sisymbrium junceum, S. loeselii, Stonophragma thalianum, Erysimum canescens, Capsella bursapastoris, Lepidium latifolium, Lepidium ruderale, Helianthemum songaricum, Gypsophila muralisj Lavatera thuringiaca, Althaea officinalis, Malva pusilla, Medicago falcata, Trifolium pratense, Tr. lupinaster, Tr. repens, Glycyrrhiza aspera, Lathyrus pisiformis, Vicia lutea, Fiiipendula ulmaria, Agrimonia eupatoria, Potentilla supina, Daucus carota, Anthriscus silvestris, Asperula humifusa, Galium jtenuissimum, Erigeron canadensis, Er. acer, Solidago virgo-aurea, Inula helenium, In. britannica, Xanthium strumarium, Bidens tripartita, Achillea millefolium, Artemisia oliveriana, Art. Maritima, Art. vulgaris, Art. Annua, Senecio Praealtus, Cousinia Platylepis, Cirsium Lanceolatum, Arwense, Cichorium Intybus, Scorzonera Austriaca, Hetracia Szovitsi, Anagallis Arver SUS, Verb, Blattaria, Scrophularia Incisa, Veronica anagallis, V. Beccabunga, V. Biloba, Mentha silvestris, Lycopus exaltatus, Ziziphora clinopodioides, Rheum rhaponticum, Artraphaxis frutescens, Ixiolirion tataricum, Alliumcoeruleum, Eremurus altaicus, Erem. (Henningia) robustus. n. sp., Cyperus fuscus, Elymus Ianuginosus, 116

Seeale cereale, Agropyrum orientale, Agr. repens, Bromus erectus, Eragrostis poaeoides, Phragtnites communis, Milium effusum, Stipa capillata, Thleum paniculatum, Setaria italica. In total, in my list for the agricultural zone I list 78 species, of which no more than 10% are absent in Europe. These plants were predominantly bulbous plants of early spring flora. Among them, one magnificent new species from the lily family was found by me for the first time; it was later named by Regel Eremurus (Henningia) robustus n. sp.]. This zone occupies the entire northern foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau and is especially remarkable for its rich irrigation. Numerous rivers, originating in the snow of the alpine zone, invade this agricultural and cultural zone with very high-water rivers and are dismantled here into ditches (irrigation canals), fertilizing its arable land and plantings, and exit into the lower zone in insignificant, low-water streams. It is clear that this zone became the main one for Russian colonization. The Russians, having learned irrigation techniques from the aborigines, were able to easily obtain fabulous harvests from their arable lands and plant luxurious gardens and vineyards. Although Russian colonization, having established itself almost exclusively in this zone, ousted from it the nomads who had small arable lands here, which they lost, The third zone is forest, has from 1,300 to 2,500 meters of absolute height, occupies the mountain slopes and valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau and is characterized by a rather harsh and humid mountain climate, but is overgrown with quite rich forest vegetation. The flora of this zone itself differs significantly from the flora of the previous zone in that half of its species belong to local Central Asian plants and only the other half grows in Siberia and Europe, either in the forest region or in the alpine [Here is a list of plants collected by me in this zone in the valleys of the Almatinka and Keskelen rivers: Atragene alpina, Ranunculus acer, R. lanuginosus, R. sceleratus, Berberis neteropoda, Draba incana, Hutchinsia procumbens, Hellanthemum songaricum, Viola biflora, Tunica stricta, Dianthus superbus, Cerastium davuricum, Linum perenne, Acer semenovi n. sp., Geranium rectum, Ger. divaricatum, Onobrychis pulchella, Prunus armeniaca, Potentilla pensylvanica, Pot. dealbata, Rubus caesius, Rosa platyacantha, Crataegus sp., Pirus malus, Sorbus tianshanica n. sp., Epilobium roseum, Cotyledon semenovi n. sp., Ribes atropurpureum, Carum carvi, Seseli lessingianum, Pleurospermum anomalum, Lonicera tatarica, Echinops sphaerocephalus, Cousinia semenovi n. sp., C. umbrosa, Alfredia acantholepis, Mulgedium azureum, M. tataricum, Hieracium virosum, Pirola secunda, Gentiana barbata, G. decumbens, Pedicularis verticillata, Polygonum, polymorphum, Coeloglossum viride, Iris flavissima. Among the plants I collected in this zone in the Almaty and Keskelen valleys were four species unknown until that time, namely: a species of maple that forms beautiful groves in the forest zone and was later named Acer semenovi; a special type of rowan, described later by academician Ruprecht under the name Sorbus tianshanica; a beautiful plant with fat leaves from the family Crassulaceae, subsequently named Umbilicus semenovi, Cotyledon (Semenovia) semenovi, and an asteraceous plant, subsequently named Cousinia semenovi.]. Even before the establishment of Russian colonization, it did not bring much benefit to the nomads, who always quickly passed through it along the most accessible routes 117

for their herds, during their migrations from the wintering grounds of the lower zone to the free pastures of their summering grounds in the fourth - alpine zone. For the Russian settlers, the forest zone was a necessary support for their sedentary colonization, since here they began to obtain all their construction and forest materials, as well as set up their own farmsteads (farms) for beekeeping and other purposes. The fourth zone - subalpine and alpine pastures - has from 2,400 to 3,500 meters of absolute height and occupies a large area in the Trans-Ili Alatau. This cold, high-mountainous zone is an Eldorado for the Kyrgyz population, but is not quite suitable for Russian colonization, and therefore remained entirely in the hands of nomads, who only needed to ensure free passage with their herds from their wintering grounds to this zone. Finally, the fifth zone of the Trans-Ili region begins at an altitude of 3,500 meters and, being covered with eternal snow, seems completely lifeless and, in any case, equally unsuitable for either Russian colonization or the life of nomads, and is attractive only for climbers and scientific researchers. For all that, it plays an important role in the natural economy of this blessed region, since, despite its apparent lifelessness, it revives it with the help of the beneficial rays of the southern sun. The melting of the snows in this zone not only directly feeds its meadows, but also gives rise to wonderful mountain streams, which, rushing into the agricultural zone as high-water rivers, fertilize its rich arable lands, orchards and vineyards. In the agricultural zone, these rivers are lost before reaching the hot lower zone, and thus flow, one might say, into an ocean of air, from which the giants of the snow zone are again collected into the enormous reserves of its eternal snow. I return to my journey. I found a big change in the composition of the local authorities in Verny. Khomentovsky was no longer there. He left his service in Siberia and went to St. Petersburg. Apparently, his courage and enterprise weighed heavily on the governor-general, who was especially afraid of responsibility for any clashes between the overly enterprising bailiff of the Great Horde and the neighboring Kokand Khanate. Therefore, G.I. Gasfort appointed as the bailiff of the Great Horde a man who was certainly honest and experienced in service in Siberia, but very calm and reasonable and less courageous, as well as less talented and less educated than Khomentovsky was. This new bailiff, Colonel Peremyshlsky, came to Siberia with Gasfort’s predecessor, Governor-General Prince V.D. Gorchakov, of whom he was an illegitimate son and from whom he received his surname of Peremyshlsky because the Gorchakovs descended from the princes of Peremyshlsky. It was with this new understanding that I had to enter into an agreement regarding my trip to the Tien Shan. Peremyshlsky greeted me very warmly and asked me to stay during my stay in Verny in his newly built and most beautiful wooden house in Verny, setting up a luxurious yurt for me to stay in his garden for the night. I got along with Peremyshlsky very soon, finding in him a simple man in the best sense of the word, extremely decent, reasonable and possessing great common sense. I explained to him that I was not at all striving to the west from Verny to the Chu River and generally to the west from Issyk-Kul, but that my only goal was to follow the road I already knew to go to the eastern tip of Issyk-Kul, to reach the northern slope of the snowy ridge, closing the lake basin from the south, and, if possible, penetrate 118

into its valleys and mountain passes connecting the Ili and Issyk-Kul basins with Kashgaria. Peremyshlsky reacted with full sympathy to my plan and, caring for my safety, agreed to give me fifty Cossacks in my convoy and help me hire 18 camels from the Kirghiz for our packs. My journey, as it turned out from the mutual exchange of thoughts; it could not have been more beneficial to him, since the state of affairs in Issyk-Kul was as follows. The war between both Kara-Kyrgyz tribes that owned the Issyk-Kul basin was still in full swing. The nominal subjects of China - the Godesses, forced out by the Kokand subjects - the Sarybagish from the entire Issyk-Kul basin, sought to regain the eastern half of the Issyk-Kul basin that belonged to them, and therefore decided to enter into negotiations with the bailiff of the Great Horde about accepting them into Russian citizenship, conditioning this citizenship on giving them immediate protection from enemies who overcame them. This was, in relation to the KaraKirghiz, the beginning of the process through which the entire Kyrgyz steppe, starting from the Little Horde, went through, generation after generation entering Russian citizenship. Each clan that joined it thereby got rid of the baranta from the clans that were already under Russian citizenship, and could victoriously fight the next, still independent clan, since it felt under the patronage and protection of Russia. Then the next clan, surrounded on all sides by possible enemies, was forced to seek salvation in turn by transferring to Russian citizenship. Przemyslsky, with his simple common sense, understood this situation of the nomads neighboring him and felt the inevitability of accepting the Bogints into Russian citizenship, and on the other hand, he was aware of the need to give them help in some form at this very moment. But Peremyshlsky did not dare to take any military action for this from Verny with the troops entrusted to him, as Khomentovsky would certainly have done without the knowledge of the Governor General, and he considered it useless to ask for permission: relations with St. Petersburg would have begun, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , which was hostile to any of our conquests in Central Asia, would have slowed down the matter. Therefore, after thorough negotiations with me, Peremyshlsky settled on the following combination. Realizing that the appearance of my convoy of fifty Cossacks on the lands of the goddesses could not make the desired impression and satisfy the goddesses, he decided to persuade the most enterprising and courageous of the sultans of the Great Horde, Gezek, who was under his charge, to appear, by agreement with the goddesses and under the company of my expedition, to help to the goddesses with their militia, which, as it later turned out, consisted of 1,500 horsemen. It goes without saying that Tezek agreed with all the greater joy to such permission from Przemyslsky that the goddesses were already turning to him for help and alliance. With such a combination, my goal of penetrating into the depths of the Tien Shan at any cost was fully secured. All I had to do was prepare for my journey, which took about two weeks. This time was not wasted by me for science either, since, with Verny located only about twelve miles from the entrance to the Almaty Valley, I had the opportunity to make almost daily excursions there and in this way managed to thoroughly become familiar with the composition of the flora of all three zones of the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau . In the second half of May, on the 119

mountain slopes closest to Verny, early spring Asian forms were still blooming, among which the newly discovered, already mentioned above, beautiful plant with a tall stem up to three meters high, covered with pink flowers, was striking. It belonged to the genus Eremurus of the lily family and was subsequently named Eremurus (Henningia) robustus. Already from the very entrance to the valley, characteristic shrubs of the lower forest zone appeared: flowering barberry (Berberis heteropoda) and hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), covered with pink flowers of Atraphaxis frutescens, and among herbaceous plants, beautiful peony (Paeonia anomala) and spectacular rhubarb (Rheum rhaponticum). As we deepened into the Almatinka valley, we took a tour in a charming forest, consisting of wild apple and apricot trees covered with delicate pale pink flowers, as well as a newly discovered species of maple, very similar to the Himalayan and Amur and which later received my name (Acer semenowi). Climbing higher up the valley, we entered the zone of coniferous and spruce forest, from which the residents of Verny removed all their building materials. At the beginning of the forest zone, I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 1,370 meters of absolute height. Climbing even higher in the valley, we reached, after three hours, the upper limit of forest vegetation, which, according to my measurements, turned out to be 2,540 meters in absolute height. Here a zone of alpine meadows had already begun, in which high-alpine plants bloomed: Trollius dshungaricus n. sp., Tr. altaicus, Oallianthemum alatavicum n. sp., Aconitum rotundirolium, Ac. napellus var. tianshanicum n., Viola altaica, Thermopsis alpina, Primula nivalis and Pleurogyne carinthiaca. Returning to Vernoye, I made another hypsometric determination there on May 23, which gave me 720 meters of absolute height. By the end of May the camels had been hired and my expedition was finally equipped. On May 29, I left Verny at 2 o’clock in the afternoon with my entire detachment, consisting of 58 people, 12 camels and 70 horses. I rode about twelve versts to a mountain spur, jutting out with a cape into the Ili foothills. Near the cape on the Katur-bulak river I came across many porphyry boulders. Having traveled five miles from here, we crossed the Bei-bulak river, and after another seven miles we reached the beautiful Talgara River, crossed it, drove another four miles and stopped for the night at the foot of the second cape, jutting into the foothills. While it was not yet dark, the artist Kosharov and I climbed to the top of this cape, and at sunset we enjoyed a charming view of the snowy mountain group, which, after the Talgar peak (Talgarnyntal-choku), seems to be the highest in the Trans-Ili Alatau. The sun, which had already gone out on other peaks, still shimmered with its wondrous reddish shine on the pointed peak and the snow-white slopes descending from it. The Talgar Peak itself was not visible behind this gigantic group of squirrels. When I went down a steep ravine, I met in it the den of a large animal, probably a bear. The banks of the Talgar tributary, on which we camped for the night, were overgrown with meadowsweet (Spirae hypericifolia) []On this day (May 31) I managed to find an unknown plant from the genus Silene; it was subsequently named after me Silene semenowi n. sp. Of the interesting, but already known to me, plants that I collected on that day on Talgar were the following: Papaver dubium, Hesperis matronalis, Erysimum cheiranthoides, Isatis tinctoria, Peganumharmala, 120

Trigonella orthoceras, Sorbus tianshanica n. sp., Viburnum opulus, Valeriana officinalis, Filago arvensis, Dracocephalum integrifolium, Polygonum nodosum, Tulipa altaica, Eremerus altaica and E. robustus. Since the collection of this day was carried out throughout Talgar, without leaving the cultural zone, a significant percentage of the plants of the Talgar flora turned out to be common with the species of Europe. I did not encounter any outcrops of hard rocks here. The foothills had clay-sandy soil and were very rich in granite boulders. In the evening, we agreed with Colonel Peremyshlsky that the next day, leaving my detachment, I would go on a full-day mountain excursion to explore the Alpine lake Dzhasyl-Kul, Peremyshlsky would go to the Kyrgyz villages, and my detachment would go to the next night’s camp on the Issyk River, and there we will meet with the bailiff to go together on June 2 to the upcoming congress of the Kyrgyz of the Great Horde. On May 30, the temperature at 9 o’clock in the morning was +14.3° C. I ordered the transition of my entire detachment to the next overnight stop at the foothills of the Issyk River, and I myself, accompanied by the artist Kosharov, six Cossacks and two Kyrgyz guides, headed to the mountains to explore the Alpine lake Jasyl-kul. We left our overnight stay at 6 o’clock in the morning, heading first to the south and then to the east across the mountain ledge where we spent the night. We climbed along a stream flowing through the valley of the foothills. At the very beginning of our ascent, the Talgar Peak was clearly visible, similar from here to Mont Blanc, but even more picturesque and majestic. The valley through which we climbed already belonged to the forest zone and was luxuriously overgrown with apple and apricot trees, Tien Shan rowan (Sortous tianshanica), boyar (Crataegus sp.), Trans-Ili maple (Acer semenowi), blackberry (Berberis herepopoda), aspen, thaw (Salix viminalis), honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) and Atraphaxis spinosa [The following plants of the local flora are included in my diary for this day: Aconitum pallidum, Paeoma atiomala, Cardamine impatiens, Scabiosacaucasica, Erysimum cheiranthoides, Dictarrmus albus, Valeriana officinalis, Rheum rhaponticum and the bulbous plants Fritillaria pallidiflora and Eremurus altaicus, characteristic of the local spring flora. All these plants seemed characteristic of the lower forest zone.]. The valley was likened to a luxurious garden, enlivened at this time of year by the colorful, elegant migration of the Dzhasyk family from the Dulat tribe of the Great Kyrgyz Horde. We stopped for a quarter of an hour and drank ayran with them, and then their biy met us on the road with kumiss. The valley rose quite steeply, but we soon reached a gentle ledge cut by a ravine, here we entered a spruce forest and encountered the first outcrop of crystalline rocks, namely porphyry. On the ledge we crossed the Tal-Bulak River and from here we began to quickly climb up the mountain. The ridge we climbed was a spur of the main ridge. In front of us rose a dome-shaped porphyry hill, all overgrown with spruce forest. Avoiding too steep a climb, we began to go around it, climbing a steep ravine, at the bottom of which in some places unmelted snow was visible. The climb was difficult. The trees that characterize the garden semi-zone of the forest zone quickly disappeared in the following order: first the apricot tree, then the apple tree, mountain ash, trans-Ili maple, aspen, thal and finally only coniferous trees remained - spruce (Picea schrenkiana) and ju121

niper (Juniperus pseudosabina), and behind them characteristic representatives of the mountain alpine flora appeared between the herbaceous vegetation [In my diary on May 30 in the upper forest zone of Issyk the following will begin: alpine clematis (Atragene alpina), four species of Anemone (A. falconeri var, semenovi n. A. obtusiloba, Anemone narcissiflora, Pulsatiila albana), 4 types of buttercups (Ranunculus acer, R. polyanthemus, R. pulchellus, R. songoricus), Callianthemutn alatavicum n. sp., swimmer (Trollius dshungaricus n. sp.), Isopyrum anemonoides, Delphinium speciosum, Aconitum pollidum; from the family poppy: Papaver alpinum and Glaucium squamigerum; from the family dymyankovyh: Corydalis gortshakovi; from the family Cruciferous: Barbarea vulgaris, Arabis pendula, Cardamine impatiens, Thlaspi arvense, Thl. cochleariforme, Hutchinsia procumbens, Chorispora bungeana, Eutrema edwardsi, E. alpestre, Goldbachia laevigata, Parrya stenocarpa, four species of the genus Draba (Dr. algida, Dr. altaica, Dr. hirta, Dr. incana), Taphros. permum altaicum. from the family saxifragaceae: Saxifraga sibirica and from bulbous plants: Ixiolirion tataricum and Tilipa altaica.]. Under the melting snow, I was pleased to see the earliest flowers of the spring flora of our Russian Sarmatian plain - the light yellow flowers of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara). Having finally climbed the ridge adjacent to the dome-shaped hill, and having driven a little along its western slope, we were pleased to see at our feet the “Green Lake” (Dzhasyl-kul), which had the purest and most transparent, dense bluish-green color of the Transbaikal beryl Beyond the lake rose the bold and steep jagged ridge of a tall squirrel, and to the right there was a view of an even higher snowy mountain, which had the appearance of a dazzling white tent: the guide called this mountain Issyk-bash. Even further to the right, to the southwest of the lake, the sharp peaks of a jagged granite ridge were visible, the slopes of which were also whitened with snow, but by the end of summer only isolated stripes and clearings remained of this snow. Near these peaks, which obscured the view of the Talgar peak, and somewhat to the right and closer to it, rose a domeshaped hill, more rocky on one side. We were here directly 300 meters above the lake and followed the ridge to the southwest. After crossing several waves and rising greatly, we reached the limits of forest vegetation. Low-growing and gnarled trees were soon replaced by shrubs, dominated by juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina) and a small species of honeysuckle (Lonicera humilis). The grass flora here was already high-alpine [Here are the plants I collected on May 30, 1857, outside the forest vegetation above Dzhasyl-Kul: Anemone narcissiflora, Trollius dshungaricus, Hegemone Illacina, Oxygraphis glacialis, Callianthemum alatavicum, Ranunculus altaicus, Ran. gelidus, Viola altaica, Saxifraga sibirica, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Droaba altaica, Dr. algida, Dr. lactea, Dr. sp., Chorosporabungeana, Potentillanivea, P. (Comarum) salessovi, Umbilicus platyphyllus, Hutchinsia procumbens, Lonicera humilis, Primula nivalis, Myosotis silvatica, Eritrichium yillosum, Pedicularis versicolor, Tulipa altaica, Gagea liottardi.]. Here I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave the limit of forest vegetation 2,560 meters of absolute height. From here, leaving my horses with three Cossacks, I began my ascent to the domed hill on foot. Our ascent was very difficult, especially since halfway up we were shrouded in a thick cloud 122

and deafened by peals of thunder. But when we finally got out of the thundercloud and reached the top of the hill, all the clouds dissipated and the sun shone in all its brilliance. Only at our feet, over the “Evil Lake,” were still black clouds spread, cut by brilliant lightning, and strong thunderclaps were repeated by peals across the neighboring mountains. This wonderful sight of mountain giants, illuminated by the sun against the background of a cloudless sky above, and black clouds with their lightning above the “Green Lake” below will never be erased from my memory. At the very top of the hill I made a hypsometric determination, which gave me 2,950 meters of absolute height. The air temperature in the second hour of the afternoon with a fresh southwest wind was +8° C. The northern side of our hill was completely covered (May 30) with masses of snow, partly freshly fallen. During our rather long halt, the clouds over the lake finally cleared and the entire landscape opened up in its full splendor. Dzhasyl-kul was visible from this enormous height, just like Lake Brienz from the descent to it from Faulhorn; only on the right side of the hill that I measured, which our Kyrgyz guides called Kyz-imchek (maiden breast), for all its grandeur, was somewhat limited. A high wall of needles blocked the Talgar peak from us to some extent and, despite its steepness, was shrouded in snow cover, from which black teeth and needles protruded, similar to the Aiguilles du Midi of the Mont Blanc group and completely inaccessible. The Kyz-imchek hill, on which we stood, was the last and highest of the porphyry mountains, and further from the beginning of the needles stretched the granites that made up Issyk-Bash and the Talgar peak. The needles seemed to me 500 meters higher than the porphyry hill of Kyz-imchek. With regret, we parted with one of the most attractive landscapes in the Trans-Ili Alatau and began to descend to the “Green Lake”. Around 5 o’clock we reached our horses and, having mounted them, followed along the ridge, descending along it into the coniferous forest zone, and then entered the valley of the Issyk tributary, overgrown with woody vegetation of the garden half-zone. On our further descent, we already met numerous Kirghiz auls and at 7 o’clock in the evening we went out to the Issyk River, where we found our entire detachment a little below the ruins of the first Russian wintering camp in 1855. Here at 7 1/2 o’clock in the evening the thermometer showed +15° C. Before sunset, the Great Horde bailiff of Peremyshl also arrived here, with whom we agreed to go the next day to a congress of two Kyrgyz tribes of the Great Horde (Dulats and Atbans), at which an interesting legal dispute or trial between both tribes was supposed to be resolved. According to customary Kyrgyz law, such a dispute was resolved by a court of biys (magistrates) - three from each tribe, in the presence of the senior sultans of both tribes and the bailiff of the Great Horde. At the same time, the biys, guided by the same customary law, had to choose as chairman or super-arbiter a person outside both tribes and completely impartial. The biys unanimously recognized me as such a person, as a person who did not belong to the local administration, who came from afar and had a reputation as a “learned person” who, after his last year’s travels in the Trans-Ili region, had already enjoyed popularity among the Kirghiz of the Great Horde. The horde bailiff, who was very afraid that strife would not occur between the tribes un123

der his command because of this dispute, with particular pleasure approved the choice of biys, and I happily agreed to take an active part in the matter, which immediately introduced me not only to the individuals who held the the fate of the entire horde, but also with local Kyrgyz customary law and their worldviews, which survived in their purity precisely in the Great Horde, which in the middle of the 19th century, that is, before the occupation of the Trans-Ili region, enjoyed great independence and fought with its neighbors and enemies without help Russian administration. As a result, during my travels one could meet in the Great Horde many old heroic and, one might say, Homeric types. On May 31, at dawn, a strong storm hit our bivouac, which twice tore down my tent and several Kyrgyz yurts, including the yurt of the bailiff of the Great Horde. A huge cloud, which we had already seen the day before at sunset, approached us at 6 o’clock in the morning and burst into thunderclaps and torrential rain. This rain stopped, however, by 11 o’clock, at a temperature of +11.4 ° C, and at two o’clock in the afternoon the weather had completely cleared up, and we, together with Colonel Peremyshlsky, could go to the congress that was awaiting us. I sent my entire detachment, slowly, to the further stop I suggested, on the Turgen River, and I myself joined only with a small convoy to Peremyshlsky in order to head with him to the Kyrgyz villages. The process to be considered by the congress was as follows. The daughter of a noble Kirghiz, named Beiserke, from the Dulat tribe, was betrothed to the son of an equally noble Kirghiz from the Atban tribe. The groom’s parents and he himself had already paid the entire dowry, and the young man received the right to take his bride as his wife. But what was everyone’s surprise when, upon his arrival to meet her, she felt great antipathy towards him and resolutely declared that she did not want to be his wife, and to the persuasion of her parents she replied that, of course, they could take her by force, but that under no circumstances will he get her alive. Knowing the character of the young girl, the parents had no doubt that she would not deviate from her decision, which was an almost unheard-of violation of common law. With all this, they felt sorry for their beloved daughter, and they warmly took her side, declaring that they were ready to make all sorts of sacrifices to ransom and save her and that they themselves would not give her up. The beauty of Beiserke’s daughter, her original mind and courage attracted to her side not only her entire clan, but also the entire Dulat tribe, and if the groom belonged to this tribe, then the matter could be settled, since the groom and his parents could be persuaded refuse the bride for the return of the bride price and a large reward. But since the groom did not belong to the same tribe as the bride, the entire Atban tribe considered the incident to be a popular insult and raised all their old long-standing scores with the Dulats, reinforced by personal enmity between the sultans of both tribes. A very large yurt, richly decorated with Bukhara carpets, was put up for the congress. In front of her we were met by the senior sultans of both tribes. These were: on the one hand, the Atbanov Sultan Tezek, famous throughout Semirechye for his intelligence and courage, very popular throughout the Kyrgyz steppe, and on the other hand, the somewhat arrogant old Dulat Sultan Ali, very famous for his wealth and hospitality. The bailiff introduced both sultans to me, and when we entered the 124

yurt, I was greeted there by the biys who had elected me as their super-arbiter. The personalities of these biys interested me all the more because I saw in them not hereditary dignitaries, but people’s representatives. However, it turned out that in the half of the 19th century, no one elected and no one appointed biys in the Great Horde. These were simply people indicated by public opinion, to whom all those in need of justice turned of their own free will for the resolution of their disputes, as experienced persons and who had become universally famous for their justice, their intelligence and other qualities, but especially their subtle knowledge of ordinary folk rights. Among such persons there were noble people, white bones, and often people of black bones, but, in any case, people who became famous for their undoubted personal merits. The locations (nomadic camps) of these people were known to everyone, and the more fame they enjoyed, the more clients they had. The biys of both sides were summoned to our congress by the sultans, who in their choice were guided exclusively by public opinion. On the Dulat side, these were: Dikambay, the uncle of the bride, an athlete by build, with a thunderous voice, a formerly famous hero who broke ten spears directed against him in battles at once. The second representative of the Dulats was the venerable old man Dugambay, with a long gray beard, who enjoyed the reputation of the best expert and faithful bearer of Kyrgyz customary law. The third representative of the Dulats was Dzhainak, who was lively and always witty and apt in his remarks. Among the Atbans, another Dzhainak was considered the best expert on customary law, but the greatest respect among them was enjoyed by their second representative, Atamkul, famous for his justice and incorruptibility and considered the best warrior of his tribe. Valiant on the battlefields, dexterous in baygas (tournaments), he was no less wise in councils and in public courts and personified the type of “knight without fear and reproach.” Finally, the third representative of the Atbans, Mamai, was also one of the bravest people of his tribe, famous for his enterprise, courage and skill in barants (robberies) and had all the inclinations of an energetic expropriator. In the depths of the yurt, opposite the entrance, in the most honorable place, a rich Tekin carpet was spread out, on which I was seated next to Colonel Peremyshlsky, and behind us, in a little visible place, the translator was placed. To the right of me, my betrothed ally took his place in the expedition I was undertaking to the foot and into the depths of the Tien Shan, Sultan Tezek, and to the left of Przemysl - “Agamemnon” of the Great Horde, who did not want to allow the forcible abduction of “beautiful Helen” from his tribe. Further, on both sides of our central group, the majestic figures of six biys were located on separate rugs. The trial began with the noble Beiserke bringing his daughter into our yurt as a defendant, who was summoned to trial at my request. Beiserke’s daughter, a slender 19-year-old girl, amazed everyone present with her beauty and extraordinary animation. In a loud voice and with great energy, she delivered her defense speech, in which she explained that she was fully aware of the rights of the groom, his parents and the entire Atban tribe to her, and that the court would probably decide the case not in her favor, but that she was in no way In this case, her husband will not get it alive, and there is no profit for either the groom or his parents to receive her dead. Following her, I turned to the biys 125

with a speech, immediately translated into the Kyrgyz language, saying that, of course, the whole matter should be judged according to Kyrgyz laws, which are known to the biys better than me, but I cannot help but remind that according to the Russian laws cannot force a girl into marriage without her consent, and therefore one should look for a way out of this matter that, while satisfying Kyrgyz laws, would not result in the useless death of a girl who spoke out so decisively to everyone. At the same time, I recognize two important conditions in this matter: the first is the fair satisfaction of the interests of the groom and his parents, and the second is the satisfaction of the honor of the entire tribe; As for the first, I know that the biys, as justices of the peace, will take care, first of all, of the reconciliation of both sides, and I am sure that they will find means for such reconciliation, observing the interests of the plaintiffs and justice; As for the second, both tribes are perfectly represented here by the biys who enjoy popular trust and by their sultans, so one can hope that the congress will find an opportunity to get out of the difficulty with full satisfaction of the honor of both tribes. After this introduction, the biys began to discuss the matter on its merits. Soon an argument began between them, at first quite calm, and then more and more passionate and almost turned into an open quarrel. All three Atban biys ardently argued that the bride’s refusal, supported by her parents and her family, constituted such an unheard-of offense that was an insult to the entire tribe. In response to this, Jainak stood up from the dulats and, with his generally recognized authority, began to prove that if there was, indeed, an undoubted offense on the part of the bride and her parents, then the offense had occurred even earlier on the part of the groom. According to Kyrgyz folk customs, the daughter of a noble man can only be the first wife of her husband, and the parents of a white bone will never agree to give their daughter as a second wife. The bride’s parents, concluding a marriage deal for their daughter, knew that her groom was not married and that they would receive the first bride price from him and give their daughter as their first wife. But when the bride price was paid and the groom came to pick up his wife, it turned out that he was already married. Two Atban biys denied this fact, but the third, fair and impeccable Atamkul, clarified this discrepancy, saying that the groom, indeed, already has a wife, taken after paying the bride price for Beiserke’s daughter and before taking her as a wife; however, the groom did not pay the second bride price to anyone and had no intention of marrying another bride, but had to recognize his brother’s widow as his wife, which was not only his right, but also his duty. The question was greatly complicated by this explanation. After quite a lengthy debate, Atamkul admitted, however, that on the part of the groom there had been, albeit a completely involuntary, violation of the rights of the bride, and therefore all the biys agreed to enter into negotiations with the groom’s parents about their satisfaction. After these negotiations, the biys managed to persuade the groom and his parents to abandon the bride themselves, receiving back their bride price, and on top of that, also a kun (ransom for the bride that already belonged to them) in an amount equal to the bride price. The second question still remained: how can the honor of the Atban tribe be satisfied? Biy Mamai stood up and proposed the following combina126

tion: the bride should be given to the groom for at least one week, and then he, of his own volition, will abandon her and send her to her parents. To this I objected that I consider it quite sufficient that Beiserke’s daughter, at our call, was brought to our court by her parents, who thereby already expressed their submission to the decision of the congress, but that handing her over for one week would be completely incompatible with the dignity of the girl white bone, who can become forever only the first wife of her husband, but in no case his temporary concubine. The bailiff of the Great Horde energetically supported me, saying that he could not allow that in a tribal dispute, the restoration of the rights of one tribe would be associated with an even greater violation of the rights of another. The cunning Sultan Tezek rose. He explained that he did not consider himself to have the right to interfere in the court of the biys when they were discussing the rights of both litigants, that is, the bride and groom, but that when it comes to restoring the dear honor of the entire tribe governed by him, he considers himself obliged to express your opinion. He considered it fair to reward the groom and his parents with the return of the bride price and payment of the kuna, but regardless, to satisfy the tribal honor, he proposes to refuse the bride’s uncle, Dikambay, who is present here, the bride he wooed in the Ataban lineage, of course with the return of the bride price and to him, but without payment of a penalty (kuna). The proposal was accepted unanimously by the biys, but with the consent of Dikambaya. Dikambay stood up and yawned that, wanting to save his niece and restore peace between the two tribes, he agreed to the biys’ proposal. The matter was decided by the congress unanimously. Dikambay was paid 50 horses and the Atban groom and his family 100. Thus, the dispute, which lasted more than a year, ended, to everyone’s satisfaction, and the bride’s young brother Khodzhir was sent to her and her parents in the villages of Sultan Ali as a messenger with good news. The Biys left. Tezek went through the villages to gather his atbans in order to follow me on an expedition to help old Burambai, and I went with Peremyshlsky to an overnight stay prepared for us at Talbulak, several miles from the place of our meeting. From here I let my detachment on the Turgen River know, so that he, slowly, the next day (June 1), without waiting for me, would make his transition (as was intended by me) from his overnight stay on the Turgen River to the next one on the Kara River. Turuk, since I, together with Colonel Peremyshlsky, accepted the invitation of Sultan Ali to the villages of his son Ables, who was roaming on the Turgen River somewhat higher than the overnight stay of my detachment, at the exit of this river from the mountain valley. On the night of June 1, it rained in Talbulak, and the morning was cloudy. We left no earlier than 7 o’clock in the morning and reached the villages of Ables in a few hours. The yurt displayed to us consisted of felts beautifully embroidered with braid and was luxuriously decorated with Bukhara carpets. But much more interesting for me was the permanently inhabited yurt of Ables, to which we were invited for refreshments and where I could get acquainted with all the household items of the rich Kirghiz of the Great Horde, and with their handicrafts, such as, for example, with their snow-white felts made of camel hair , embroidered with colored cords and trimmed with wide variegated braid, as 127

well as with beautiful multi-colored felt carpets, sewn in mosaics from colored felts, etc. We could rightly be surprised at the spaciousness and comfort of this residential yurt and the richness of its high-quality Bukhara and Kashgar decorations and Tekin carpets, and a variety of household utensils, partly Oriental, partly Russian, arranged on carpet bales along the walls of the yurt. Among these utensils there were Chinese porcelain cups, and Russian glass glasses, and saucers, and Russian knives and forks, and silver spoons, and beautifully shaped Bukhara copper kumgans (washstands and basins), and Russian wooden utensils: large bowls that replaced dishes, and numerous Russian cellars and boxes. On one side of the yurt there was a large sofa bed, covered with rich blankets, mosaically sewn from multi-colored silk fabrics. Cloth napkins beautifully embroidered with multi-colored silks covered the carpet bales, beautifully tied with homemade cords, placed along the walls. In front of the sofa bed, sitting on a Tekin carpet, was Ables’s wife, dressed in a rich Chinese silk robe. On her head was a white, picturesquely folded bandage. When Ali Sultan entered the yurt, a rich silk curtain fell in front of the part of the yurt in which Ables’s wife was sitting and hid her, since she was not supposed to appear in front of her father-in-law. The meal began. First, kumys was served, then tea in Chinese cups with sugar, raisins, sear, bursak and Tashkent sweets. Then the meal continued with a very tasty tail fat pilaf with lamb, raisins and onions. Ables’ little son came out and his two little sisters flashed by: the latter in silk robes and Kyrgyz trousers, with khchekh hats on their heads. Then we returned to our yurt, where Ables took us; he was richly dressed in a robe embroidered with gold and had on his head a conical velvet cap, embroidered with gold and trimmed with sable. Another treat was served here, consisting of lamb and horse meat. About one o’clock in the afternoon I said goodbye to the hospitable hosts and Colonel Peremyshlsky and galloped off to catch up with my detachment. We crossed Turgen opposite three mounds, quickly drove along a foothill plain cut by deep ravines and hollows, twelve miles from Turgen we crossed the Cherganak River and, having traveled another eight miles, caught up with our detachment. With him we drove another ten miles, reached the Kara-Turuk River, where we camped for the night at the river’s exit from the mountain valley. The Kara-Turuk River unpleasantly struck us with the dark, dirty color of its water, from which its name came. This color depended on the destruction of clayey porphyries, the outcrops of which were at the beginning of the gorge, not far from our overnight stay. The soil as the river emerged from the mountains consisted of fertile sediments, and further down the river there were good meadows and pastures, but the hills closest to the river had sandy and clayey soil, not particularly fertile, covered partly with rosehip bushes and Sophora alopecuroides. Among the herbs, the most striking were the steppe forms of astragalus (for example, Astragalus schrenkianus). From the nearest of these foothills, the sunset view of the mountains east of Ili Altynemel, Alaman and Katu was extensive. The mountains to the south of us, covered with fog when we arrived for the night, cleared up in the evening, and fresh snow that had fallen in large quantities during June 1 could be seen on them. The night of June 2 was cold, but at 7 o’clock in the morning the temperature rose to +12.2 ° C. We left 128

our bivouac at 10 o’clock in the morning and followed the foothills directly to the east along the base of the lowered continuation of the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau. The soil on our way was at first sandy and barren, and then clayey and quite fertile. Since the entire thirty-verst space that we covered on June 2 between Kara-Turuk and Chilik, although it had a steppe character, lay entirely in the second, that is, cultural zone and was very convenient for making irrigation ditches, it contained quite extensive arable lands of the Atbans. The vegetation of this foothill steppe, in which the flora characterizing the cultural zone of the Trans-Ili Alatau had a strong admixture of the Asian-type flora of the lower steppe zone of the Trans-Ili region, seemed, in its ashen color, as if scorched by the sun. Although my collection on June 2 was not the most interesting, I still managed to find on that day a new, unknown asteraceous plant from the genus Gousinia, which later received my name (Gousinia semenovi n. sp.) [In my diary on June 2 1857, the following plants were recorded on the foothill steppe between Kara-Turuk and Chilik: Papaver pavoninum, Sisymbrium sophia, Sis. brassicaeforme, Erysimiim canescens, Capsella bursapastoris, Euclidium syriacum, Dianthus crinitus, Lavatera thuringiaca, Peganum harmala, Ruta sieversi, Hypericum perforatum, Sophora alopecuroides, Medicago lupulina, Trigonella polycerata, Astragalus schrenkianus, Rosa cinamomea, Rosa laxa, Spiraea hypericifolia, Potentilla bifurca, Umbilicus platyphyllus, Carum setaceum, Galium verticillatum, several species of wormwood (Artemisia scoparia, Art. oliveriana, Art. maritima, Art. sacrorum, Art. vulgaris, Art. annua), Cousinia affinis, Cous, semenowi n. sp., Filag arvensis, Cichorium intybus, Taraxacum sp., Tragopogon pratensis, Scorzonera sp., Cynoglossum viridiforum, Verbascum thapsus, Verb, blattaria, Orobanche amoena, Plantago lanceolata, Chenopodium botrys, Orchis turkestanica, Allium coeruleum, Trilicum aegylops, Poa bulbosa , Agropyrum prostratum, Agr. cristatum.]. The invasion of steppe plants into the cultural zone was especially noticeable about ten miles before reaching Chilik, where the hitherto continuous northern chain of the snowy Trans-Ili Alatau broke off abruptly and seemed to end, continuing however further with a lower ridge that no longer reached the snow line. The mountain that forms the tip of the high snow chain was called Bokaibik by the Kirghiz (that is, steeply falling mountain). To the east of it, through the transverse gorges of the lowered chain, two rivers emerge into the foothills, not far from each other, originating in the alpine zone of the Trans-Ili Alatau, where they flow in valleys parallel to each other. These rivers - Asy-su and the much more significant Chilik - merge at the exit from the mountain gorges in the foothills. Of these, the less significant - Asy-su - was to such an extent developed into ditches for irrigating Atban arable lands that it reached the incomparably more abundant Chilik by a completely dry riverbed, covered with huge boulders of porphyry and syenite. Through this river bed we hardly reached the Chilik current, which with extraordinary speed rolled its noisy waves through the huge rocks it brought from the depths of the Trans-Ili Alatau. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon we had already stopped on the left bank of the Chilik at the confluence of the then dry Asy-su riverbed into it. Here a spacious Atban yurt was set up for me, which was in great need, since very soon a black cloud descended 129

from the mountains and it started pouring rain, and meanwhile the owner of the local foothills, Sultan Tezek, came to me for the necessary meeting, with whom I already met at the Atbanodulat congress. Under the protection of a strong yurt, for three hours, despite the bad weather, we could comfortably, over a cup of tea I offered to my guest, finally talk with him about the expedition ahead of us and, having distributed our roles in assisting the old Boginsky manap Burambai, agree on the place of our meeting and connections in front of the Burambai nomads near the mountain pass at Santasha (the base of the Tien Shan range). Upon my closest acquaintance with Tezek, who enjoyed the reputation of a warrior throughout the Great Horde, I became convinced that I was dealing with a truly outstanding personality. Tezek was a little over 40 years old; He was tall, open-looking, of an aristocratic Kyrgyz type, with the graceful manners of a white-bones man, but far from athletic in build. He was even born a premature baby, which is why he received the name Tezeka (which means litter in Kyrgyz). But its origin [The tribes of the Atbans and Dulats of the Great Horde retained the common name Wusun in the middle of the 19th century. Their sultans considered their family to be descended from more ancient rulers than the Genghis Khanids, who were the ancestors of many sultan families of the Middle Horde; it is quite possible that the sultans of the tribes that retained the name Wusun descended from the ancient Wusun rulers (Kun-mi), with whom the Chinese dynasty was related back in the 2nd century BC.], his innate talent and favorable circumstances for him during his youth developed him into an absolutely outstanding personality. These circumstances consisted in the fact that the Great Kyrgyz Horde, after all the others, entered into Russian citizenship and roamed on the farthest outskirts of Russian possessions in the Kyrgyz steppe, enjoyed great independence before occupying the Trans-Ili region, that is, until the second half of the 19th century, and did not have any close and immediate Russian authorities, such as the subsequently established bailiff of the Great Horde, and was subordinated only to the Semipalatinsk governor, who lived in his regional city on the Cossack Siberian line, passing along the Irtysh far behind the Kirghiz steppes, a thousand miles from the lands of the Great Horde, which occupied a vast area in the southern part of Semirechye to the Chinese borders of the Kuldzha region and in the TransIli region to the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, which separated them from the lands of the Kara-Kirghiz, who were partly in nominal dependence on China, but most of all in the citizenship of the Kokand Khan. With these wild and predatory mountaineers, the Kirghiz of the Great Horde had to fight for existence around the half of the 19th century, all the more difficult since there was not a single Russian settlement on their lands until 1854, and the closest Russian stronghold to them was the city of Kopal, occupied settled and lasting Russian colonization only since 1859. But even this outpost of Russian rule did not give our nomadic subjects a proper foothold against their foreign enemies, since the local Kopal authorities were not so much afraid of the KaraKirghiz as of their terrible responsibility before the St. Petersburg authorities for inciting international clashes. The Kirghiz of the Great Horde, constantly subjected to raids and barantes by their predatory foreign neighbors, therefore 130

had to seek salvation in courageous and energetic self-defense. These conditions of independent struggle for existence developed between them in the middle of the 19th century such courageous and heroic types, to which the sworn allies of my enterprise belonged, namely Sultan Tezek and Biy Atamkul. Having become thoroughly acquainted with Tezek, I soon came to the conviction that with such an ally I could finally realize my cherished dream of paving the way from Russia into the depths of Central Asia, into the depths of the most central of the Asian mountain systems, completely inaccessible to geographical science until then. continent - Tien Shan. My rapprochement with Tezek happened especially quickly, because he, with his characteristic precision of mind, understood where his role began and where it ended, and found it advantageous for himself to place himself, with all his horsemen, in full my order, knowing from my reputation already established during the entire journey that I do not allow any extortions from the Kirghiz, and I will not accept any gifts from the goddesses who came under our protection, and that all the gratitude of Burambai for the help provided to him will fall to Tezek. We only had to agree on the time and place of our congress before the Burambai nomads. Before evening, when the weather cleared up, I had already parted with Tezek and from 5 o’clock in the afternoon I began my scientific work: examining the surrounding area and hypsometrically determining the absolute altitude of our overnight stay. This latter turned out to be (at the confluence of Asa and Chilik) 880 meters. The air temperature at 6 o’clock in the evening was +14.1° C. The vegetation in the valley at the exit of the Chilik River from the mountains was very rich. The wonderful greenery of the trees and flowering herbs seemed like a dark emerald oasis among the gray desert of the surrounding foothills, where steppe vegetation extended even above the valley from which Chilik flowed. Woody vegetation consisted of Siberian poplars (Populus nigra and P. suaveolens), trans-Ili maple (Acer semenovi), four species of willow (Salix songorica, S. alba, S. purpurae and S. viminalis), boyar (Crataegus sp.), sea buckthorn (Hipophae rhamnoides) and cherganaka (Berberis heteropoda). All these trees and shrubs were intertwined with Djungarian clematis (Glematis sorgarica) [Of the herbs I collected that day on the lower reaches of Chilik, I entered the following species in my diary on June 2: Ranunculus acer, Cynoglossum viridif lorum, Orchis turcestanica, Carex punctata, Elymus junceus, Agropirum cristatum. ]. On June 3, in clear weather, the thermometer at 7 o’clock in the morning showed +15.5° C. First of all, we tried to navigate the surrounding area to continue our journey. Our guides called the mountains of the foothill zone between the Asy and Chilik rivers Saushkan, and the more distant ridge that separated the longitudinal valleys of Chilik before they emerged from the mountains was called Ortotau. They called the lowered continuation of the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau beyond Chilik Seyrek-tash, and its further continuation Boguty, but through the gorge broken through by Chilik, an even more northern and parallel to Seyrek-tash and Boguty and higher Turaigyr chain was visible. None of these chains reached the snow line anymore. Our further path went through two passes - Seyrek-tash and Turaigyra, since the possible path through the Chilika gorge was considered at that time completely inaccessible for our large detachment and especially for 131

camels. We left our overnight stay at 8 o’clock in the morning and immediately crossed the ford found by our Kyrgyz through the noisy, stormy and foamy Chilik, crossing which, however, at the beginning of June, when the strongest snowmelt had not occurred in the alpine zone, does not pose any great danger . A few miles beyond the ford, we began to climb strongly to the mountain pass of the significantly lowered northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau. This entire lowered chain seemed completely treeless on its slopes, and only the valley along which we climbed, enlivened by the flow of a stream, was picturesquely bordered by a whole row of light green spreading maples. Higher up, the valley turned into a rocky gorge, consisting of siliceous shales with a north-east to south-west strike of 65° and a northward dip of 80°. The bedding of this siliceous shale was especially clear from its contact with the porphyry, which raised its strata. Further, our road went through a narrow porphyry gorge, overgrown with shrubs: argay (Cotoneaster racemiflora), hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), showered with white flowers, currants (Ribes heterotrichum), honeysuckle (Lonicera microphylla) and beautiful rose hips (Rosa platyacantha and R. cinnamomea). Finally, we reached the ridge itself, covered exclusively with meadow herbaceous vegetation, which, however, did not have an alpine or even subalpine character. To our right was Seyrek-tash, that is, an overhanging stone, from which the entire pass got its name. At the top, near the very top, we met a spring flowing to its northern side and having a temperature of +4.8 ° with an air temperature of +16.5 ° C and a weak east wind. Here I made a hypsometric determination, which gave 1,560 meters for the top of the mountain pass. From this peak to the north the view into the Ili Valley was very extensive. Beyond the Ili River rose first the sandy mountains, then the pseudo-volcanic Katu hills and the Kalkan mountains located on the very border of China, and then on the northern horizon the Alaman snow chain, which was part of the Semirechensky Alatau, the eastern, even higher continuation of which disappeared into the fog, already within the Chinese borders . During my passage through Seyrek-tash on June 3, I managed to discover two new, still unknown asteraceous plants from the genus of daisies (Chrysanthemum), later named Chrysanthemum (Pyrethrum, originally Tanacetum) alatavicum n. sp. and Chr. (Pyrethrum) semenovi n. sp. [During my passage through Seyrek-tash on June 3, I collected the following plants: Helianthemum songaricum, Dianthus crinitus, Caragana aurantiaca, Potentilla multifida, Rosa laxa, Cotoneaster racemiflora, Umbillcus platyphyllus, Ribes heterotrichum, Patrinia intermedia, Convolvulus gortshakovi, Conv. pseudocantabrica, Scutellaria orientalis, Lagochilus diacantophyllus, Ceratocarpus arenarius, Salsola arbuscula, Thesium multicaule, Euphorbia alatavica, Ephedra sp.]. From the pass at Seyrek-tash we descended through a transverse porphyry gorge onto a dry, waterless and rather barren plateau separating the parallel mountain ranges of Seyrek-tash and Turaigyr. The rock outcrops we encountered consisted of siliceous shales with a NE to SW strike of 70° and a dip of 40° to the SE. The shale was metamorphosed in places by intruding porphyry, small mounds of which appeared at the end of the slope. When these hills passed into the plain, the soil was dry and barren, and the grass flora was dominated by thorny plants, such as Acantophyllum pungens, spiny and non-climbing Con132

volvulus (Conv. gortshakovi and Conv. subsericeus), spiny Eremostachys sp. The soil of the intermountain plain onto which we descended was sandy-clayey, covered with pebbles and fragments of porphyry and siliceous shale. Here and there there were salt licks, that is, white deposits of salt on dried mud. Having finally met a little spring to the left of our path, we settled down here for a rest and overnight stay. The hypsometric definition here gave me 1,120 meters for the height of the plateau on which we were located. The Celsius thermometer showed +18° at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Ahead of us towered Turaigyr, which differed from the Seyrek-tash we crossed in that its entire northern slope was covered with spruce forest. Through the gorge cut through by Chilik, a view of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, consisting of a continuous row of snow whites, opened up. On June 4, the weather, after a night storm and heavy rain, cleared up, and the Celsius thermometer at 8 o’clock in the morning showed +12.5°. At this hour we set off and spent 1 1/2 hours crossing the flat plateau, on which we had our overnight stay, to the base of Turaigyr. The plain was completely barren and completely covered with pebbles and fragments of red and diorite porphyries and hornfels, which became larger and larger as they approached the base of the ridge. The color of the rocky desert was gray, there was almost no vegetation on it, and only twice did we come across circles overgrown with the steppe plant harmala (Peganum harmala). Turaigyr rose steeply before us, stretching straight from west to east. Its entire northern slope, starting from the breakthrough of the Chilika River through it, is covered with spruce forest. The highest peak of the ridge seemed to be one and a half times higher than the pass through which we had to follow. At the beginning of the ascent at this pass we encountered outcrops of siliceous shale, and then black lydite and breccia and, finally, clearly bedding conglomerate with a strike from N 80°20’ to E-SE and a dip of 40° to N. The road began quickly climb a narrow gorge, along which we first entered the forest and then the subalpine zone. Both of them are overgrown with luxurious woody vegetation: beautifully flowering rowan (Sorbus tianshanica) and argay (Gotoneaster racemiflora), blackberry (Berberis heteropoda), meadowsweet (Spiraea hyperieiilora), honeysuckle (Lonicera coerulea), juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina). I was amazed by the ascent to these heights of some steppe plant forms, such as Acanthophyllum pungens, non-climbing bindweed (Convolvulus gortshakovi), barnacle grass (Anabasis phyllophora), etc. No less interesting for me were the rock outcrops encountered along this path. At one place to the right of the road I met a very instructive outcrop of diorite porphyry, raising beds of conglomerate on both sides, which had a clear strike from W-N-W to E-S-E and dipping on one side 30° to the N, and on the the other is 20° to the south. We finally reached the top of the pass, climbing quite steeply along a slope densely overgrown with woody vegetation. Turaigyr forms on its pass not a wide ridge, like Seyrek-tash, but a narrow ridge. The hypsometric measurement gave me 2,000 meters of absolute altitude for the pass. The thermometer at 1 o’clock in the afternoon showed +14.5° C. At the top of the pass, diorite porphyry sharply bordered on reddish granite. The view from the pass was unusually vast and delightful. In the north, beyond the lower parallel chain of Seyrek-tash, it was possible to view 133

the entire Ili Plain to the distant snowy peaks of the Semirechensky Alatau, and below, to the left at our feet, the exit from the Turaigyr gorge of the Chilika River was visible. On the southern side of the pass in front of us stretched the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, rising picturesquely with a snowy wall, and beyond its descent to the left, in the far southeast, the most gigantic group of Tengri Tag in the Tien Shan shone with its continuous snow cover. At our feet, on the southern side of the pass and to the left of us, the Charyn River, formed here from the confluence of the Kegen and three Merke rivers, dug its bed in a terribly deep gorge. The flora on the top of Turaigyr did not yet have an alpine character [Here is a list of plants collected by me during my crossing of Turaigyr on June 4, 1857: Atragene alpina, Thalictrum minus, Papaver pavoninum, Goldbachia laevigata, Polygala comosa, Caragana aurantiaca, Potentilla recta, Pot. nivea, Pot. sericea, Cotoneaster intermedia, Cot. multiflora, Saxifraga hirculus, Lonicera microphylla, Patrinia intermedia, Scabiosa caucasica, Senecio sibiricus, Saussurea pygmaea, Androsa cemaxima, Polemonium coeruleum, Myosotis arenaria, Pedicularis physocalyx, Dracocephalum nutans, Scutellaria orientaiis, Anabssis phyllophora, Ephedra sp., I xiolirion tataricum, Iris ruthenica , Heleocharis palustris, Phleum pratense, Alopecurus ventricosus.]. Descending from the Turaigyr Pass, we barely found a spring on our way into the gorge that had +3.2° C, and here we stopped for the night. In the evening at 8 o’clock the air temperature was +9.2° C. Before sunset, we still climbed the mountain directly overlooking our bivouac, from where the artist Kosharov took views: to the right of the Charyn gorge, and to the left of the San-tash mountain pass and to distant Tengri-tag. On June 5, we left our overnight stay on the southern slope of Turaigyr at 8 o’clock in the morning and by noon we descended to the Jalanash plateau, in which the labyrinth of three rivers, already familiar to me from 1856, was deepened - Merke (Uch-Merke), Kegen and Charyn. The plateau had sandy-clayey soil, partly covered with boulders and rock fragments, but still more fertile than the plateau separating the foot of Seyrek-tash from Turaigyr. There was no forest vegetation on the southern slope of Turaigyr, but the mountains rising beyond the Charyn River were covered with forest. Having descended onto the plateau, we stopped at a rest stop around noon and made a hypsometric determination here, which gave us 1,430 meters of absolute height. The weather was clear, the Celsius thermometer showed +19°. About two o’clock in the afternoon we had already reached a cliff above the Charyn River, the valley of which is cut into the plateau for at least 100 meters. The slopes of this deep valley gave a complete understanding of the tectonics of the entire plateau, broken by a labyrinth of three rivers, merging in the depths of the valleys and forming the Charyn River in its stormy and deep cascade current, known as Ak-Togoya. The slopes of the valleys, cut into the plateau, consisted of sandy, weakly cemented sediments, filled with a myriad of boulders, reaching enormous sizes and forming, when more firmly cemented, a rock that geologists call pudding. The view from the cliff above Charyn, and indeed from the Jalanash plateau, was amazing. In the steep wall of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau rising in front of us in the south, up to 30 snowy peaks could be counted, and in the much more distant Tien Shan up 134

to 15 even incomparably taller giants could be seen. At about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we, continuing our path across the plateau, reached our descent into the valley of the first Merke, which dug a channel in the rocks of the plateau almost as deep as the Kegen River, which forms the Charyn River after its confluence with the three Merkes. Upon our descent into the valley of the first Merke, we were met with kumis by the warrior Atamkul, sent by Tezek at the head of his vanguard. Together with him, we stopped here for the night on the river bank, where the hypsometric determination gave me 1,350 meters of absolute height, that is, 80 meters below our halt on Jalanash. Taking advantage of the still late hour of the day, I made an excursion down the valley to the place where the Merke River merges with the Kegen River to form a stormy current known as Ak-Togoya. The cliffs of the valley of the first Merke were covered with quite rich vegetation, and at the same time I was able to make a fairly abundant collection of plants from the local flora, among which I managed to find two completely new species from the genus Astragalus, which later received the names: Oxytropis merkonsis n. sp. and Astragalus leucocladus n. sp. [The rest of the plants I collected that day (June 5) in the valley of the Merke River were the following: Glematis songaricaj var. integrifolia, Atragene alpina, Berberis heteropoda, Glaucium squamigerum, Fumariavaillanti, Turritis glabra, Alyssum linifoliura, Berteroa incana, Draba nemorosa, Thlaspi arvense, Sisymbrium sophia, Erysimum canescens, Camelina microcarpa, Arenaria serpyllifolia, Cerastium alpinum, Thermopsis lupinoides, Medicago falcata, Trigonella orthoceras, Caragana frutex, Car. aurantiaca, Car. tragacanthoides, Lathyrus pratenses, Onobrychis viciaefolia, On. pulchella, Coronilla varia, Prunus prostrata, Spiraca hypericifolia, Potentilla bifurca, Fragaria moschata, Rosa laxa, Rosa platyacantha, Cotoneaster multiflora, Lonicera hispida, Lon. coerulea, Lon. microphylla, Asperulaaparina, Patrinia intermedia, Artemisia vulgaris, Gnaphalium silvaticum, Acanthocephaius amplexifolius, Serratuia tenuifolia, Scorzonera purpurea, Codonopsis ovata, Campanula steveni, Onosma simplicissimum, Myosotis silvatica, Pedicularis sp., Ped. dolichorrhiza, Salviasilvestris, Dracocephalum ruyschiana, Eremostachys sp., Scutellaria orientalis, Thymus serpyllum, Polygonum acetosum, Euphorbia pachyrrhiza, Populus suaveolens, Urtica cannabina, Ephedra sp., Juniperus sabina, Koeleria gracilis.]. We returned to our overnight stay on the first Merka with a rich collection of plants and rocks. On June 6, the thermometer at 7 o’clock in the morning showed +19.5° C. Since the vast and high plateau, into which the entire labyrinth of Uch-Merke was cut, was already adjacent directly to the Tien Shan, we had only two passes left to the nomads of the Boginsky manap Burambay, located in the forest and subalpine zones of the Tien Shan foothills at the exit to the plateau from the Tien Shan gorges of the upper reaches and tributaries of the Karkara River. With favorable weather on June 6, we managed that day to first get out of the deep gorge of the first Merke on the plateau, then descend into the valley of the second Merke, the slopes of which turned out to consist of the same rocks as the slopes of the valley of the first Merke. Then we again climbed the plateau, and then again descended into the deep valley of the third Merke, which turned out to be swampy. When leaving this last valley, at the foot of 135

huge porphyry rocks, we were overtaken by the entire picturesque detachment of Atbans with Tezek and Atamkul at the head, who had come out of the valley of the Cheprashta River, where on the night of June 6 he was camping for the night. In the evening of this day (June 6), having separated from the Atbans before going to the foot of the Tien Shan foothills, we went to our overnight stay, which we chose at the Tiek-taz tract, on a spring flowing into the Kegen River, not far from its exit from the Tien Shan foothills Here I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 1,660 meters of absolute height, therefore this area was in the forest zone and in the zone of alpine meadows. At 7 o’clock in the evening the thermometer showed +9° C, and the flora of the surrounding plateau revealed the nature of the zone constituting the transition from forest to subalpine [Here is a list of plants collected by me during my stay in the Burambai nomads on the Karkarinsky plateau and Santasha at an altitude of 1,660 to 1,830 meters: Thalictrum Simplex, Anemone narcissiflora, Adonis vernalis, Ranunculus polyanthemus, Delphinium speciosum, Berberis heteropoda, Barbarea vulgaris, Turritis glabra, Cardamine impartiens, Eutrema alpestre, Viola biflora, Parnassia ovata, Polygala comosa, Gypsophila altissima, Cera Stium dauricum, Cer . alpinum, Geranium collinum, Ger. rectum, Thermopsis lupinoides, Megicago platycarpos, Cicer songoricum, Vicia sepium, V. cracca, Lathyrus pratensis, Hedysarum obscurum, Geum intermedium, Sanguisorba alpina, Alchemilla vulgaris, Potentilla viscosa, Pot. recta, Cotoneaster racemiflora, Ribes atropurpureum, Rib. rubrum, Saxsifragasibirica, Carumcarvi, Lonicera hispida, Lon. Karelini, Gallium saxatile, Valeriana officinalis, Acter limonifolius, Inula helenium, Achillea millefolium, Gnaphalium silyaticum, Senecio sibiricus, Crepis sibirica, Hieracium vulgatum, Codonopsis ovata, Campanula steveni, Primula nivalis, Polemonium coeruleum, Myosotis silvatica, Solenant Hus nigricans, Veronica spicata, Rhinantus cristagalli, Pedicularis sp., Ziriphora clinopodioides, Nepeta nuda, Dracocephalum altaiense, Dr. Ruyshiana, Lamium album, Rheum rhaponticum, Rumex aquaticus, Polygonum polymorphum, Thesium refractum, Hippophae rhamnoides, Euphorbia subamplexicaulis, Euph. esula, Picea schrenkiana, Orchis turkestanica, Iris guldenstaedtiana, Allium obliquum, Veratrum album, Juncus bufonius, Carex sp., Carex nutans, Elymus sibiricus, Bromus erectus, Poa songorica, Avena pubescens. I became acquainted with all this interesting flora during my three-day travels on the Burambai nomads on the Karkarinsky Santash plateau and during the first ascents to the foothills of the Tien Shan. Here and these days I managed to find that new plant from the genus Astragalus, which later received the name Astragalus leucocladus n. sp.]. On June 7, early in the morning, we left our overnight stay on Tiektaz and headed the closest route to the Boginsky nomads on the Malaya Karkara River. The old, almost 80-year-old patriarch of the goddess tribe met me unusually warmly in the village of his cousin, who was incredibly obese. Burambai’s joy at the arrival of Russian help was explained by his absolutely critical situation, since the entire eastern half of the Issyk-Kul Lake basin, which was in his possession, was already virtually lost to him. He cleared it both along the northern and southern shores of the lake (along Kungei and Terskey) since his defeat in the fall of 1854 and went to winter over the Santash mountain pass, leaving only 136

a few villages in the valleys of the Tyupa and Dzhargalan rivers - the eastern tributaries of the lake. The Sarybagishs tirelessly sent their barants to these villages, and in one of these raids they managed, while Burambai was with his army on Terskei, to bypass him from Kungei and from here reach his villages on the Tyupe River, completely defeat them , capturing part of his family, namely one of his wives and the wives of his three sons. This happened at the end of 1856, after which Burambay migrated to Santash, and the Sarybagish already considered the entire Issyk-Kul basin to be conquered by them, especially after the next episode that happened in the spring of 1857. One of the strong Goddess clans, Kydyk, with the biy of Samkal at the head, who was in the same relationship with Burmbai as appanage princes in ancient Russia were with the great ones, quarreled with the main Goddess manap and, separating from him, decided to migrate with his entire clan, number 3,000 people capable of carrying weapons, beyond the Tien Shan, through the Zaukinsky mountain pass. The Sarybagish, who already occupied the entire southern coast of Issyk-Kul (Terskey), insidiously allowed the rebel kydyks to enter the Zaukinsky mountain pass, but when these latter with all their herds and herds were already climbing the pass, they attacked from two sides - from the rear of Lake Issyk -kul and in front of Naryn, that is, from the upper reaches of the Syr Darya, and completely defeated them. All herds and herds of kydyks were recaptured from them; many people died in battle or were captured, and only the weak remnants of a three-thousand-strong clan escaped through the high valleys of the alpine zone of the Tien Shan and returned unwillingly to the citizenship of Burambai. Old Burambay, however, did not grieve so much over the losses of the Kydyks, who had separated from him without permission, as over the loss of his entire territory in the Issyk-Kul basin, his arable land and gardens on the Zauku River, and the captives of his family. The village where my first acquaintance with Burambai took place was located on Santasha itself. From the place of our first meeting with Burambai, by 4 1/2 o’clock in the afternoon we had already reached the villages of Burambai itself, located slightly above the mountain pass at Santasha. Here I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 1,830 meters of absolute height. On the evening of June 7, I had already met the entire family of the venerable manap. He had four wives. The eldest, Alma, behaved with great dignity. Captured by the Sarybagish in the fall of 1856, she was exchanged for noble Sarybagish prisoners taken before the spring of 1857. Another wife of Burambai, named Meke, was still in captivity among the Sarybagishs along with the wives of Burambai’s sons. His other two wives roamed in their own villages several miles from the eldest. Of the four daughters of the manap, I saw only one, quite beautiful, named Juzyum, but the most beautiful, Meiz, did not enter her father’s yurt. The old manap hastened to introduce his four sons to me. The eldest, Klych, was at least 50 years old. He looked like his father and had an ugly Kara-Kirghiz type. The second son, Emirzak, was distinguished by an intelligent face and had the type of Kirghiz of the Great Horde; the third, named Turkmen, had a pleasant appearance, but seemed simple-minded, and the fourth, Kanai, was a handsome boy of about 13. The wives of Klych and Emirzak were captured by the Sarybagish. The night I 137

spent in the spacious and beautiful yurt exposed to me in the village of Burambay at an altitude of 1,830 meters was cold. On the morning of June 8 there was even a slight frost. In the morning, Sultan Tezek arrived with his entire detachment of Kirghiz of the Great Horde. The rumor about the appearance of a strong Russian detachment at the foot of the Tien Shan, who came to defend the goddess’s possessions, spread like lightning throughout the entire Issyk-Kul basin. They told me that I had a small weapon (a pistol) in my hands, from which I could shoot as many times as I wanted. The rumors spread about us, with the usual exaggerations about our numbers and weapons, had a magical effect. The Sarybagish quickly left their nomadic camps, conquered from the goddesses, on both banks of Issyk-Kul (Terskey and Kungey) and fled partly to the western end of the lake and even further to the Chu and Talas rivers and even partly beyond the Tien Shan to the upper reaches of Naryn, as a result of which I received full opportunity to realize your intention to penetrate into the depths of the Tien Shan. in the direction of the meridian of the middle of Lake Issyk-Kul through the most accessible of its passes - Zaukinsky. On June 8, I had a final meeting on this subject with Burambai and Tezek. I explained to them that I was going forward only with my convoy (of fifty Cossacks) and Boginsky guides along the southern coast of Issyk-Kul (Terskey) and, having reached the Zauku River, I would turn south in order to cross the Zaukinsky Pass to the sources of Naryn ( Syr Darya). During all this time, Tezek and his detachment would have to remain to guard Burambai’s nomads, even if the latter decided to follow me and reoccupy his Issyk-Kul lands. Burambay was delighted. My ascent to the Tien Shan along the Zaukin Valley could not have been more beneficial to him, since it secured his possession of the most important of the Tien Shan mountain passes and its original arable land and garden plantings along the Zauku River. Therefore, Burambai himself volunteered to supply me free of charge with the necessary number of horses and camels for my first journey into the depths of the Tien Shan. The whole day of June 8 was spent gathering horses and camels. The night of June 9 in the Burambai nomads was still cold, but by 9 o’clock in the morning, with the sun shining, it was already hot (up to 20 ° C). CHAPTER FOUR My performance in 1857 with a Cossack detachment deep into the Tien Shan.Santash Pass.- Captives of the Goddess.- Ak-su River.- Meeting with the Sarnbagyashes near the Karakol River.- Zaukinsky mountain pass and the upper reaches of Naryn.- Dead battlefield.- Caves.- Issykkul Ukhta Kyzyl-su and the shores of this lake.- Tyup River.- Sources of Naryn.- Ancient Usun.- Alpine meadows.- Kungey and Terskey Alatau.- Meeting with the Sarybagish baranta.Tabulgatinsky pass.- Trip to the upper reaches of the rivers : Kokjara and Saryjasa.- Duana.- Khan Tengri and his glaciers.- Tekes River.- My mediation between Burambai and Umbet-Ali and four captives.- News of the death of Adolf Schlagintveit in Kashgar.- A trip to Musart and an expedition to the rescue Tezek.- Kurmenttsi Pass.- Chilik and Turgen Rivers.- Return to Vernoye.Return journey.- Ili Plain.- Trip to Tezek.- Lepsa.- Lake Ala-kul.- Tarbagatai.138

Return to Semipalatinsk.- Barnaul. - Omsk. - Return to St. Petersburg. On the ninth of June, I finally set out with indescribable delight, with my entire detachment, on my first journey into the depths of the Tien Shan, which had long risen before me. My detachment consisted of 49 Cossacks; one of the Cossacks fell ill and was left by me in the care of the goddesses, along with my serf servant, who also fell ill, really or feignedly. In addition to the Cossacks, my detachment included 12 Kara-Kirghiz guides and camel leaders given to us by Burambai, and my faithful companion, the venerable artist Kosharov. One of the Cossacks was always with me as a translator, since he had an excellent command of the Kyrgyz languages. In our detachment, in addition to 63 good Kara-Kirghiz riding horses (below us), there were 12 more camels. Our entire caravan very quickly left the villages of Burambai to the nearby Santash mountain pass across the mountain watershed between the Ili and Issyk-Kul basins. Santash rose very little above the Burambai nomads and got its name from a pile of stones (“Santash” means a thousand stones) piled up on the shore of a small lake. Regarding this pile of stones, the following legend has been preserved among the Kara-Kirghiz. When Timur (Tamerlane) in the last quarter of the 15th century undertook his first campaign from Samarkand past the southern coast of Lake Issyk-Kul to the remote eastern countries of Asia, he headed to the current Chinese Ili province through the most convenient pass from the IssykKul basin to the Ili, which received the name Santash only after Tamerlane’s campaign due to the following circumstance. Since Timur walked at the head of a countless army, at the pass leading to countries not yet subordinate to his rule, he decided to count the number of his troops even before the start of hostilities. For this purpose, walking along the coast of Issyk-Kul, he ordered each of his soldiers to take with them one stone. When crossing the pass, Timur ordered his soldiers to put the captured stones in one pile on the shore of the lake located on the pass. Thus, the number of stones piled up represented the total number of troops that crossed the pass. When, after a long campaign, Timur, having defeated all his enemies in many battles and conquered vast countries in the east, returned to his capital the same way through Santash, he decided to make a new account of his victorious army and ordered every warrior returning through Santash , grab one stone at a time from the pile piled there. This pile decreased enormously, but when it was counted, its size represented, on the one hand, the number of soldiers who died during the campaign, and on the other hand, it remained forever as their monument, built in a foreign country with their own hands. From Santash, having walked no more than five miles, we have already entered the basin of Lake Issyk-Kul to the top of its western tributary of the Tyup River. On the banks of this river, on this day (June 9), I managed to find a completely new asteraceous plant from the genus Tanacetum, later described by the botanist F. Herder under the name Tanacetum semenovii. In order to cross from Tyup to the valley that flows parallel to it, but to the south of it in Issyk-Kul and the Dzhargalan River, already familiar to me from a trip in 1855, I crossed diagonally through the wide Tyup valley and began to climb the low ridge of Kyzyl-kiya separating both valleys , overgrown in its

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upper part, where it already adjoined the Tien Shan, with a fir forest. From the pass a magnificent view suddenly opened up of the advanced range of the Tien Shan, to which the Kyzyl-Kiya mountains belonged. Having descended from the base of this mountain into the valley of Dzhargalan, emerging here from the gorges of the Tien Shan, I saw from here the entire longitudinal valley of Dzhargalan and the confluence of the Turgen-ak-su river emerging from the Tien Shan gorges into it and the entire main chain of the heavenly ridge (Tian) shining with its eternal snows -shan), which the Kirghiz called Mus-tag (snowy mountains). Although the longitudinal valley of Dzhargalan in its height, which is not much inferior to the height of Santasha, is already in the zone of coniferous forests, there was so little forest vegetation here that the local flora had completely the character of the flora of the agricultural zone of the Trans-Ili region, on which Vernoye and all the Russian settlements of the Trans-Ili foothills were located . This subsequently made it possible for Russian colonization to firmly establish itself in the Issyk-Kul basin and to establish here, by the way, on the Karakol River a flourishing urban settlement, which later received the name Przhevalsk from Przhevalsky’s grave located nearby. Having descended from Kyzyl-kiya to the Dzhargalan valley, we began to meet whole crowds of goddesses who were trudged on foot from Sarybagish captivity, since they had been abandoned by Sarybagish, who quickly cleared the lands they had conquered in Issyk-Kul before our arrival. The prisoners trudged along on foot hungry, emaciated and half-dressed, so we had to share food with them so that they would not die of hunger. Fortunately, we were driving with us from Santash a whole herd of sheep, which I had bought from the goddesses, and had good supplies of kurt (cheese), which Burambai had given me as a gift. On the Turgen-Ak-Su River, below its exit from the mountain gorge, we stopped for a half-day rest among bushes of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), black barberry (Berberis heteropoda) and tala (Salix). Having risen from a halt at about one o’clock in the afternoon, instead of heading straight to Terskey, the southern coast of Issyk-Kul, I decided to stop for the night in an area that was of keen interest to me, namely in the gorge of the Tien Shan itself, close to us, in which there was a well-known the Kara-Kirghiz received the warm healing spring of Alma-Arasan and from which the mountain river Ak-su, a tributary of Dzhargalan, flowed out onto the Issyk-Kul plain. Upon leaving our bivouac on Turgen-ak-su, we crossed three rivers, which were called Jerges among the Kara-Kirghiz. The current of the last of them, wide and fast, although shallow, is densely overgrown with beautiful trees. Finally, the goal of our journey appeared - the Ak-su gorge. We turned towards it and climbed to the foothill area, from where the blue Issyk-Kul with its two bays and the cape separating them was clearly visible. From this foothill area we descended into the very gorge of the Ak-Su River. Having reached the gorge, we followed it for about five miles along a path that ran along the left bank of the river high above its fast, noisy and foamy current, which justified its name Ak-su (white water). The steep cliffs of the mountains are densely overgrown, partly with spruce forest, partly with a forest of various deciduous trees, among other things, and apple trees, from which the healing spring got its name - Alma-Arasan. Half a mile 140

short of Arasan, outcrops of coarse-grained granite appeared, uplifting layers of sedimentary rocks, namely light gray limestones, which presented an excellent profile with a strike from E to W and a dip from N to 29°. Half a mile before Arasan, from the path along which we had laboriously made our way high above the noisy and foamy river, we began to descend along a very steep and rocky slope to Arasan itself. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains when, at 7 o’clock in the evening, we reached the famous spring, near which we settled down for the night. The entrance to the Arasan basin itself was locked with wooden doors, on which I found still surviving Tibetan inscriptions, similar to those we saw on Tamgaly-tash on the Ili River, thirty miles below the Ili picket. The warm spring, upon emerging from the ground, was separated into a fairly spacious pool 2 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1 meter deep and lined with granite. Its temperature turned out to be 40° C. The smell of the source is sulfuric, but the separation of gases is not visible and there are no bubbles. Their exit was hindered by a lot of debris at the bottom of Arasan, between which there was no visible place where the key was knocked out of the ground. A stream several meters long flowed from the Arasan basin, flowing into the Ak-su River. This river quickly rushed through the gorge through huge stones, was very foamy and in places fell in waterfalls. Its temperature at 7 o’clock in the evening was 11°C with an external air temperature of 15°C. Hypsometric determination gave an absolute altitude of 1,810 meters for our overnight stay. Waking up on June 10 at 5 o’clock in the morning at my overnight stay near a warm spring (Alma-Arasan), I hurried with particular pleasure to look around in the gorge of the Ak-Su River, since this was the first valley of the central Tien Shan that I managed to penetrate. In order to explore the nature of this valley as thoroughly as possible, I decided to climb it several miles along the right bank of the river, and then descend along the left to its end and reach the Issyk-Kul plateau through a very inaccessible gorge, along which there was no way to pass with my numerous detachment, packs and camels. I sent my entire detachment immediately forward along the bypass mountain road with the artist Kosharov in order to unite with him at the place where he, having descended from his rest stop on the Issyk-Kul plain, would cross the Karakol River at the place where, after several dozen years after that, the city of Karakol arose, which later received the name of our glorious explorer of Central Asia - Przhevalsky. At the same time (June 10, 1857), when, apart from the Cossacks accompanying me, not a single Russian had ever been in this area, I, wanting to be as light as possible, left with me only my always inseparable companion, the Cossack translator and a Kara-Kyrgyz guide who is well acquainted with the area. The question of whether there are volcanic rocks in the Tien Shan was in the foreground for me, and since I was already convinced that the crystalline rocks of the Aksu valley, uplifting layers of sedimentary rocks (limestones and shales of the Paleozoic systems), turned out to be granites and syenites, then all I had to do was carefully search to see if there were any volcanic rocks among the countless boulders carried away by the stormy river from the most distant peaks of the Heavenly Ridge. But there were no volcanic rocks between the boulders of the river in its valley. I could calmly proceed entirely to the study of the flora of the 141

Aksu Valley and make a complete collection of the plants I encountered, which turned out to belong to the subalpine, forest and partly cultivated agricultural zones throughout the entire length I explored. The woody vegetation of the valley consisted of coniferous species: Central Asian spruce (Picea schrenkiana), reaching the Himalayan ridge, apra (Juniperus sabina), also a characteristic tree species of Central Asian mountain ranges, and deciduous species of wild apple (Pyrus malus), rowan (Pyrus sorbus) and the following characteristic Central Asian shrub species: black barberry (Berberis heteropoda), irgai (Cotoneaster nummularia), boyarka (Crataegus pinnatifida), two species of currant (Ribes atropurpureum and R. rubrum), two species of honeysuckle (Lonicera hispida and L. microphylla). As for the flora of herbs, it had the character of a flora partly of the cultural zone of the Trans-Ili region, partly forest and even subalpine [Here is a complete list of herbs collected by me on June 10 in the valley of the Ak-su river above: and below Alma-Arasan: Thlaspi arvense, Sisymbrium brassicaeforme, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Nasturtium palustre, Dianthus crinitus, Silwne viscosa, Linum perenne, Malva borealis, Trifolium repens, Astragalus vicioides. Galium boreale, Artemisia vulgaris, Lappa tomentosa, Mulgedium azureum, Campanula glomerata, Asperugo procumbens, Verbascum phlomoides, Veronica anagallis, V. biloba, Dracocephallum integrifolium, Seutellaria alpina, Sc. galericulata, Lamium album, Eremostachys sanguinea, Urtica dioica, Iris guldenstadtiana, Triticum prostratum.]. Having examined in detail the flora of the Ak-su valley at a distance of several miles up from our overnight stay, we turned back and began to descend along the left bank of the river. The road was very difficult, since the valley had the character of a wild gorge, overgrown with very luxurious vegetation. Only about five versts below Arasan the valley widened, and since we followed its high left edge, a vast view of the entire Issyk-Kul plain gradually opened up from it. Soon we saw at the foot of the mountains a fairly wide river, shining with a silver ribbon, across which several dozen horsemen were crossing. This river was the same Karakol on which we agreed to meet with our detachment. Naturally, from a distance we mistook the crossing horsemen for our detachment, but we soon noticed our mistake and considered that it was a strong detachment of well-armed Sarybagish, which walked from east to west and crossed Karakol, which was very high in water at that time. The Sarybagishi, noticing us, sent several horsemen to meet us. Our situation was dangerous, since a hostile meeting seemed inevitable to us. Our descent was steep and difficult and, to our misfortune, in one place we had to jump over a rut, and the horse of my faithful companion suffered some kind of damage to the spine, after which it could only walk. At last we found ourselves face to face with six hostile horsemen, from whom we were separated only by a narrow, shallow rut. Our weapons were ready, but without resorting to them, we entered into preliminary negotiations, as often happened in ancient times during hostile meetings between Russians and steppe nomads (Polovtsians). When the Sarybagish asked who we were, we answered that we were Russians and belonged to that large detachment that came to the rescue of the goddesses. And when asked where our detachment was, we answered that it was very close behind the mountain and would show up now. Then they told us that for now 142

they could very easily attack us and capture us. We explained to them that this would cost them very dearly, since we have weapons with us that can fire as many times as we want, and that in a battle with us they would only lose their time, whereas now, before the detachment arrives, they can It’s easy, after finishing your entire crossing of the river, to gallop away from our detachment. Luckily for us, our detachment suddenly began to appear from behind a high pass. The sun played on the shining weapons of our advanced Cossacks, and then our camels walked orderly and measuredly, one after another, accompanied by the Goddess’s horsemen. There seemed to be no end to the troop descending from the mountains. Our hostile interlocutors quickly galloped to the crossing, through which the Sarybagish detachment had already managed to cross, and they all rushed to the southern coast of the lake. The descent of our detachment and its crossing of the river lasted an hour and a half, and then we took a short rest on the sandy banks of Karakol, heavily overgrown with barberry and sea buckthorn. Here I learned from the stories of Kosharov and the Cossacks about the reasons for the slowdown of our detachment. The bypass road through the pass turned out to be very inaccessible for pack animals. The paths were so narrow and steep that more than once we had to reload the camels. At one point one of the pack horses fell off its pack and was completely broken. Her pack had to be pulled out of the abyss and laid out on three spare horses. The Kirghiz, who owned the horse, hugged and cried over it as over a friend, and, parting with it, cut off its ear and tail and took them with him. Of course, I hastened to give him one of my spare horses. Having taken off from our halt, we crossed several rivers and spent about an hour in the afternoon on the Chulpan River, and then we set off again and by 3 o’clock in the afternoon we reached the Jety-Oguz River, where we stopped for the night. Here we met many men, women and children, and with them were several horses and bulls and three yurts. These were Boginsky captives, released by the Sarybagish, who fled from the arable lands and ditches, which they annexed from the Boginians after their defeat. The view from our overnight stay to the south through the Jety-Oguz gorge to the Tien Shan was amazing. The snow-white two-horned Oguz-bash closed the valley in the south and was similar to the Jungfrau mountain of the Bernese Alps, but was even more original and magnificent both in its shape and in its whiteness. Since evening had not yet come, I managed to look into the Dzhetyoguz valley, the second of the Tien Shan valleys that I visited. I did not encounter any rock outcrops and limited myself to a thorough examination of the boulders deposited by the river. Between them there were the same granites as in the Ak-Su River gorge, syenites, coarse-grained diorites, gabbros, gray limestones, black and red porphyries, in small quantities gneisses, sandstones, amphibolites, hornblende shales and breccias, but volcanic rocks it didn’t turn out. The Jety-Oguz gorge is densely overgrown with shrubs: black barberry, irgai (Cotoneaster nummularia), boyar (Crataegus pinnatifida), honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) and rose hips (Rosa cinnamomea). All this was intertwined with beautiful clematis (Clematis soongorica). Upon returning to our bivouac, we enjoyed an extensive and magnificent view to the south of the vast blue lake, and beyond it - the high wall of the southern chain of the Trans143

Ili Alatau (Kungei Alatau - Ed.), consisting of a whole series of scenes jutting out as a continuous ridge of snow. The sun was already setting towards evening, dark clouds were hovering over Kungei, spectacularly illuminated by the sunset. At a time when the snowy peaks of Kungei Alatau had already begun to light up with their alpine shimmer [Alpengluhen], the soft dome-shaped foothills were bathed in such a light that likened them to light smoke or a cloud, as if all these mountains were burning and smoking. On June 11, we left our overnight stay and, having crossed Dzhety-Oguz, began to climb the saddle-shaped foothills that separate the main ridge of the Tien Shan from its advanced chain, which the Kara-Kirghiz called Orgochor. Having climbed the inclined plane, we walked further to the west-southwest, already at the same level, and after twelve versts we reached the Bolshaya Kyzyl-su river. To our right there was a magnificent view of the blue lake and its beautiful quadrangular bay, protected by spits: the Bolshaya and Malaya Kyzyl-su rivers flowed into it. To the left there was a wonderful view of the main range of the Tien Shan with its continuous row of snowy peaks. On the road we came across several graves and mounds. Then, after about five versts, we crossed Malaya Kyzyl-su, and even further we reached the Zauku River, on which was the famous mountain pass (pass) across the main ridge of the Tien Shan, leading to Kashgaria and Fergana. Before entering the Zaukinsky Valley we met 15 Goddess riders. This was a small reconnaissance detachment sent by Burambai to examine the nomadic places of the younger manap of the Sarybagish tribe named Tyuregeldy, who, due to his enterprise and courage, was the most dangerous enemy of the goddesses. Their reconnaissance mission was unsuccessful: it returned home without any prey, but in terms of reconnaissance it was very successful: it brought comforting news for me that Tyuregeldy was wandering far from the Zaukinsky Pass in the inaccessible and more western valleys of the Tien Shan, well protected from possible attacks of the goddesses. I could consider my ascent to the Zaukinsky mountain pass quite safe, although Tyuregeldy boasted that he would try to capture the Russian “ulkunture” (big boss), as the Kara-Kirghiz called me. After the meeting with the Boginsky horsemen, I sent - without any fear - my entire detachment along the road indicated by them, the direct route to the Zaukinsky mountain pass, myself, lightly, only accompanied by my constant companion a Cossack translator, as well as the head of the Boginsky reconnaissance party we met , who enjoyed the special confidence of Burambai, began a thorough examination of the surrounding area, which turned out to be equally interesting both geologically and historically. The tract along which we reached the Zauku River was called Kyzyl-jar. It received its name “Red Yar” from a huge outcrop of rather weak red sandstone, filled with boulders and located in beautiful layers with a clear strike from E to W and a dip of 15 ° to the S. This interesting rock is the Issyk-Kul conglomerate, very ancient in origin, found by me in this way for the first time at a distance of more than twenty miles from the lake and at a considerable height above its level. Historically, the tract was of no less interest. The historical role of this area begins already in the 7th century AD. At this time (630), the first traveler before me penetrated here - an eyewitness who brought geographical information about the Tien Shan and Issyk-Kul. It was 144

a Buddhist pilgrim, the Chinese Xuan-tsang, who penetrated here on his way from one of the cities of Semigrad, located south of the Tien Shan, namely Aksu, to the capital of the Turkic kagan (khan). The pilgrim’s path went through the Tien Shan, probably along the Zaukinsky mountain pass, descended to the southern coast of Issyk-Kul (Terskey), along which it went further through the Barskaun River, exited from the western end of the lake onto the Chu River and, passing through the Buam Gorge, reached the upper reaches of the Talas River and the country of “A Thousand Springs” (Min-bulak). In this country at that time there was the headquarters (residence) of the Tuguz (Turkic) Kagan, which was called Suyaba. A century after Xuanzang’s travel, the capital of the Khagans, Suyab, was destroyed by the Chinese in 748, and 18 years after that (in 766) it was again occupied by the Kharluks, the people of the Turkic tribe, who, like their other fellow tribesmen, were the Tukue. and the Kirghiz - came from the southern Altai and upper Yenisei. At this time, the interesting area of Kyzyl-Dzhar, in which I was (June 12, 1857), was occupied by the Dzhikil tribe, which had separated from the Kharluks, and founded their residence here, called Jar (Yar). From that time on (the end of the 8th century), the area of Yar (Kyzyl-jar) in its population and culture was no longer inferior to other similar areas on the northern slope of the Tien Shan, namely Suyab in the country of “a thousand springs” and Barskaun near the confluence of the river of this name in Issyk-Kul. In all these areas, even during my travels in 1857, ancient ruins were visible - the remains of ditches and very ancient and completely wild garden plantings, in the form of entire groves of apple trees and apricot trees (apricot trees). It is clear how much the elderly Kara-Kirghiz manap Burambay, who descended from the Dzhikil khagans who chose Kyzyl-jar as their residence, treasured the area of Kyzyl-jar and the lower part of the Zaukinsky valley, and how depressed Burambay was by the loss and destruction of his native nest, his arable lands, gardens and buildings. Only after examining the outskirts of Kyzyl-jar did I understand the importance Burambai attached to the expedition I had planned into the depths of the Tien Shan, past the residences he had lost, along the Zaukinsky mountain pass. She returned to him his homeland and lands blessed by nature, which had been the property of his ancestors for more than a thousand years, as well as the wonderful pastures of the upper reaches of the Yaxartes (Syr Darya) and the Heavenly Herbt, captured by his enemies. That is why the orders of the old manap, who considered my expedition his own business, were the most energetic. Burambay, who was intelligent and deserving of his complete trust, and whom I met with the head of his reconnaissance detachment, instructed, following our ascent to the Zaukinsky pass, to occupy, with the help of the detachment of Sultan Tezek, who was about to arrive after me, not only the Kyzyljar area and the Zaukinsky valley, but also the entire Terskey to the mouth of Barskaun, which Burambay considered the border of his possessions with Sarybagish. At the same time, the Bogin and Atban patrols were supposed to protect our rear from detour and attack by hostile Sarybagish during our ascent to the Zaukinsky Pass and to the sources of Naryn (the upper reaches of the Yaxartes). Thus secured, I parted with my companion (the head of the Boginsky detachment) and hurried, accompanied only by my Cossack 145

translator, to catch up with my detachment on its way through the Zaukinsky Valley. Having galloped for two hours, at about one o’clock in the afternoon we already found our detachment in the valley of the Zauki River at a bivouac after a thirty-mile march that day. Immediately upon my arrival, the entire detachment left their bivouac, and we went forward. After several miles of ascent, the river divided into two branches, and we followed the western one, which seemed to us the main one. The valley was wide and densely overgrown with beautiful spruce forest. All the rock outcrops remained away from me, but along the entire route I encountered masses of syenite boulders. The views across the valley were enchanting. Ahead of us, directly to the south, a wonderful group of snowy peaks (squirrels) opened up, bordered below by a wide border of tall spruce forests. To the right and to the left of this group of squirrels we were delighted by the bold rocky ridges, consisting of syenite battlements and towers, on which only snow clung here and there. In two places we noticed streams falling vertically from the mountains, one of which fell in the form of Staubbach, but was poorer in water. Finally, we entered the dense, shady groves of coniferous forest. I was struck by the amount of young growth that prevailed over the old trees, as if this forest had grown recently, which I had never seen before in Asia. But on one slope I noticed a vast expanse of completely dried out and fallen trees. Having passed through this upper forest zone, we crossed a difficult ford to the right bank of the river, and then, after a strong rise, we walked along a flatter, slightly rising valley and, after walking along it for about fifteen miles, we turned to the southwest. In the distance, ahead of us, a whole group of snow squirrels was visible, one of which seemed to close the valley. We walked about five versts along the bottom of the squirrels and finally stopped for the night, due to the fatigue of our horses and camels, at a place convenient for a bivouac for a large detachment. The hypsometric determination gave us 2,360 meters for this overnight stay. We met here countless marmots, who jumped out onto the stones as we approached and began their characteristic and piercing whistle. The rock outcrops above our bivouac, in a narrow and deep gorge through which a mountain stream made its way, falling like a waterfall, consisted of syenite. The vegetation in the upper part of the forest zone we passed through was subalpine and finally completely alpine [Here is a list of plants I collected that day (June 12) on the road through the Zaukinsky mountain pass: Atragene alpina, Thalictrum alpinum, Pulsatilla albana, Ranunculus pulchellus, Isopyrum anemonoides, Berberis heteropoda, Chorispora bungeana, Erysimum cheirantus, Thermopsis alpina, Caragana jubata, Oxytropis frigida, Hedysarum obscurum, Spirae oblongifolia, Potentilla sericea, P. fruticosa, Comarum salessowi, Cotoneaster nummularia, Pyrus aucuparia, Sedum coccineum, Saxifraga sibirica , Lonicera hispida, Aster alpinus, Callimeris altaica, Erigeron unif lorum, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Doronicum oblongifolium, Adenophora polymorpha, Primula nivalis, Pr. longiscapa, Androsace villosa, A. septentrionalis, A. filiformis, Scrophularia incisa, Pedicularis rhimantoides, Gimnandra borealis, Dracocephalum stamineum, Dr. heterophyllum, Acantholimon diapensioides, A. hohenackeri, Chenopodium hybridum, Rheum emodi, Rh. spiciforme, Polygonum viviparum, Pol. polymorphum, Parietaria micrantha, Pla146

tanthera viridis, Fritillaria palediflora, Tulipa altaica, Lloydia serotina, Carex atrata, Cnigra, C. frigida, C. capillaris, Festuca altaica, Bromus squarrosus, Avena pubescens. In a forest consisting of spruce (Picea schrenkiana), I noticed many mosses of the genus Sphagnum.]. On June 12, the thermometer at 5 o’clock in the morning showed only 3.5 ° C. At 5 o’clock we began our ascent, but after half an hour the river divided into two branches, of which the valley of one went to the southwest, and the other went directly to the south. The latter was indicated to us by all the Kara-Kirghiz guides as the closest, although more difficult and less accessible for our detachment, ascent to the Zaukinsky Pass. We turned along this path, but here at the last fir trees I decided to leave my entire detachment with packs and camels and only, accompanied by the artist Kosharov, seven Cossacks and two Kyrgyz with four pack horses and two spare horses, did I ascend to the top of the Zaukinsky Pass. Some of the Kara-Kirghiz guides called the river along which we decided to climb and which, according to their stories, flowed higher through two lakes, Kashka-su, while others called it Zauka. Which of the two names was more correct remains unknown to me. Turning directly to the south, we first walked along a fairly wide valley, quickly rising between high cliffs, consisting of black-green cherts, which replaced the syenites a little lower than the bivouac on which I left the detachment. The valley rose very quickly. Plants of the alpine zone began to appear: Callianthemum rutaefolium,. Trollius altaicus, Caragana jubata, Comarum salessowi, Androsace villosa, etc. On the road we constantly came across Alpine marmots [Probably Marmota baibacina (L.B.).], as well as ground bunnies or jerboas (Dipus sagitta?) [This is not could be Dipus sagitta (hairy jerboa), which lives in hummocky and dune sands (L.B.).]. Cliffs of grindstone black shale trended W-S-W. After an hour and a half of difficult ascent, we came out onto a beautiful and transparent alpine lake of a wonderful green aquamarine color, from which the river flowed, along which we climbed. Beautiful scoters (Casarca rutila) of a wonderful red metallic color swam on the lake. Having walked around the lake from the western side, we climbed onto a colossal pile of the same shale, from under which the river feeding it flowed into the lake from the south. The view from this pile of rocks back across the lake to a row of tall snow squirrels was amazing. But the transition from the lower alpine lake to the upper one was incredibly difficult for our horses, since the entire valley between both lakes was so littered and even blocked by huge blocks and slabs of siliceous and clayey shales, under which the river, from its exit from the upper lake to its confluence to the bottom, was buried so deeply that one could not even suspect its existence: this phenomenon was similar to that which occurs in Western Europe along the Rhone River, in an area known as perte du Rhoe. The vegetation on this entire pile of huge stones, under which the river was buried, was sparse. I did, however, collect a few plants: two beautiful brassicas of brilliant yellow and purple color (Erysimum cheiranthus, Hesperis matronalis), one scrophularia (Scrophularia incisa) and red tall Himalayan rhubarb (Rheum spiciforme). With incredible difficulty we reached the upper alpine lake, which also had a beautiful green color, but was less transparent. But the view across the lake to the south to the notch of a certain Zauki pass was even more pic147

turesque, which was facilitated by the fact that in the lower corner of the upper lake the shales were replaced by granites, which rose above its left bank with high and beautiful rocks, and on the upper right corner of the lake mountain peaks were visible with patches of eternal snow. Having descended onto the lake, we found a convenient place for bivouac nearby on its right south-eastern side at the very foot of the last ascent to the Zaukinsky mountain pass. Here I decided to stop for the night in order to have the entire next day at my disposal for the final ascent to the top of the mountain pass to the lakes that give rise to the sources of Naryn, that is, the upper reaches of the ancient Yaxartes (Syr Darya) that have not yet been reached by anyone. On June 13, we had already left our overnight stay before sunrise and first drove along the southern shore of the lake, but, having reached a river flowing into it from a mountain pass, we first began to climb along it, and then, turning to the east-southeast, we continued to climb uphill along paths laid in a zigzag between protruding rocks. Our ascent was especially difficult because on our way we began to come across corpses of animals that seemed completely fresh, lying in a wide variety of positions in which they had been caught by sudden death. Among them, horses were most often encountered, but there were also many camels, rams and cattle, and twice we encountered corpses of people. All of them have been perfectly preserved since their death (in May) in the icy atmosphere of the upper alpine zone. Our ascent to the mountain notch leading to the top of the mountain pass lasted at least two hours, since every careless step could cost us our lives. Our horses walked timidly, frightened by the corpses lying across the paths. At one turn, my horse, frightened by an unexpected meeting with such a corpse, shied away; I managed to jump off her onto the rock, and she fell down, but stayed on the cliff, catching her front legs on a protruding stone. Almost at the same time, one of our pack horses, as a result of a similar fright, fell from its pack, fell into the abyss and died. I had to stop on the rise, where they transferred my saddle to a spare horse, and I decided to leave four Cossacks and a Kyrgyz until the next morning at the foot of the pass, instructing them to save our pack by getting it out of the abyss. I myself continued my ascent, accompanied by Kosharov, three Cossacks and two Kyrgyz guides, who led two pack horses and one spare. On the steepest parts of the climb, my companions were forced to walk and lead their horses, and at the end of the climb I myself got off my horse and also walked, and was amazed that I constantly had to stop, suffocating due to the difficulty of breathing rare air on such height. Finally we reached the top of the pass, which presented me with an unexpected sight; the mountain giants were no longer in front of me, and in front of me lay an undulating plain, from which snow-covered peaks rose in relatively low hills. Between them were green lakes, only partially covered with ice, and where there was no ice, flocks of beautiful scoters (Casarca rutila) swam across them, striking with their brilliant metallic red and blue colors, reminiscent of the colors of birds of paradise. The hypsometric measurement gave me 3,380 meters for the absolute height of the Zaukinsky Pass. I felt a noise in my ears, and it seemed to me that blood would immediately come out of them. However, the matter turned out well, and I again mounted my horse in order to climb the nearest rather gentle peak, 148

from which I could survey the entire hilly highland and see several more lakes. Then, descending from the top, I continued my way south through wonderful alpine meadows. Luxurious vegetation covered all the slopes of the hills and was decorated with large, bright flowers of blue and yellow gentians, lavender swimmers (Hegemone lilacina), white and yellow buttercups. But most spectacular were the vast clearings, completely overgrown with golden heads of a special and as yet undescribed breed of onion, because of which this entire part of the Tien Shan received from the Chinese the name Tsun-lin, that is, onion mountains. The Cossacks ate these onions with pleasure: they thought they were so tasty. In addition to this breed of still completely unknown onion, which subsequently received the specific name in my honor Allium semenovi regel, I managed to find on this day (June 13) another new plant from the genus Oxytropis, which later received the specific name from the botanist Bunge, who described it Oxytfopis oligantha [Here is a complete list of plants that I collected on this day (June 13) at an altitude of 3,380 meters at the top of a mountain pass on the watershed of the rivers flowing into Zauku and Naryn (that is, the Issyk-Kul and Aral Sea systems). These plants characterize the high-alpine flora of the Tien Shan: Anemone micrantha, An. narcisiflora, Ranunculus altaicus, Ran. golidus, Oxygraphis glacialis, Callianthemum rutaefolium, Trollius altaicus, Hegemone lilacina, Isopyrum grandiflorum, Aconitum rotundifolium. Papaver alpinum, Corydalis gortchakovii, Draba pilosa, Viola gmeliniana, Viola grandiflora, Oxytropis oligantha, Dryadantha bungeana, Saxifraga flagellaris, Valeriana globulariaefolia, Primula cortusoides, Primula nivalis. Gentiana foliata, Gentaurea, Gent. prostrata, Gentiana kurros, Gent. frigida, Gymnandra borealis, Allium semenovi.]. After walking for two hours through these wonderful alpine meadows, we climbed another gentle snowy hill, from where we saw three more lakes, from which rivers flowed to the southern side of the pass to the southeast and, merging, formed a more significant river, the high longitudinal valley of which, heading west, she was lost in the foggy distance. This was the Naryn River, the upper reaches of the ancient Yaxartes, on the lower reaches of which (Syr Darya) Russia already had a firm foot. We wandered for another two hours between the sources of Naryn, but I did not dare to go down its valley: our horses were exhausted and wounded; With me, besides Kosharov, there were only three Cossacks and two Kara-Kirghiz. It was impossible to spend the night at such a height, and descending into the high longitudinal Naryn valley was too dangerous, since the strong baranta of Sultan Tyuregeldy could attack us there. Therefore, after spending about five hours at the Zaukinsky Pass, I decided to return back. On the way back, at the source of Naryn, we met a small light-brown mountain Tien Shan bear (Ursus arctos leuconyx). He, of course, found sufficient profit for himself in the field of destruction of the goddesses, to which we headed on our return journey. This decisive and last battlefield between the goddesses and the Sarybagish, according to our guides, should have been located a little to the right and east of our return path, between the peak we were familiar with, which we climbed, and the outskirts of the plateau along which we climbed to the pass . When the numerous Boginsky clan, with heavy losses, climbed onto the plateau of the Zaukinsky Pass, pursued, one might say, 149

on the heels of the Sarybagishs, then, convinced of the impossibility of fulfilling their original intention of migrating to Naryn, they decided to turn towards the east along the paths leading to Sary-jas and Kok-jar, and make their way to Karkara to the nomads of their supreme manap Burambai, from whom the rebellious family so frivolously separated. But at this turn, the goddesses, weakened by their losses on their difficult ascent, were overtaken on both sides by detachments of Sarybagish: Umbetala, who was chasing them on their heels, and Tyuregeldy, who bypassed them from the upper reaches of Naryn. In the clearing, which we entered from the foot of the peak of the plateau closest to the outskirts, the fate of the goddesses was decided after the last desperate battle. Everything that was still able to move from their herds and herds was repulsed by the Sarybagish and quickly driven away by them to the upper reaches of the Naryn, and everything that could not move fell exhausted on the battlefield, littering it with their corpses. Only those of the goddesses, under whom the horses still remained, galloped without looking back to the east, along the paths leading to the high valleys of the foothills of Tengri Tag, and were no longer pursued by their conquerors, who turned west to the Naryn valley with their rich booty. The day was already approaching evening when we, having rounded the peak we were familiar with, came out from its foot onto a “dead field”, covered with frozen corpses, among which were human ones. The impression this field made on me was incomparably stronger than the impression of the “morgue” on San Bernard. Only then did I deeply feel the poetic appeal of the great poet Pushkin to such a clearing with the words: “O field, field, who strewed you with dead bones?” And it seemed to me that something was swaying in front of me in this terrible dead field and that I was already hearing some living sounds here. And indeed, as I moved forward through this desert, I saw something sway in front of me, and, to my surprise, it was not a hallucination. A flock of Boginsky ssbak, who had remained on the battlefield since spring and fed there on corpses that had not decomposed at all due to the cold, rushed towards us with a joyful bark. These dogs stuck to us and remained our faithful companions during our entire further journey until returning to Vernoye. At about seven in the afternoon we quickly turned from the “dead field” to the northern outskirts, from which we began our descent along the same road along which we had ascended. It was already beginning to get dark when, halfway down the descent, we noticed below, at the foot of the pass, on the shore of an alpine lake, the lights of the bivouac of four Cossacks we had left there, who were waiting for us with concern about our fate. At the bivouac I found tea, dinner, and my white tent, in which I could sleep for four hours before dawn, having sent two Kirghiz at night to our main detachment, which was waiting for us in the Zaukinsky Valley, in order to warn him about our return. On June 14, before dawn, we began to descend along the familiar road past both alpine lakes and further along the Zauke River and at about 5 am we arrived to join our main detachment, which we found at the place where we left it on June 12 - near the last fir trees at the upper border of forest vegetation. The detachment, warned about our return, had already risen from its bivouac at night, and we, without wasting time, nonstop continued our descent from the Zaukinsky mountain pass, but no longer 150

with the haste with which we descended to join our detachment at dawn from alpine lakes to the upper limit of the forest zone. Already before the bivouac of our main detachment, the shales, of which all the mountain outcrops of the valley consisted, ended, and outcrops of crystalline rocks - granites began to appear. Halfway from our detachment’s bivouac to our overnight stay on Zauk (on June 12), I noticed on the left side of the valley outcrops and screes of diorite porphyry. Somewhat lower, after turning directly to the south, syenites have already begun, both in outcrops and in screes. Next we walked through a zone of dense and moss-rich spruce forest. Only as we approached Kyzyl-Dzhar did the coniferous forest thin out, and the spruce trees were replaced by mountain ash (Pyrus aucuparia). The interesting area of Kyzyl-Dzhar required additional inspection, which I undertook, without at all delaying the further descent of the entire detachment to Lake Issyk-Kul, separating from it lightly with my Cossack translator, the artist Kosharov and three Kara-Kirghiz who were well acquainted with the old residence of Burambay. I carefully collected samples of the characteristic, in my opinion, ancient Issyk-Kul conglomerate, from which the entire Kyzyl-Dzhar is composed, and checked the strike and dip of its layers. They turned out to be the same as I observed elsewhere during our ascent: the strike was from E-N-E to W-S-W, and the dip was 15° to the N. A sample of a conglomerate that became part of my extensive geological collection, which was later transferred to Museum of the Mining Institute [I collected rocks in well-formed samples throughout my route at every new exposure or change in rock.], consisted of red coarse sand, rather weakly cemented, with boulders of various Tien Shan rocks brought into the lake flowing into him by rivers. This conglomerate showed a tendency to form caves in it, which I noticed in one of its cliffs on the right bank of the Zauki River. One of these caves served as a warehouse for the mill where Burambai ground his bread. The inside of this cave was heavily smoked. I did not find any inhabitants from the animal world in it, except for two mice that ate bread leftovers. The bottom of the caves was inclined, in accordance with the inclination of the conglomerate layers 15° to the north. The most spacious of the caves was fenced with an artificial stone fence cemented with clay. Near the caves there were the remains of Burambaevsky fortifications. Having completed an additional survey of the Kyzyl-Dzhar area, we quickly went to catch up with our detachment, which was slowly descending along the road to Issyk-Kul. We drove straight past the ancient ruins through the steppe foothills of the Tien Shan and, having caught up with our detachment, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon we went to that beautiful bay of the lake into which both Kyzyl-su rivers flow. Here we stopped for a break and, in the hot weather, decided to swim, and the bay, convenient for this purpose, amazed us with its wealth of fish. Huge carp (Cyprinus carpio) shone in the sun with their beautiful scales and splashed in large numbers on the very surface of the water, getting tangled in dense thickets of aquatic plants from the naiad family (Potamogeton perfoliatus), with long stems rising from the bottom of which the bay was overgrown in the very middle [ This was probably the spawning of carp. (Ed.).]. We did not have any equipment for fishing with us, but the Cossacks, entering the water, took with them their sabers (swords) and, drawing them 151

naked, began to use them to chop the fish that were entangled in the seaweed and splashing on the surface of the water. This improvised method of fishing gave us up to 11 pounds of fish in about two hours, from which we cooked an excellent fish soup for the whole detachment, and salted the rest, obtaining salt through the Kara-Kirghiz from the nearest salt marsh. The water temperature in the bay turned out to be 20°.5 C while the air temperature was 28.5° C. The hypsometric determination gave me 1,370 meters of absolute height for our halt on the shore of the bay. We spent the night in thickets of sea buckthorn and other bushes on the banks of the Kyzyl-su river. On June 15 at 5 o’clock in the morning it was only 9.5° C. Having left our overnight stay at that hour, we reached the very shore of Issyk-Kul east of Kyzyl-su Bay in the shortest possible time. I decided to devote the whole day to exploring the shoreline of the lake, and then the flora of not only this strip, but also the entire plateau, in which the deep basin of the lake is embedded [Since there was not a single boat in the entire Issyk-Kul at that time, I could not even think about measuring the depth of Issyk-Kul and could judge it only from the testimony of the Kara-Kirghiz and from the general nature of the basin, which occupies a longitudinal valley between two gigantic mountain ranges and is similar to the basin of Lake Geneva. As it turned out later, according to information provided by V.V. Nagaev, in 1892 the depth of the lake was determined to be seven versts from the southern shore at 80 meters, 20 versts 256 meters, 42 versts 300 meters; the maximum depth of the lake can be considered 425 meters, that is, the lake seems to be the deepest of all European and Russian lakes, except Baikal and the Caspian Sea (in 1892, L. S. Berg discovered a depth of 702 meters near the southern shore - Ed.). ]. I was especially interested in the coastal strip, 30 to 60 meters wide, on which I noticed two old coastal ledges parallel to each other, each up to 3 meters high. On this coastal strip one could find everything that the waves of the lake, which had long been famous among the natives for its storms, threw onto its shores. First of all, I examined the boulders and pebbles thrown out by the waves of the lake, and became convinced that the rivers flowing into the lake from the Tien Shan did not introduce any volcanic rocks into it. I then found between these boulders many remains of fish, as well as a considerable quantity of shells, bones of water birds, and even the bones and tusks of wild boars. The remains of fish that I found belonged (except for carp) to the Marinka (Schizothorax pseudaksaiensis issykkuli Berg) and Osman (Diptychus dybowskii kessler) breeds familiar to me and the Cossacks who accompanied me from the rivers and lakes of Semirechye. The shells collected by me and subsequently sent to the zoologist Martens for identification turned out to be a new species of limnaea, described by him under the name Limnaea obliquata mart. On this very coast, not long before my trip, the goddesses found a copper cauldron, very ancient in shape and decoration, and several copper tools, apparently from the Bronze period. they were actually found and placed in the interesting Tashkent museum he created, but unfortunately, I do not know what happened to them after the closure of this museum.]. The water of the lake here was a beautiful transparent blue, but on the more distant horizon it was indigo blue and was very salty. The view from the arched shore to the 152

somewhat elevated Cape Kara-Burun jutting into the lake and to the main gigantic ridge of the Tien Shan, rising above the southern coast of Issyk-Kul (Terskey), is truly charming. Unfortunately, during my study of the Issyk-Kul basin, I was forced to limit myself to a thorough examination of the shoreline, and then move on to the study of the land flora of the Issyk-Kul plateau, since any hydrological studies of the lake basin in the absence of a boat were out of the question. Only my six trips in 1856 and 1857 in various places, as well as questioning the natives, convinced me that there are no islands of the type that Aral-Jol appears to be on Lake Ala-Kul, on Issyk-Kul and there could hardly be. It would be interesting for me to check the stories of the Kara-Kirghiz about the ruins of buildings that disappeared under the water, which sometimes, when the water is low, are visible to this day. In support of this testimony, the KaraKirghiz told me that they often found on the shore, which I examined on June 13, bricks and stones from which the buildings that had disappeared under the water were made. They showed me the place where they saw these buildings from the shore that I visited on June 14, 1857, and from the cape separating the Tyup and Dzhargalan bays. This place, it seemed to me, was located on the underwater continuation of Cape Kara-Burun and, in any case, in the eastern shallow part of the lake, because a large amount of sediment was constantly introduced into it. Regardless of these buildings that disappeared under the water of Issyk-Kul, there are also other historical testimonies about the islands that were on Issyk-Kul, now obviously disappeared. These indications date back to the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 14th century, according to the testimony of the Arab Shah, the great Timur (Tamerlane) placed his noble captives on an island in Lake Issyk-Kul, where he ordered a home to be built for them. In the middle of the 15th century, according to Muslim historians, one of the Mongol khans founded a fortification on an island among Issyk-Kul in the Koi-su area, in which he kept his family for safety. Comparing these three testimonies, I have no reason to doubt their validity and come to the conclusion that all three refer to the same island, which existed in the 14th and 15th centuries and was built up at that time and disappeared under the water of the lake along with its buildings later XVI century. Where could such an island be located? Without a doubt, in the eastern, shallow part of Issyk-Kul, since it was not rock-rock like the Aral-Tube on Lake Ala-Kul, but alluvial, and in this case it should be confined to the place indicated by the Kara-Kirghiz on the underwater extension of Cape Kara-Kul. breaker That the island was alluvial and was surrounded by shallow water, I find confirmation of this in the name of the area of the lake in which the island was located - “Koi-su”, which means mutton water. The name Koi-su is often found in Central Asia and is always applied to such shallow and calm waters that sheep can easily cross. This is actually a “mutton ford”. This could only be the water surface surrounding the alluvial island of Issyk-Kul, formed on the underwater continuation of the Kara-burun. It was not particularly difficult to disappear with all your buildings under the waves of Issyk-Kul during any strong storm that accompanied one of those earthquakes to which the coasts of Issyk-Kul were often subject. Thus, the fragments of buildings washed up on the coast, which I visited on June 14, 1857, do not 153

belong to the Wusun-Chinese period (II century), but to the Mongolian period (XIV and XV centuries). Having left the interesting shores of Issyk-Kul, we spent the rest of the day moving from the shores of the lake along the steppe surface of the Issyk-Kul plateau, and, having crossed the Dzhety-Oguz River, we went out to the Dzhargalan River, where we stopped for the night, having collected a rich material on the flora of the Issyk-Kul plateau, and I managed to find, despite the comparative poverty of the flora and the predominance in it of ordinary plants of the European-Sarmatian and West Siberian plain [Here is a list of this flora, compiled from records, supplemented and corrected after the development of my collection, processed botanists Regel, Bunge and Herder and stored in the herbariums of the Botanical Garden: Clematis soongorica, Thalictrum simplex, Ranunculus acris, Aquilegia vulgaris, Delphinium caucasicum, Berberis heteropoda, Glaucium aquamigerum, Cardamine impatiens, Berteroa incana, Chorispora bungeana, Sisymbrium brassicae, S. sophia, Erysimum canescens, Capsella bursa-pastoris; Lychnis dioica, Silene inflata, S. viscosa, Malva borealis, Geranium pratense, Peganum harmala, Haplophyllum sieversii, Rhinactina limoniifolia, Erigeron acris, Solidago virga-aurea, Achillea millefolium, Tanacetum fruticulosum ledinsdorum, Artemisia dracunculus, Artemisia sacrorum, A. vulgaris, A. absinthium, Senecio vulgrais, S. sibiricus, S. paludosus, Onopordon acanthium, Jurinea chaetocarpa, Cichorium intybus, Tragopogon ruber, T. pratensis, T. floccosus, Scorzonera purpurea, S. austriaca, S. marshalliana, S. tuberosa, Taraxacum officinale, Convolvulus lineatus, C. arvensis, Campanula patula, C. steveni, Chenopodium hybridum, Blitum yirgatum, Oxyris amaranthoides, Atriplex laciniata, Eurotia ceratoides, Ceratocarpus arenarius, Rheum rhaponticum, Rumexaquaticus, Atraphaxis lacti, A. lanceolate , Polygonum aviculare, P. polymorphum, P. cognatum, Hippophae rhanmoides, Euphorbia subamplexicaulis, Eu. esule, Eu. latifolia, Salix fragilis, S. pyrpurea, S. viminalis, Alisma plantago, Orchis latifolia. Thermopsis Lanceolaata, Medicagofalcata, M. Lupulina, Trigonella Polyserata, Trifolium Pratense, T. Repens, Lotus Corniculatus, Glycirrhiza Aspirima, Caragana Frutesceens, C . Pygmaea, with Tragacanthoides, Astragalus Hypoglottis, A. Onbrychis, A. Buchtarmensis, Vicia Cracca, Lathyrus pratensis, L. tuberosus, Prunus padus, Spiraea hypericifolia, Geumstrictum, Potentilla supina, P. bifurca, Sanguisorba alpina, Rosa platyacantha, R. cinnamomea, Crataegus pinnatifida, Cotoneaster nummularia, Cotoneaster multiflora, Pyrus malus, Galium boreale, G. verum, Lithospermum officinale, Echinospermum deflexum, E. microcarpum, Cynoglossum viridiflorum, Solenanthus nigricans, Hyoscyamus niger, Verbascum pholniceum, Dodartia orientalis, Odontites breviflora, Rhinanthus cristagalli, Pedicularis dolichorhiza, P. verticillata, Origanum vulgare, Th ymus serpyllum, Salvia sylvestris, Ziziphora clinopodioides, Nepetanuda, Dracocephalum altaiense, D. peregrinum, D. ruyschianum, Scutellaria orientalis, Lamium album, It rained all night on June 16 at our overnight camp in Dzhargalan. On June 16 at 7 o’clock in the morning, when we left our overnight stay on Dzhargalan, the weather had already cleared up somewhat, and the Celsius thermometer showed +14°. We climbed the coastal rampart and, along the gently undulating and slightly rising terrain, ascended to Tasma - a wide strip separating the parallel flows of the 154

Dzhargalan and Tyupa rivers. Having ascended Tasma, we saw the beautiful grave of the Boginsky batyr, named Nogai, who died on this place in 1842. This monument, the work of the best Kashgar craftsmen, cost the Nogai family quite dearly: they paid for it two iambs in silver, two camels, five horses and 300 rams. The monument looked like a small temple of oriental architecture with a dome and tower. In the front wall a door in a deep embrasure was visible, and the dome was painted with extremely rough frescoes, which depicted Nogai himself on a horse with a long lance in his hand, and behind him - also on a horse his son Chon-karach and then all members of the family Leg and a row of pack camels. Fantastic trees and even flowers were drawn between the groups. All the bricks from which the building was built were brought from Kashgar. Between them, the red bricks were somewhat rougher and worse than our Russian ones, but the gray ones were of better quality and were characterized by their strength and sonority. But the glazed bricks, apparently collected from ancient ruins, were especially durable and beautiful. The room inside the building was octagonal and high, about four meters in diameter, but completely empty. Our further passage through Tasma lasted another two hours. The soil here seemed much more fertile than on Terskei, and the grasses were richer, but still they had the character of a slightly sandy Russian-European steppe. Then we saw in front of us the entire wide valley of the Tyupa River, stretching from east to west, and the long Issyk-Kul Bay into which it flowed. The entire Trans-Ili Alatau ahead of us was covered in thick fog. After walking for half an hour across the Tyup valley, we reached the river itself, crossed it into a ford and came out onto the opposite ridge opposite Dzhantai’s grave. This tomb was taller and architecturally more beautiful than the first: it had a dome and two towers, and on its front wall there were beautiful patterned embrasures of windows and doors with interesting decorations on top. The room inside the building was high, cylindrical, and in the middle of it was a kind of sarcophagus. Following further from the grave of Dzhantai along the road to Kungei, that is, to the northern coast of Issyk-Kul, and crossing the first river Vadpak, we noticed here several ancient so-called “stone women”, which are found in the southern Russian (Novorossiysk) steppes, then -there are nomads from Central Asia along the entire route of resettlement. The local stone women were roughly carved from syenite, dug deep into the ground and had wide and flat faces, although male, and with long mustaches. We also came across “Chud” mounds here. It is obvious that Santash, as well as the entire space between the Tien Shan and the Trans-Ili Alatau, then both banks of the Issyk-Kul, and then the flows of the Chu and Talas rivers served as the most traveled routes of people’s migrations from the inner mountainous Asia, about which the Chinese chronicles have preserved very detailed memories. Already in the 2nd century BC, these chronicles often tell about the nomadic peoples with whom the Chinese became acquainted at the northwestern extremity of the Middle Chinese Empire, where its province of Gan-su, in a relatively narrow strip, invades the Central Asian Plateau, as if extending its hand to to capture it. The most energetic of the Asian nomads willingly strove to this northwestern extremity of the empire, finding here the “Achilles heel” of China, since from here, during the period of weakening of the 155

Chinese state, they could crush it with impunity with their invasions, taking with them rich booty from the settled Chinese settlements they ravaged . The most powerful and dangerous for China of these nomadic peoples two centuries BC were the Huns, who lived here with the tribes subordinate to them - the dark Mongolian-type Yue-jis and the blue-eyed and fair-haired Wusuns. In the second century BC, when the statehood of China, after a period of weakness, began to awaken again, the Chinese managed to somewhat push the Huns back from the Gansu entrance to the rich and fertile Chinese plains. The Huns retreated, and, in turn, drove the Wusun and Yue-Jis out of their nomads, forcing them to flee to the distant west. The Wusuns moved first and, following the northern Tien Shan road (Tianshan-bei-lu), entered the Ili River basin. The Yue-jis slowly followed behind them. At first they held out in the vicinity of the Huns, but, having been knocked down by them again, they fled without looking back in the intention of uniting with the Wusuns. Following first along the southern Tien Shan road (Tianshan-nan-lu), they crossed to the northern slope of the Heavenly Ridge in the meridian of the city of Hami, but, finding this northern slope occupied by the Wusuns, who had finally established themselves in both the Ili basin and the Issyk-Kul basin , walked forward past them, turned south again and went along the Jaxartes to ancient Sogdiana, and from there they went further west to Europe. The Usuns remained the undisputed owners of the Issyk-Kul basin for five centuries and, it would seem, could not help but leave behind some monuments, which should include the local stone women, the tools of the Bronze Age found here and, in general, the most ancient objects thrown out waves of Issyk-Kul. According to the always detailed information of the Chinese chronicles, all the Wusuns who established themselves in their second homeland numbered 120,000 families, and their army consisted of 188,000 horsemen. Their country, according to the description of Chinese chronicles, was replete with excellent pastures and herds, which constituted their main wealth, but it was cold and heavy with rain, and its mountains were overgrown with spruce and deciduous forests. The Wusuns were most willing to engage in horse breeding: the rich had over 4 and even 5 thousand horses. Although the Wusuns were under the supreme rule of the Huns, they still had their own rather powerful sovereigns, who bore the title of Kun-mi. The Chinese willingly sought an alliance with these Usun rulers in order to initiate, if necessary, war in the rear of their powerful enemies. Therefore, the Chinese court in 107 BC gave its princess in marriage to the Wusun king with the title of Kun-di. For this queen, the first Chinese palace was built in the main camp of the Wusun king. The Chinese called this royal residence Chi-gu-chin, that is, “the city of the red valley.” This “red valley,” according to my local considerations, could only be the Dzhargalan valley, but, in any case, Chi-gu-chin was not on the banks of Issyk-Kul, but at some distance from it, as confirmed by ancient Chinese maps, which was caused by the needs of the Usun sovereigns to be surrounded by rich pastures, and not by water. The lamentable song of the Wusun queen, written by her even before the construction of the palace at the end of the 2nd century BC, was preserved by Chinese chroniclers. Here is its translation:

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My family married me off And forced to live in a distant country, My poor yurt serves as my palace, The walls are lined with felt. Raw meat serves as food for me, And sour milk is a drink. My feelings strive for the fatherland, And my heart is deeply wounded. Oh, if I could be a bird of passage How quickly I would rush there. But already during the reign of the queen’s grandson, named Ud-zy-ty, the kingdom of the Wusuns was divided into large and small halves, and the temporary capital of Chi-gu-chin was abandoned forever. There is no doubt that the fall of the Wusun state was most facilitated by the fact that the Huns, gradually forced out by Chinese policy, from the neighborhood of the province of Gan-su and from Tangut, also went west and found a second homeland in Dzungaria, subjugating all the nomads who lived between the Tien Shan and Altai and belonged mainly to the Eastern Turkic tribes (tu-kue). Chinese chroniclers vigilantly observed the movements of their enemies, collecting detailed information about them, but at the beginning of our era they already lost sight of them, content with the last message that they had gone to Si-hai, that is, the “western sea,” under by which Chinese historians mean the Aral-Caspian basin. It is obvious that the Chinese Huns, according to the testimony of their chroniclers, could not go west by any other route from Dzungaria, like through the current Kyrgyz steppes and across the Ural River in the Volga region, where the European Huns first became known in the Itil (Volga) river basin, which apparently gave , name of the famous Attil. Only in Europe did the Asian Huns come from their second fatherland not exclusively in their tribal composition, but in an agglomeration, made up of various tribes of nomads who lived between the Tien Shan and Altai and recognized the political dominion of the Huns. Not all of these tribes followed the Huns, but many remained on the beautiful pastures of Dzungaria, in exchange for which the Asian Huns enticed in their further movement the peoples who came across their path, mainly Finnish tribes. Chinese chroniclers mention the Wusuns even before the beginning of the 4th century AD. Driven out at that time from their Tianynan nomads by the wave produced by the great movement of the Huns, they fled partly to the southwest to the upper reaches of the Jaxartes and to Transoxiana and partly to the northwest to the Kyrgyz steppe, where they submitted to the Turkic tribes (tu-kue) who had moved there, mixed with them in alliances that in relatively recent times received the name Kirghiz-Kazakhs, and since then have disappeared forever from the theater of history. Obviously, the remains of the Usuns should be sought among the tribes of the Kara-Kirghiz and the Kirghiz of the Great Horde, between which, on the one hand, I occasionally met blue-eyed and fair-haired people, and on the other hand, the word “Usun” survived, which the Kirghiz of the Great Horde designate two of their clans collectively , and Sarybagishi is one of its clans. It is clear that no monuments could have been preserved from the nomads who lived here before the beginning of our era, except for stone women and some bronze tools, but the nature of the Trans-Ili region and the Tien Shan foothills in some places has retained its characteristic features, so well noted for two

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thousand years ago by the Chinese. I return to my journey. We first used the entire day of June 16 to explore the vast steppe plateau separating the Tien Shan from the Trans-Ili Alatau east of Issyk-Kul, in which the longitudinal and parallel valleys of the main tributaries of the lake - Dzhargalan and Tyup - are very shallowly cut, separated from each other by a gentle ridge , called Tasma, and then we headed to the northern coast of Issyk-Kul, Kungey, which interested me no less than the southern one - Terskey. Beyond the Badpak-kara river, where we met ancient stone women, we had already reached Kungey, from where in front of us, slightly to the left, to the west-southwest, a view of Issyk-Kul opened up with Cape Kok-kulusun jutting into it and two transparent blue bays. Unfortunately, by 4 o’clock in the afternoon, at a temperature of 14° C, heavy rain began, and we, having reached the Kurmenta River, descended along it to the bay into which it flows, and settled down here for the night among the bushes of sea buckthorn and thala. It was pouring rain all night from June 16 to June 17, and from 2 o’clock in the afternoon there was heavy hail, and only by 9 1/2 o’clock in the morning on June 17 the weather completely cleared up, and we went out, passing the Kurmenta bay, to the shore of Issyk-Kul in that a place where from this shore one could see that truly enchanting view along the lake basin, which was 170 versts long and up to 55 versts wide to the southwest, from which the entire continuous snow-white row of Tien Shan giants seemed to rise from the indigo-blue immense surface of the lake. From here the artist Kosharov took several views, partly with pencil, partly with oil paints, by the way, and when the waves rushing onto the shore had not yet had time to calm down after the storm. The nature of the coastal strip on Kungei turned out to be the same as on Terskei: a ledge a meter high, and between it and the water level there is a wide sandy strip, onto which the surf of the waves deposits pebbles, boulders, shells, bones of fish and water birds, and objects that belonged to people , who lived on the banks of Issyk-Kul. Between the latter, I searched in vain for what interested me most. When I was in Venice in the early 1850s, on the famous Catalan map, preserved there, I saw for the first time an image of Lake Issyk-Kul, and on its northern side was depicted a monastery of Nesterian Christians, who fled, as is known, from the countries of the Middle East (Syria etc.) deep into Asia and founded their monastery on the banks of Issyk-Kul in the 12th century. Obviously, if this monastery was located on Kungei, then the monks who founded it could choose a place for themselves on the shore of one of the small bays of Kungei, protected from the disturbances of the lake and rich in fish. Kurmentinskaya Bay fits these conditions quite well, but, unfortunately, I did not find any objects justifying my assumption either on its shore or in the coastal sediments of the neighboring shore. Having wandered with pleasure for half an hour along the shore of the lake and collected several more interesting shells, by the way, two species of Planorbis, Pl. marginatus and Pl. Hmophilus, we turned to the place where the Kurmenta River emerges from the mountains and walked along the road through the field of a memorable battle indicated to us by our guides, in which the Urman manat, famous among the Kara-Kirghiz, fell in 1854. He was fatally struck by Burambai’s son Klych with a spear blow that 158

hit him right in the heart. Urman died in the yurt of Kodzhigul, Burambai’s cousin, in the arms of his daughter, who was married to Emirzak, Burambai’s second son, who had galloped to him. Up to 6,000 horsemen took part in the battle on both sides and, despite the death of Urman, the Sarybagish won a complete victory. This was back in 1854, and since then, before my arrival in 1857, the Bogintsy lost all their possessions on Issyk-Kul, extending beyond the middle of the lake, both on Terskei and Kungei, and retired to Santash. During my long conversations about the battle with the Kara-Kirghiz, I had the opportunity to ask them about the nature of the Issyk-Kul winters. From these inquiries it turned out that the lake never freezes, but winters on it are cold, and although very little snow falls, the small bays of the lake, which the surf does not reach, are covered with ice. From the exit of the Kurmenta River from the mountains, we spent an hour or two crossing the ledge of the Trans-Ili Alatau, separating the exits from the mountains of the parallel rivers Kurmenta and Shaty, and, having reached the latter, we turned north up its valley in order to explore it to the very top mountain pass leading here through Kungey-Alatau. We climbed up the Shaty valley for about an hour before we reached the first fir trees, under which we bivouacked, in the middle of dense vegetation, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, at the foot of the syenite rocks. The Cossacks began to pitch my tent and collect tezek (dung, that is, dung) for lighting a fire and cooking, and I, with a botanical capsule on my shoulder and a geological hammer in my hands, immediately walked up the mountain in order to quickly get to the alpine zone . The vegetation of the mountain slope was luxurious. More mountain shrubs rose above the slender spruces: strong juniper (Cotoneaster nummularia), meadowsweet (Spiraea oblongifolia), rose hips (Rosa gebleriana sehr.) and red currant (Ribes rubrum), partly intertwined with mountain clematis (Atragene alpina). Some mountain plants that do not grow on the coasts of Issyk-Kul also appeared, such as yellow Aconitum lycoctonum, Himalayan Anemone falconeri, Altai pea (Lathyrus altaicus) and broad-leaved Himalayan rhubarb (Rheum emodi). But I wanted to get to the alpine zone as quickly as possible, and therefore, seeing a high mountain ridge directly above me, obviously extending beyond the forest zone, after two hours of climbing, I climbed it, encountering, as I expected, truly alpine vegetation . Among the buttercup plants, I collected here the delicate white buttercup (Calianthemum rutaefolium), the bright yellow alpine buttercup (Ranniculus altaicus), the beautiful Anemone narcissiflora, the swimmer (Trollius patulus); from the cruciferous Chorispora bungeana; from legumes the species of astragalus (Oxytropis platysoma). From the Rosaceae Potentilla fragiforaus; from the Asteraceae, the large-flowered Scorzonera austriaca and the fiery-colored Erigeron uniflorus; from primroses Primula algida. P. nivalis and graceful light lilac Soldanella alpina; from Lamiaceae Phlomis alpina, etc. To my extreme pleasure, on this excursion (June 17) I managed to find two new species: one astragalus, which later received the name Oxytropis oligantha from the botanist Bunge, who described it, and the other from the lovely family of primroses (Primulaceae), which characterizes spring and alpine plant and which later received my name from the botanist Herder, who described 159

it, Cortusa semenovi. The view from this ridge was enchanting: dark blue vastness: the lake spread out at the foot of the mountain on which I stood, as if on a relief map, and behind it the continuous snowy chain of the Heavenly Ridge rose without any breaks or dark spots. Particularly spectacular were the mountains beyond the southwestern tip of the lake, where an entire series of snowy peaks seemed to emerge directly from the indigo-blue surface of the lake. I was so carried away by the wonderful spectacle and collection of high-alpine herbs that I did not notice that it was already getting dark in the deep Shata valley and that I would not get into the valley before nightfall. I quickly began my descent, which was not easy, however, because the steep slope, although overgrown with the wonderful grass of an alpine meadow, was very wet and slippery. I did not descend in a zigzag, but diagonally, directed down the valley to the bivouac, the lights of which were already clearly visible to me. Soon I noticed another living creature moving in the same direction as me. It was a bear, also descending along diagonals, but directed not downwards, but upwards of the valley, and, therefore, crossing my diagonal much lower than where I was. Then I just remembered that I had forgotten my revolver in the tent and that I had no other weapon except a hammer. It was necessary to avoid meeting the bear and to do this, figure out which of us would be the first to get to the intersection of both paths. Since I was closer to this place, without wasting time, I continued my descent and crossed the path of the bear when he was only a hundred steps away from me. Descending further very quickly, I, however, turned around to look at the bear’s descent. Having reached the intersection of the paths, the bear stopped, sniffed my trail and looked at me, but did not turn onto my path and, without chasing me, continued along its path, significantly speeding up its descent and funny somersaults on steep places. At this point I could calm down. The paths that crossed each other, with the enormous height of the descent, had to diverge at least a whole mile away when they entered the valley. My descent into the valley continued for at least another hour, but I did not lose sight of the lights of my bivouac, and by the time I reached the bottom of the valley, it was already dark night. Having reached the bivouac, I was met by my companions, who were already very worried about me. After having dinner and drinking tea, I went into my tent and, by the light of my lamp, which consisted of dry dung stuck into a huge piece of fat from a lamb’s tail, I wrote down my diary and put my treasures on a piece of paper - collections of rare plants of the Alpine trans-Ili flora. On June 18, waking up at dawn in the valley, we broke up for the night and began to climb up the Shaty valley. Having crossed to the left bank of the river, we walked near a small spring, rising in a zigzag strongly uphill, partly along somewhat marshy soil, partly through large blocks of syenite, but, having passed this slope, we again descended into a mountain valley, where the climb was not so steep, and entered a dense fir forest mixed with mountain ash. Higher up, this forest thinned out and was replaced by shrubs, consisting mainly of juniper (Juniperus sabina). Then the juniper disappeared, and wonderful alpine meadows appeared with those flowers, most of which I had already collected the day before on the ridge where I met the bear, but 160

between them I also noticed a countless number of wonderful large-flowered Altai violets (Viola grandiflora) and white Edelveiss [Leontopodium alpinum). So we reached the top of the pass, for which the hypsometric determination gave me 3,140 meters. The air temperature was only +2°, and the entire slope of the pass was covered with snow. From here Kosharov and I and one Cossack climbed another mountain, towering a hundred or two meters above the pass, since I wanted my companion to see and draw that delightful and even more extensive view than the one I had seen the day before from my mountain ridge. We descended from the mountain pass very quickly and, having rested at a halt in the lower part of the valley, went out to Kungey and then turned very quickly to the east through the undulating space separating the exits from the mountains of the Shaty and Tabulgaty rivers, but here, having crossed the Taldy-su river, Before we encountered more syenite outcrops, we unexpectedly came across a baranta. We quickly climbed one of the ridges located across the river. At some distance ahead of us, our goddess guides were galloping, when suddenly I noticed that they quickly and in fear turned back, warning us of some danger. I spurred my horse and galloped towards this danger, and all the Cossacks galloped after me, of whom there were only 15 people on this excursion of mine. When I climbed the ridge, I saw about 30 people chasing two of our Boginsky guides from the Sarybagish baranta. All of them had their turkhas (flintlock rifles with their characteristic protruding horns) behind their backs. It was no longer possible for us to leave. I again spurred my lively horse, and it carried me into the middle of the gang, and I only had time to prepare my revolver, famous among the Kara-Kirghiz. The Sarybagish horsemen immediately stopped and turned their horses back, deftly jumped off them and, taking their rifles from their shoulders, laid them on the ground. I also stopped my horse. At this time, those lagging behind me were already approaching. I thought that the Kara-Kirghiz were going to put their rifles on their horns in order to prepare for shots, but they, leaving their weapons on the ground, told us that they were surrendering. Thus, when we approached them, completely unexpectedly for us, we found ourselves with up to 30 prisoners on our hands. I announced to them that, having never had any hostile intentions against them, I was releasing them, but with the indispensable condition that they immediately return home and under no circumstances go to war against the goddesses, and to ensure the fulfillment of my demands, I am holding them under I will give myself two hostages, whom I will release upon my return to Burambai. The Sarybagish were very pleased and hurried to gallop home, and two Amanats joined my detachment as guides. In the evening we reached the Tabulgaty River, turned north into its valley, climbed it and, reaching the forest area, settled down there for the night in a beautiful spruce grove. It rained all night. June 19 was one of the very successful days of my trip. By 9 o’clock in the morning the weather had completely cleared up, and we began exploring the interesting valley and climbing the high Tabulgatinsky pass, which, however, we were told that it was easier than the Shatinsky pass I had just explored. Near our overnight stay, the vegetation of the forest zone was already mountainous and even subalpine in nature, but then, with the 161

disappearance of forest vegetation, it gradually turned into high-alpine. After a thorough study of the transition of this vegetation from the forest zone to the alpine zone, I was able to discover on this day (June 19) six completely new species of plants: four still in the forest zone, and two in the alpine zone. These plants subsequently received the following names: one from the fume family (Fumariaceae) was named after me (Corydalis semenovi); the second, from the genus of Astragalus of the legume family (Leguminosae), is named Oxytropis heteropoda; the third, from the umbrella family (Umbelliferae), is called Peucedanum transiliense; the fourth, also an umbrella, turned out to be a new, hitherto unknown genus, named after me Semenowia tfansiliensis; the fifth, from the Compositae family, is named Tanacetum transiliense; finally, the sixth, bulbous, belonged to the lily family (Liliaceae) and was named Orithyia heterophylla. On this day I collected many plants in the forest and alpine zones. Of those collected in the forest zone: a) four species turned out to be completely local in their geographical distribution, since they were rediscovered; b) five species were already previously found in Altai, and partly in Tarbagatai [Sanguisorba alpina, Lonicera hispida, Rhinactina limoniifolia, Dracocephalum imberbe, Tulipa altaica.]; c) seven species are distributed throughout the AltaiSayan highlands [Lathyrus altaicus, Libanotis condensata, Aronicum altaicum, Saussurea salicifolia. Dracocephalum altaiense, Salix sibirica, Festuca altaica.]; d) five species are common in the same Altai-Sayan system, but in addition they are also found in the Caucasus [Anemone narcissiflora, Potentilla fragiformis (gelida), Ribes atropurpurea, Aster alpinus, Doronicum oblongifolium.]; e) two typical polar Siberian species, passing into America and ascending to the Asian mountain ranges [Potentilla pensylvanica and Bupleurum ranunculoides.]; f) nine species belong to the Euro-Siberian polar species, ascending to Asian and partly European mountain ranges [Papaveralpinum, Moehringia latexiflora, Cerastium alpinum, Saxifraga hirculus, Erigeron alpinum, Oxyria reniformis, Carex frigida, Eriophorum chamissonis and Phleum alpinum. ]; g) eleven species belonged to fairly common forms of our European-Russian Polesie, also widespread in Siberia [Prunus padus, Spiraea oblongifolia, Qeum rivale, Alchemilla vulgaris, Pyrus aucuparia, Androsace villosa, Poligonum bistorta, Salix viminalis, Carex praecox q., Veratrum album, Poa hemoralis.]; h) finally, three species turned out to be steppe Russians, reaching through the Asian steppes to the Trans-Ili Alatau [Nepeta nuda, Dracocephalum nutans, Tulipa sylvestris.]. Climbing along the valley, after two hours we reached the limit of forest vegetation, and then at 2 o’clock in the afternoon - and the top of the pass. Here I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 2,750 meters of absolute height for this peak. The thermometer at this hour showed 7.5 ° C. At the pass, starting from the limit of forest vegetation , I made an extremely interesting collection of high-alpine plants. Of the 31 plant species I collected in the alpine zone of the Kurmentinsky mountain pass, it turned out to be: a) two local ones, newly discovered on this day (June 19); b) one is also local, already found by me in a few days in the Tien Shan [Allium semenovi.]; c) five Himalayan forms [Anemone falconeri, Oxytropis kashmiriana, Sedum occineum, Oenetiana curroo, Rheum spiciforme.]; d) one species had previously been 162

found by Karelin only in Tarbagatai and by me in the Tien Shan [Oxytropis frigida.]; e) two species were previously found by the botanist Bunge only in eastern Altai on the Chuya River and by me in the Tien Shan [Hegemone lilacina, Dracocephalum imberbe.]. The remaining high-alpine species of the Kurmentinsky Pass have a wider distribution, namely: f) six species throughout the Altai-Sayan system [Ranunculus altaicus, Calliant hemumrutae folium, Thermopsis alpina, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Primula cortusoides, Gymnandra borealis.]; g) five more species, in addition to this mountain system, reach the Caucasus [Erysimum cheirantus, viola grandiflora, Saxifraga sibirica, Primula nivalis, Androsace villosa.]; h) finally, four more species reach the polar plains of Asia and Europe [Lychnis apetala, Astragalus alpinus, Gentiana aurea, Pedicularis versicolor.]. When we reached the top of the Tabulgatinsky Pass on this day (June 19), its entire northern slope was covered with snow, but this snow was fresh, having fallen in recent days; where it melted, clearings of eternal snow were visible. The very crest of the pass and the descent from it to the southern side consisted of granite. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon we quickly began to descend, and two-thirds of the way down the granite gave way to limestone. I began the study of these limestones from the line of their contact with granites, and soon I was lucky enough to discover in them a sufficient number of perfectly preserved fossils, which gave me the opportunity to determine, without a doubt, the era of formation of the Paleozoic layers of sedimentary formations, so widespread in the Trans-Ili Alatau and Tien Shan . I located my overnight stay in the valley of the Kurmenta River on the lower border of the forest zone, which here, according to my hypsometric measurement, turned out to be 1,820 meters in absolute height. Our successful day ended with a hearty dinner, delivered to our entire detachment in the form of two rams from the nearest Boginsky villages that followed our movement along Kungei. On June 20, in good weather and a temperature of + 7.5 ° C, I got up at five o’clock in the morning and hastened to spend three hours on the most careful collection of fossils in the mountain limestone outcrop towering above us [Here is a list of these fossils: from Brachiopoda: Productus semi-reticulatus, Pr. Cora, Pr. striatus, Pr. giganteus, Spirifer mosquensis, Pr. glaber, Orthis resupinata, Rhynchonella acuminataatrypa of large size, not yet described; from cephalopods (Cephalopoda) Orthoceras sp.; from bivalve shells: Allorisma regularis and Pecten sp.; from single valves: Euomphalus pentangulatus; from corals: Campophyllum giganteum, Lithostrotion philippi, Chaetetes radians. All these fossils are characteristic of the mountain limestones of the Carboniferous system.]. We left our overnight stay at 9 o’clock in the morning and, having gone out to Kungey, a few hours later we reached the wide valley of the Tyupa River, at that time luxuriously overgrown with woody and herbal vegetation [Of woody plants, bird cherry (Prunus padus), apple tree (Pyrus malus) grew here ), meadowsweet (Spiraea hypericifolia), argay (Cotoneaster nummullaria), blackberry [Berberis heteropoda], willow (Salix viminalts).]. Here, in the beautiful pastures of the Tyupa River valley, we found Boginsky villages and, having changed our horses in them, by evening we reached the villages of Burambay, who prepared a most cordial welcome 163

for us. My expedition to the shores of Issyk-Kul and into the interior of the Tien Shan to the source of Yaxartes, as well as a trip to Kungey, returned to Burambai all his possessions in the Issyk-Kul basin, the remains of his residence in the Zaukinsky valley and many goddesses captured by the Sarybagish, and the alliance with Sultan Tezek ensured his safety for a long time. Only two more urgent desires remained in his soul. The first was that I asked in writing the Sarybagish manap Umbet-Alu, who was already my “Tamyr,” to return to Burambai, for which he would pay a ransom, all the captives of his family. The opportunity seemed very convenient for me. I immediately returned freedom, weapons and horses to the two Sarybagish people I had taken hostage during the capture of the Sarybagish Baranta. I instructed them to immediately deliver my letter to Umbet-Ala, to which I received an answer after my second trip to the interior of Tan Shan. The second and most persistent request of Burambai was that I assist in accepting him into Russian citizenship with his entire tribe and all his possessions, which included the entire eastern half of the Issyk-Kul Lake basin and the entire northern foothills of the Tien Shan to the eastern snows of the highest of the peaks of the entire Heavenly Range - Khan Tengri. To this request from Burambai, I replied that I was ready to petition both the governor-general and the capital of Russia for the acceptance of his tribe into Russian citizenship, but that for this I must first complete my acquaintance with his possessions. That is why I now intend to go to the boundaries of his summer nomads on Mustag to the upper reaches of the Kok-Dzhar and Sary-Dzhasa rivers, about which I have already received inquiring information from the goddesses who once roamed there. Burambai gladly agreed to my proposal, realizing that all the lands that I would visit would be assigned to his tribe; Moreover, he warned me that his enemies Sarybagish never come to summer camps on Sary-jas, because it is too far from their nomadic lands and they are afraid of being cut off from them, just as they cut off the goddess clan that evaded Burambai and wanted to migrate to the Naryn River . My equipment, which took three days, was excellent. With the assistance of Burambai, I hired 70 fresh horses, 10 camels and 6 guides at a cheap price. As in all my travels in 1857, I had no other food supplies, except for crackers baked for me in large quantities during my stay in Verny by order of Przemyslsky, and in addition, tea and fat tail fat. We found rams wherever we met Kyrgyz villages, and, if possible, we took them alive. On June 24, we left in full force from the villages of Burambai on Malaya Karkara in order to penetrate for the second time into the unknown depths of the Tien Shan in the direction of the highest of its giants, Khan Tengri, and, if possible, cross the watershed of the rivers of Dzungaria, belonging to the system of the Ili River and Lake Balkhash and Kashgaria or Malaya Bukharin, belonging to the system of the Tarima River and Lake Lob-Nor. We had to climb the Tien Shan along the Big Karkara River, which belongs to the Ili system. After two hours of travel, we reached the exit of B. Karkara from the mountains and turned into its valley, along which we walked unhindered for an hour and a half in the foothills of the Tien Shan. The valley was overgrown with a good spruce forest, and the rock outcrops we encountered consisted of 164

limestone and then granite. Having reached the division of B. Karkara into two branches, we took the left one, but its valley narrowed so much and turned into an inaccessible gorge that our guides warned us that it was impossible for our rather large detachment with camels to follow further through the gorge and that it was necessary to make a detour it through the mountains along the road along which the goddesses usually go with their herds and herds to their nomadic camps. This bypass road was called Sart-jol, that is, the road of the Sarts. Climbing the road steeply uphill, we first followed another forest zone through a spruce forest, but then we reached the limit of forest vegetation and came out into wonderful meadows characterized by alpine and subalpine vegetation and serving for the summer migrations of noble goddesses from the Burambaev family. We headed to the village of one of these “white bone” goddesses, Baldysan, who chose a wonderful place for summer camping here on the occasion of the illness of his mother, who needed mountain air, turning away from Sart-Jol through luxurious alpine pastures. I spent about three hours with pleasure in the meadows of the subalpine zone collecting plants, between which on this day, June 24, I managed to find naiga and one new species of astragalus, later named by the botanist Bunge Oxytropis ochroleuca [Here is a complete list of plants collected by me on this day on bypass road (Sart-jol) in the forest subalpine and partly alpine zone of the Tien Shan: Thajictrum simplex, Farnassia laxmani, Thermopsis lanceolata, T. alpina, Medicago platycarpa, Caragana jubata, Oxytropis ochroleuca n. sp., Cicer soongoricum, Lathyrus pratensis, Hedysarum obscurum, Potentilla viscosa, Pyrussorbus, Ribes atropurpurea, Saxifraga sibirica, Lonicera hispida, L. karelini, Inula rhizocephala, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Senecio sibiricus, Crepis sibirica, Hieracium vulgatum, Primula cor tusoides, P. nivalis, Cortusa matthioli, Gentiana prostrata, G. aurea, Polemonium coeruleum, Myosotjs sylvatica, Pedicularis dolichorhiza, Ziziphora clinopodioides, Picea schrenkiana, Juniperus sujina, Allium semenovi, Luzula communis, Juncus buffonius, Carex paniculata, Carex nitida, C. nut ans, Hordeum pratense, Elymus sibiricus, Brachypodium pinnatum, B. schrenkianum, Bromus erectus, Dactylis glomerata, Poa altaica, Avena pubescens, Phloeum boehmeri.]. We reached the village of Baldysan at 4 o’clock. Baldysan, who received me especially cordially on the recommendation of Burambay, was a type of Kara-Kyrgyz sybarite. Peace-loving by nature, he, above all, loved his tranquility and, not taking part in the bloody feud between the goddesses and the Sarybagish, he never rode on a baranta and loved to roam in those areas of the Tien Shan that were most inaccessible to the raids of the Sarybagish. His inclinations were artistic. He passionately loved music and was considered among the Kara-Kirghiz to be the best musician on the dombra (a string instrument like a balalaika) and willingly listened to the songs of folk storytellers and improvisers, sometimes spending whole nights in this activity. With particular pleasure, at my invitation, Baldysan played the dombra in front of me, invited the storytellers of epics, who sang these epics very monotonously to the sounds of the dombra, and also improvised some songs in front of me, in which, according to the testimony of my Cossack translators, glorified my trips to the coast of Issyk-Kul and to 165

the sources of Naryn, which forced the Sarybagish to flee from the lands of the goddesses. When I returned to the yurt that had been prepared for me with my constant Cossack translator and artist Kosharov, a “duana”, that is, a soothsayer, or in Siberian shaman, appeared to us in his picturesque clothes and a high hat made of swan’s down, with tambourines in his hands. since among the Kara-Kirghiz, as well as among the Kirghiz of the Great Horde, under the cover of a weakly instilled Islam, remnants of shamanism were still smoldering. Duana, after several of the usual frantic leaps, brought himself into the ecstasy of a soothsayer and began to predict my future for me. According to his fragmentary words, translated to me by the Cossacks (as they knew how), he predicted to me that I would be an ulkun-tyure (great dignitary) of the king and would have a hundred ranks (or insignia), which, judging by his gestures, he saw on me “with his own eyes” in front of him, after which, at every new honor he saw, he fell at my feet in such exhaustion that he finally fainted. Of course, I didn’t attach any importance to Duana’s predictions then. I didn’t even think about ranks and insignia, since I was already 30 years old, and I didn’t think about joining the public service, caring only; about scientific interests, especially about studies of internal Asia; conceiving a new journey to where Przhevalsky was subsequently sent, with my assistance. Having spent the night with my hospitable host in great Asian comfort, I said goodbye to him on the morning of June 25, and he expressed to me his desire that when I return to Russia, I would take him there at his own expense, since he certainly wanted to hear Russian music. We left on this day at about 6 in the morning and headed to Sart-jol, along which we descended into the spruce forest area and through it we went out again to the upper part of the B. Karkara valley. This part of the valley, located above the wild gorge in which the river makes its way through the forward chain of the Tien Shan and which we were forced to bypass along the Sart-Jol, for about ten miles still retains the character of a narrow transverse valley with a steep rise, but the forest vegetation in it is already disappears. But from everywhere along steep cliffs, partly overgrown with bushes, rocks stick out, first consisting of granite, and then of syenite. After two or three hours of climbing along this transverse valley, we came to a wide and high longitudinal valley, in relation to the direction of the ridge, that is, stretching from east to west. In this longitudinal valley two branches of the Karkara merge: one flowing from the west and the other from the east. The first retains the name Karkara, and the second, that is, flowing from the east, is called Kok-dzhar by the color of the stone cliffs found on it (Kok-dzhar means green yar). The Kokdzhar valley, which we followed, turning directly to the east, turned out to be one of the characteristic high-mountain longitudinal valleys of the inner Tien Shan. Its average height was no less than 2,760 meters; all of it lies above the limits of forest vegetation and is overgrown on the steep slopes of two parallel ridges, between which it extends in a direction straight from east to west, only with high-mountain shrubs, and partly with subalpine and alpine grasses, descending from the limits of the eternal snow of the Kokdzhar mountain pass. The rock outcrops that we encountered in the Kokjar valley turned out to consist of layers of greenish shale, placed on an 166

edge with a dip of 85° to the north and a strike straight from east to west, in accordance with the direction of the wide and high longitudinal valley. The highland shrubs, in the absence of trees, decorating the valleys, were in full bloom at this time of year (June 25). These were Potentilla fruticosa showered with bright yellow flowers, two beautiful species of meadowsweet with tufts of white flowers Spiraea oblongifolia and Sp. laevigata, gray-green tamarix, whose delicate greenery mixed with a mass of beautiful bright pink flowers (Myricaria daurica), two species of low-growing light green willows (Salix sibirica and S. nigricans), dark green, sometimes semi-tree-like Cossack juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina) and, finally , a thorny tuye-uiruk (Caragana jubata) with thick gray greenery and pale yellow flowers, its shape reminiscent of a camel’s tail and served as a favorite delicacy of our camels. We followed twenty versts along the Kokdzhar valley, which, due to the nature of its vegetation, was a wonderful summer camp for the owners of the country, the goddesses, upstream of the wide, but not quickly flowing Kok-dzhar, until we reached the confluence of the Tuz-kok-dzhar river. , which received its name from the salt spring located near it. We turned to this source, since the salt spring in the Tien Shan was an interesting phenomenon for me, as a geologist. In the Tuz-kok-jara valley, the source was located on the left side of the river, on the flat bottom of the valley, where it emerged from sandy-clayey rock, forming a pool one and a half meters deep. Water saturated with a solution of table salt had 18.6° C. We arrived here at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and I intended to stop here for the night, but could not carry out my intention, because in this part of the valley the food was very poor, as a result of which there was no fuel (nameska, that is, dung). Therefore, we were forced to return to the valley of the main Kok-Dzhar, where at 5 o’clock in the afternoon we found a convenient place to spend the night at the foot of the ascent to the famous Kok-Dzhar mountain pass among the natives, which serves as the main watershed between the basin of the Ili River and Lake Balkhash with one (Dzungar) side and the Tarim River and Lake Lob-Nor on the other (Kashgar). I spent the evening packing a rich haul of plants collected in the Kok-Jara valley [Here is a list of these plants: Anemone narcissiflora, Pulsatillaalbana, Ranunculus cymbalariae, R. hyperboraeus, R. gelidus, Callianthemum rutaef olium, Trollius patulus, Eutrema alpestris, Viola grandiflora, Lonicera hispida, Lonicera micropnyua, Galium verum, Aster alpinus, Erigeron uniflorus, Tanacetum Ledebourii, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Saussurea pygmaea, Cirsium semenovi n. sp., Allium schoenoprasum, A. obliquum, A. atrosanguineum, Eremurus altaicus, Luzula campestris, Juncus communis, Juncus bulbosus, Juncus bufonius, Eriophorum chamissonis, Arenaria rupifraga (Coryomorfa), Cerastium alpinum, Linum perenne, Geranium saxatile, Caragana jubata, Hedysarum polymorphum, Onobrychis sativa, Spiraea oblongifolia, Spiraea laevigata, Alchemilla vulgaris, Potentillasupina, P. pensylvanica, P. multifida, P. bifurca, P. recta, P. fragiformis, P. fruticosa, Myricaria davurica, Carum indicum, Archangeiica decurrens, Schrenkia vaginata, Alfredia acantholepis, Androsace villosa, A. septentrionalis, Onosmas implicissimum, Thymus serpyllum, Phlomis spectabilis, Dracocephalum nutans, Dr. altaiense, Ere167

mostachys sanguinea, Oxyria reniformis, Polygonum viviparum, P. bistorta, P. polymorphum, Euphorbia alatavica, Eu. subamplexicaulis, Salix sibirica, S. nygricans, Juniperus pseudosabina, Carex stenophylla, C paniculata, C. atrata, C. nigra, C. frigida, C. praecox, C. nutans, Hordeum pratense, Elymus sibiricus, Brachypodium pinnatum, Poa alpina, Avena pubescens, Deschampsia koelerioides, Ptilagrostis mongholica, Phleum alpinum.], between which were two completely new ones, which later received the names Cirsium semenovi herd. and Deschampsia koelerioides reg. The hypsometric determination gave for the absolute height of our overnight stay, and therefore the longitudinal valley of Kok-Dzhar, 2,740 meters; the air temperature at 6 o’clock in the afternoon was +8.5° C. On June 26, at sunrise it was only -2.5° C. My tent became icy, and the puddles were covered with thin ice. We went up the main Kok-Dzhar, first to the south, and then began to turn gradually to the southwest as the river split into several branches, each of which became somewhat poor in water. Along one of them we began to climb stronger and stronger up the mountain. The outcrops we encountered consisted of shale with a terminal trend from E to W and a dip of 90°. Further, our path passed by a majestic cliff, consisting of light bluish limestone, rising like a completely vertical wall above our path. When we reached the top of the mountain pass around one o’clock in the afternoon, we were blinded by an unexpected sight. Directly south of us rose the most majestic mountain range I had ever seen. It all, from top to bottom, consisted of snow giants, of which I could count at least thirty to the right and left of me. This entire ridge, together with all the spaces between the mountain peaks, was covered with an unbroken veil of eternal snow. Right in the middle of these giants stood one, sharply separated by its colossal height, a snow-white pointed pyramid, which seemed from the height of the pass to be twice as tall as the other peaks. And indeed, since the peak of Khan Tengri turned out to be, according to later measurements, about 7,000 meters of absolute height, its relative height above the mountain pass was 3,500 meters, while the height of the other mountain peaks above the pass did not exceed 2,000 meters. The sky was completely cloudless on all sides, and only on Khan Tengri was a small cloud visible, like a light crown surrounding the dazzling white mountain pyramid a little below its top. The entire mountain group of Tengri-Tag was visible along its entire majestic length, and in front of it along its base, at our feet, flowed the Sary-Dzhas River, which, as it turned out, according to the testimony of our leaders, belonged to the system of the Central Asian Tarima River, flowing parallel to the Tien Shan on its southern side in Lob-nor. Surprisingly, the Sary-Dzhas River originated not on the southern, but on the northern side of the Tien Shan from many glaciers widely developed on the northern slope of Tengri Tag. The river that gathered from these sources flowed majestically along the wide longitudinal valley of the Tien Shan, first straight to the west, and then, deviating to the southwest and further to the west, it gradually burst into the gorges of the lowered Tengri Tag and, going around it, broke through the Tien Shan. Shan, and then went out to its southern side, into Chinese Turkestan (Kashgaria), and, joining there with another significant Tien Shan river Ak-su, carried its 168

waters to Tarim. The hypsometric determination gave for the absolute height of the Kokdzhar mountain pass and, consequently, the Tien Shan mountain watershed 3,510 meters, the temperature at the pass at one o’clock in the afternoon was +9.5 ° C, and its vegetation was high-alpine. I spent about three hours at the pass not only to admire such a majestic view, the like of which can hardly be found anywhere in the world, but also to navigate the orography of the highest mountain group in the Tien Shan, which the locals love aptly gave the poetic name Tengri-taga (ridge of spirits), likening these snowy peaks to heavenly spirits, and the giant crowning them and overwhelming with his greatness - Khan-tengri, that is, the king of these heavenly spirits. This is where the Chinese name for the entire mountain system Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains) comes from. At about 4 in the afternoon we began to descend south from the pass and soon reached a stream flowing into Sary-jas. In the second hour of our descent, this stream connected with another and, after many bends, reached Sary-jas. Not far from its mouth we stopped for the night. The Cossacks placed my tent right next to the stream, which flowed not far from there into the Sary-jas and, therefore, belonged to the most central of the Asian continental basins - the Tarim and Lob-nor basin. Clouds had already begun to roll over the snowy peaks, but I still managed to enjoy the marvelous spectacle of the “glimmer of the Alps” (Alpengluhen) on Tengri Tag. Only when the last rays, illuminating the majestic “king of spirits” (Khan Tengri) with their pink shine, went out, I retired to my tent and, in the dim light of my lamp, sorted out the botanical treasures I had collected that day. Between them were two completely new plant species, later named Cirsium nidulans and Cortusa semenovi. In total, I collected 50 plants that day [Here is their list: Anemone micrantha, Ranunculus cymbalariae, R. altaicus, R. gelidus, Oxygraphis glacialis, Callianthemum rutaefolium, Hegemone lilacina, Isopyrum grandiflorum, Papaver alpinum, Corydalis gortchakovii, Viola gmeliniana, V. grandiflora, V. biflora, Lychnis apetala, Cerastium trigynum, Astragalus brachytropus, Sedum coccineum, Saxifragail agellaris, Gentiana aurea, G. prostrata, G. decumbens, Pleurogyne carinthiaca, Myosotis sylvatica, Eritrichium villcsum, Veronica ciliata, Pedicularis amoena , P rhinantoides, P. versicolor, Parrya stenocarpa, Draba pilosa, Draba lactea, D. stellata, Taphrospermum altaicum, Thlaspi cochleariforme, Hutchinsia pectinata, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Richteria pyrethroides, Cirsium nidulans n. sp., Taraxacum steveni, Primula nivalia, Cortusa mathioli, Cortusa semenovi n. sp., Oxyria reniformus, Allium alataviense, A. semenovi, Carex atrata, Carex stenophylla, Carex nigra, Carex irigida, Philagrostis mongolica.]. Of these 50 high-alpine plants, 30 can be considered native to the Trans-Ili region and Semirechye, that is, old Dzungaria, but 4 of them reach the Himalayan ridge, 5 to Altai, and 7 spread throughout the entire Altai system. The remaining 20 species also move to Europe, namely 10 belong to the European polar forms, and 10 to the European high-alpine forms, found in the Caucasus. On the night of June 27, a snowstorm broke out over us. On June 27 at 5 o’clock in the morning, leaving my tent, covered with snow, I found that those sleeping not far from me under a huge felt (Kyrgyz felt) were literally buried in a snow veil. Two or 169

three of them had already climbed out of their snowy holes and were cheerfully helping their comrades get out from under the snow-covered felt under which they had settled down since the evening. However, the temperature was higher than yesterday. The Celsius thermometer showed +3°, and the snow was quickly melting in the rays of the southern sun. The Cossacks scattered in all directions to collect fuel, and one of them, tearing through the melting snow, came across an object within our bivouac that made a very difficult impression on all of us. Under the snow was the corpse of a goddess, carefully wrapped in felt and dressed in a robe, underwear and boots. This corpse was perfectly preserved in the atmosphere of the ice zone. Without a doubt, this was one of the goddesses who fled from the battlefield at Zaukinsky Pass in May 1857. Wounded or exhausted in battle, he and his comrades reached Sary-jas and, ending his life here, was carefully wrapped by them in felt and left under a snow cover. Having drunk tea, we left our bivouac at 6 o’clock in the morning in order to, having crossed Sary-jas, climb the snowy ridge rising on its southern side, reach the eternal snow and measure the height of the snow line on the northern slope of Tengri-tag. The Sary-Dzhas River, on the bank of which we soon came out, struck me with the milky white-greenish color of its water, obviously fed by glaciers. Crossing the river was not so much hampered by its speed, which was not excessive, as by the many branches and deep holes that appeared in some of them. Nevertheless, our crossing with the camels was completed safely, although it took a lot of time. However, I myself gained a lot of time by leaving the entire detachment on the river bank at the crossing and setting off to climb lightly with Kosharov, three Cossacks and two Kirghiz. The ascent from the longitudinal valley, which had up to 3,000 meters of absolute height, was accessible to our horses, which were unusually accustomed to mountain ascents. Moreover, our guides, with the intelligence characteristic of mountain Kara-Kirghiz, led us along the shortest and easiest path to the nearest glades of eternal snow. The vegetation on the slopes along which we climbed was high alpine. The climb turned out to be very steep, but after about three hours we reached the point where the reduced steepness no longer prevented us from seeing the snowy peaks. Only scattered stones made our way very difficult. These were not fresh stones of small scree, but deeply cut into the ground and sharp and large stones protruding from it perhaps the remains of an old moraine. Finally, we reached snow patches, and then began to climb through solid snow, but this snow was freshly fallen the previous night and covered small clearings of eternal snow. Here, having climbed to a peak accessible to our horses, covered on its northern slope with eternal snow, I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave me 3,950 meters, which is both the height of the snow line on the northern slope of the Tien Shan and the highest point I reached in this ridge. Since it was at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and there was still enough time left, I asked my guides to help me go down to Sary-jas as close as possible to the place where this river cuts into the mountains with a wild and inaccessible gorge, which has to be bypassed through a high mountain pass. We spent about an hour and a half descending diagonally to Sary-jas, which we reached at four o’clock in the afternoon, and 170

reached it at the place where the Kara-Kirghiz, traveling from the Burambai nomads to Semirechye, stop for their second overnight stop. From here I sent one of my Cossacks up the Sary-jas to our detachment with instructions about a place to stay for the night, and I myself decided to walk down the Sary-jas for another two hours or more in order to see where the bypass road separates from the Sary-jas and where this river enters the mountain gorge. During these two hours of descent along the current of the Sary-Dzhas, I managed to obtain as detailed information as possible about the entire route from the Burambaev nomads on Santasha to the city of Semigradya to which this road leads, namely Turpak. The guides told me that the path to Kashgaria, on which we were, is the only convenient one in the interval between the Zaukinsky and Musartsky mountain passes. They travel from the villages of Burambai to the city of Turpak in seven days. The first night we spend the night on Kok-Dzhar near the place where we had our overnight stay on June 25-26. The second night, having crossed the difficult Kokdzhar mountain pass, they spend the night on Sary-jas at the place we reached that evening. On the third day, they climbed the road that goes around the gorge, through which Sary-jas breaks through, to the Kuilyu mountain pass, crossed it and spent the night on its southern side. The top of the pass is always covered with snow. But under this snow there is ice, so, apparently, the road passes through a glacier sliding down from one of the peaks of Tengri Tag. However, my guides considered the passage through this pass to be less high and less difficult than the passage through the Kokdzhar mountain pass. On the fourth night they spent the night at Ishigart, a rather low pass, apparently across the southern foothills of the Tien Shan. On the fifth night we spent the night on the Cholok River, and on the sixth we camped for the night in sight of the Chinese guard located in front of Turpak. In addition to the road crossing the Tien Shan watershed between the Kok-Dzhar and Sary-Dzhas rivers, in the majestic Kok-Dzhar mountain pass there is another road that crosses the Tang Shan watershed between the top of the Turgen-Ak-Su and Sary-Dzhas rivers. , but considered difficult in my time. That’s all I could find out at that time about the routes that bypassed the impassable Saryjas gorges and leading to Kashgaria. Then, when the day began to turn towards evening, we turned back up the Sary-Dzhas and quite late at night we reached our detachment’s camp for the night. The night was warmer than last, and the snow did not fall. On June 28 at 5 o’clock in the morning the thermometer showed +5° C. We set off at 6 o’clock. On this day, I wanted to get to the sources of the Sary-jas, which originate in glaciers descending into the side valley of the Tien Shan. From the longitudinal valley of Sary-jas, in which we were, we first had to walk upstream of the river for another two hours, and then, moving away from it and climbing up the mountain, cross diagonally the mountain spur, skirted by the flow of the river. About three hours later we reached the Sary-jas again, but in the upper part of its course, where it had not yet emerged from the transverse valley into which its sources flowed, originating from the glaciers descending from Tengri-tag. I headed towards the one that seemed to me the largest and closed the transverse valley, and left two very beautiful glaciers to my right, descending towards the southwest 171

into a side valley three miles wide. We walked along a valley floor filled with boulders. The predominant rock between them is fine white and gray marble. There is undoubtedly more of it here than near the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli near Rome. Between the boulders there were mountain clayey, siliceous, and light gray and shiny mica schists, and often crystalline rocks - granites, gneisses and syenites, but there were no volcanic rocks, as in everything I had seen so far in the Tien Shan. Throughout the valley we came across huge numbers of mountain sheep skulls with their huge curled horns. These skulls were so heavy that a strong Cossack had some difficulty lifting them. They were very different from the mountain sheep - argali (Ovis argali) common in Altai and other Asian mountain ranges. The natives call the rams we found kochkars. This breed of colossal mountain sheep was first characterized and described by the famous 13th century Venetian traveler Marco Polo. His compatriots did not believe his descriptions and nicknamed him “il millione,” that is, the narrator of tales from a thousand and one nights. Only in the first half of the 19th century, the English traveler Lieutenant Wood, who penetrated the Pamirs, found there skulls with horns exactly corresponding to those described by Marco Polo, and from these descriptions, English zoologists identified the Marco Polo rams as a new animal, which was given the name in honor of the famous Venetian Ovis polli, but they ranked it among the breeds of animals that completely became extinct in historical times, like the so-called sea cow (Rhytina stellen). For three hours we followed up a wide valley and finally began to cross it diagonally, heading towards the cape protruding into it on our left side, to which we walked for another two hours, crossing the Sary-Dzhas to its right bank. The cape ended in a steep cliff, which we reached around 4 in the afternoon. Here I stopped my entire detachment with camels and packs for a day, since I wanted to devote the rest of that day to climbing the steeply rising edge of the valley above us and from there to see the glacier to which I was striving in all its volume, and to devote the entire next day to Already light, take a closer look at the glacier itself and the upper part of the valley. As soon as our entire extensive caravan stopped for its long day, Kosharov and I, accompanied by two Cossacks and two Kyrgyz, drove up the valley, to which, on our left side, the steeply rising mountains crowned with eternal snow came close. Soon we began to climb their steep slopes along a barely noticeable path, and here an unexpected meeting awaited us. Along the path that runs above ours, but parallel to it, one might say, above our heads, at a distance of a good rifle shot, rushed a large herd of mountain sheep, which our goddesses greeted with the cry: “Kochkar, kochkar!” And indeed, I could see through my binoculars that these were huge rams with those characteristic horns, the skulls of which we found in abundance in the Sary-Dzhas valley. Thus, I could state with delight that the semi-fairytale Ovis polli still exists, and could collect some biological information about it from the Kara-Kirghiz who were familiar with its life. The alpine pastures on the slopes of Tengri Tag are so vast and rich in wonderful herbs that this very breed of colossal mountain sheep lives very freely on them. Moreover, such alpine pastures, at an absolute height of at least 3,000 meters, run through a wide strip, although 172

in places interrupted by deep gorges, from the slopes of Tengri Tag to the Pamirs (Roof of the World), to which they freely run up from here, jumping, where possible, over abysses or descending into them with their characteristic jumps, throwing themselves from steep cliffs headfirst and falling harmlessly onto their indestructible horns, the sound of which often echoes the silence of mountain gorges. From the place of our interesting meeting, we could well navigate the Saryjas glaciers. Beyond the wide valley we clearly saw two more beautiful glaciers, picturesquely descending into a short transverse valley in relation to our path. It was very clearly possible to distinguish at the foot of two separate groups of snow whites of Tengri Tag snow-white firn glades giving rise to glaciers, stone ridges of their lateral moraines and, finally, their ends of a dirty color. But most of all we were interested in the glacier that closed our valley and majestically descended from the vast firn fields of Tengri Tag, finally falling like a steep ledge into our valley. Kosharov especially carefully copied this glacier from the height at which we were. It had already begun to get dark when we climbed even further into the mountain in order to enjoy from an even greater height the indescribable spectacle of the “glimmering of the Alps” (Alpengluhen) of the Heavenly Range, when the entire vast valley was already covered with a night blanket, and the snowy peaks of Tengri-Tag, with their with the majestic king Khan Tengri at their head, their ruby flowers still shone in the rays of the sun, already invisible from the valley. When this magical flickering finally began to fade, we descended into the arms of the night to the welcoming lights of our halt. The night we spent here near the Sary-jasa glacier, which later received my name, was not particularly cold: the thermometer at 9 o’clock in the evening showed +8.5° C. On June 29, I got up at 5 o’clock in the morning and set off lightly, accompanied only by Kosharov, three Cossacks, two Boginsky guides and one pack horse, in the direction of the main glacier, which we soon saw directly in front of us. It descended from the huge group of peaks of Tengri Tag, as if in a wide, suddenly frozen stream, deserving, in Alpine terminology, the name of the ice sea (Meer de glase). The lower part of it, descending into the valley, was accompanied by a high ridge of lateral moraine, and the tip of the glacier was characterized by its color, similar to the color of blackened marble statues. I approached this tip, crossing its leading moraine. The ice mass that made up the tip of the glacier was 100 meters high. The ice of its cracks had a light green color, similar to the color of the best Transbaikal beryls. The needle-like crushing that I noticed in the ice of the Alpine glaciers I knew was not noticeable in it, and although bubbles were visible in places, the ice was still folded so tightly that when I beat off a block of it, my hammer rang against it, like rock. One of the mountain sources of Sary-jas burst out from under the glacier with force. Hypsometric determination of the tip of the glacier gave me 3,220 meters. From the tip of the glacier I turned to the right in order to reach its left moraine, which rose in a rather high ridge. The moraine also contained large blocks of stone, but mostly consisted of small stones. In some places this moraine came so close to the glaciers that I managed to climb onto the glacier itself, on the surface of which I encountered large blocks of stone on ice stands, the so-called “ice tables”. The 173

more I moved up the glacier, the more often I encountered deep cracks, at first so narrow that it was possible to cross them, but when they became wider, I was forced to return to the moraine, because my companions, due to their inexperience, could not serve as my reliable assistants when crossing the glacier. The color of the ice in the deep cracks was not blue, as in European glaciers, but the same green color of the best Transbaikal beryls. The height that I reached while climbing the glacier turned out to be 3,285 meters according to the hypsometric measurement. Having climbed out of the glacier again onto its left moraine, I descended into the valley, which I reached at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, at an air temperature of +12.5 ° C. Here I began a highly interesting collection of Tien Shan alpine plants from the pastures of Marco Polo sheep (Ovis polli ) and reached the bivouac of his caravan in the evening, where the air temperature at 7 o’clock in the evening turned out to be +7° C. The fires were lit, tea and dinner were soon prepared, and I, by the light of my lamp, wrote down my diary and put my treasures - never-before-seen Tengri-Tag plants - into sheets of blank paper. Our dinner, wherever there were no Kyrgyz villages and it was impossible to get Kyrgyz sheep, consisted of soaked black bread crackers, fried in fat tail fat. Between the plants collected in the upper Saryjas valley on June 29, there were 4 new species. One of them was also a hitherto undescribed Robinia, similar to Caragana jubata, but distinguished by the greater density of its light gray green color, the greater length of its needles and its light pink rather than yellow flowers. I collected and dried very carefully this interesting genus of plants, which the Kara-Kirghiz called tuye-uyryuk (camel tail), but the director of the Botanical Garden, Dr. Regel, who described the plants I collected, overlooked this plant, mixing it with a very different species, Caragana jubata, widespread throughout Altai-Sayan highlands, having yellow flowers and belonging to another species of the genus Caragana. The remaining three new species, which I found on June 29 in the Saryjas Valley, belonged to the Asteraceae family; they subsequently received, during their description, the following names: Saussurea semenovi, S. glacialis and Cirsium semenovi. Of the plants already familiar to me, the most striking were the light blue carpets of common forget-me-nots (Myosotis silvestris), common in the meadows of our native Sarmatian plain, and the golden-yellow carpets of the type of onion that gave the Chinese name Tsun-lin (onion mountains) the central part of the Tien Shan, where I first discovered these plants (Allium semenovi), and, finally, dark blue carpets of high-alpine gentian species [Here is a complete list of 60 plants I collected on June 29 in the Saryjas valley: Thalictrum alpinum, Anemone micrantha, Ranunculus cymbalariae, R altaicus, R. gelidus, Oxygraphis glacialis, Callianthemum rutaefolium, Hegemone lilacina, Isopyrum grandiflorum, Aconitum rotundifolium, Coridalis gortchacovii, Parrya stenocarpa, Draba pilosa, D. lactea, D. stellata, D. incana, Thlaspi cochleariforme, Erysimum cheir anthus, Taphrospermum altaicum, Hutchinsia pectinata, Viola grandiflora, Lychnis apetala, Alsine villarsii, Cerastium trigynum, Caragana jubata, Oxytropis kashmiriana, Ox. oligantha, Astragalus brachytropus, Hedysarum polymorphum, Spiraea oblongifolia, Potentilla sericea, Saxifraga flagellaris, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Galium 174

soongoricam, Aster alpiftus, A. flaccidus, Calimerisaltaica, Erigeron uniflorus, Richteria pyrethroides, Tanacetum ledebourii, T. pulchrum, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Saussurea pygmanea , S. semenovi, S. glacialis, S. sorocephala, Cirsium nidulans, C semenovi, Alfredia acontholepis, Taraxacum caucasicum, T. steveni, Crepis multicaulis, Primula cortusoides, P. nivalis, Gentiana falcata, G. aurea, G. prostrata, G. kurroo royle, G. frigida, Swertia marginata, Myosotis sylvatica, Salix sibirica, Allium semenovi, Festuca altaica, Poa alpina, Koeleria cristata, Deschampsia coelerioides, Ptilagrostis mongolica, Phleum alpinum.]. On June 30, my entire detachment, in its entirety, left camp at 6 o’clock in the morning at a temperature of +3.5 ° C, and we went down the Sary-jas valley, along the right side of the river, until its flow came out into a longitudinal valley and did not turn along it to the west. From this place they began to climb at 10 o’clock in the morning to the high pass separating the parallel longitudinal valleys of Sary-jas and Kok-jar, and, having reached the top of the pass at about one o’clock in the afternoon, descended into the Kok-jar valley, and then, reaching their old road, reached Tuz-kok-jar in the evening and here, having climbed five versts above the salt spring, we stopped for the night. Near this overnight stay, to my particular pleasure, I found outcrops of mountain limestone with their characteristic fossils of the Carboniferous system (Productus giganteus, Pr. semireticulatus, Spirifer sp. Bellerophon, Pleurotomaria and others). This find was all the more interesting because it determined the deep geological antiquity of the Tien Shan uplift, which, undoubtedly, already from the end of the Carboniferous period formed the skeleton of the great Asian continent. On July 1, we left our overnight stay on Tuz-kok-jar at 8 o’clock in the morning, two hours later we reached the headwaters of this river, from where we began to climb a steep, but accessible for our camels, climb to the top of a mountain pass, on which spots of unmelted snow were visible . Everywhere on our climb we came across rock outcrops, they consisted of red sandstone, which had an almost vertical dip (85° C). The height of the pass, according to my hypsometric measurement at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, turned out to be 3,320 meters. The vegetation throughout the mountain pass turned out to be high-alpine [Here is a list of plants I collected on July 1 at the Tekes Pass: Anemone narcissiflora, Ranunculus cymbalariae, Ran. altaicus, Ran. gelidus, Calliantemum rutaefolium, Isopyrum anemonoides, Isopyrum grandiflorum, Viola grandiflora, Draba rupestris, Lychnis apetala, Alsine villarsii, Geranium saxatile, Caragana jubata, Potentilla multifida, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Serratula nitida, Scorzonera austriaca, Taraxacum steveni , Joungia flexuosa, Myosotis sylvatica, Eritrichium villosum, Arnebia perennis, Pedicularis rhinantoides, Ped. versicolor, Dracocephalum altaiense, Dr. nutans, Orithya heterophylla, Allium semenovi. All. atrosanguineum, All. alataviense, Carex atrata. In addition to the listed 31 plants, I found here on this day one more new one, from the Asteraceae, which later received the name Serratula procumbens.]. The views from the pass to Khan Tengri and part of Tengri Tag, although more limited than from the Kokdzhar mountain pass, are nevertheless charming. On the other side, the view to the north, to the Kokpako valley cut into a deep gap, is vast and majestic. Along one of the 175

sources of this river we began to descend from the pass directly to the north, but after half an hour of travel we turned to the northeast and along a waterless valley we soon reached the source of the Tekesa River. At first we walked along the waterless part of the valley, and then the Tekes springs began to gather in it. Red sandstones were replaced here by limestones and then by breccias. At the confluence of its sources, Tekes became a significant river; heading first to the north and then to the northeast. As we descended Tekes we entered a forest area. High-alpine plants began to disappear, and high-mountain shrubs tuye-kuyryuk (Caragana jubata), apra (Juniperus sabina), cherganak (Berberis heteropoda), honeysuckle (Lonicera hispida, L. microphylla, L. karelini, L. coerulea), sea buckthorn ( Hippophae rhamnoides), willows (Salix nigricans, S. sibirica), and finally taller trees: rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), birch (Betula alba), poplar (Populus suaveolens) and spruce (Picea schrenkiana). As we descended along the Tekes valley, the grasses I encountered more and more belonged to the cultural zone and had the character of the most ordinary European-Russian flora [Here is a list of plants that I found in the forest and cultural zone of Tekes on July 1 and 2, 1857. : Thalictrum minus, Th. simplex, Ranunculus acris, Ran. polyanthemus, Trollius altaicus, Aquilegia vulgaris, Delphinium caucasicum, Aconitum lycoctonum, Berberis heteropoda, Papaver alpinum, Turritis glabra, Draba nemorosa, Capsella; bursapastoris, Parnassia laxmani, Polygala vulgaris, Dianthus crinitus, Gypsophila acutifolia, Silene inflata, Alsine villarsii, Cerastium vulgatum, Cer. alpinum, Geranium pratense, Thermopsis lanceolata, Medicago platycarpa, M. foliata, Trifolium repent, Tr. pratense, Oxytropis ochroleuca, Coronilla varia, Vicia cracca, V. sepium, Lathyrus pratensis, Geum strictum, Sanguisorba alpina, Potentilla scricea, P. recta, Alchemilla vulgaris, Pyrus aucuparia, Carum carvi, Archangelica decurrens, Anthriacus sylvestris, Lonicera hispida, L coerulea, L. microphylla, L. karelini, Galium verum, Valeriana officinalis, Achillea millefolium, Tanacetum vulgare, Artemisia dracuncalus, Gnaphaliurru leontopodium, Senecio sibiricus, Jurinea chaetocarpa, Taraxacum officinale, Crepis sibirica, Campanula glomerata, C. patula, Adenophora polymorphe , Gentiana falcata, Polemonium coeruleum, Myosotis sylvatica, Veronica spicata, Euphrasia officinalis, Pedicularis comosa, P. rhinantoides, Lycopus exaltatus, Origanum vulgare, Thymus serpyllum, Nepeta nuda, Nepeta ucranica, Dracocephalum altaiense, Scutellaria orientalis, Lamium album, Phlomis tuberosa, Goniolimon speciosum, Plantago major, Eurotia ceratoides, Rumex acetosa, Rumex aquaticus, Polygonum bistorta, Hippophae rhamnoides, Euphorbia esula, Salix nigricans, S. sibirica, Urtica cannabina, Betula alba, Picea schrenkiana, Juniperus sabina, Alisma ranunculoides, Orchis la tifolia, Iris guldenstadtiana, Orithyia heterophylla, Gagea liottardi, Allium atrosanguineum, Al. alataviense, Al. obliguum, Veratrum, album, Phleum boehmeri, Lasiagrostis splendens.]. As for the rocks that I encountered while descending the Tekes Valley, in the alpine zone the sedimentary rocks were replaced by crystalline rocks, namely granites and syenites, which stretched along our path for an hour and a half. Then came sedimentary rocks again, first shales, then sandstone, and finally mountain limestones with their characteristic fossils of the Carboniferous system - Productus semireticulatus, 176

etc. These limestones had a dip of 50° to the west. They were followed by thin-layered non-crystalline (clayey) shales, similar to those known in geological nomenclature under the name Brandschiefer, in which seams of coal are often found. This development of coal system strata in the upper reaches of the Tekesa River explains the abundance of rich coal deposits further down the river (in the Chinese Kuldzha province). Having crossed to the left side of the Tekes, we chose a place to spend the night here on the night of July 2 at the confluence of a small spring between the juniper (Juniperus sabina) bushes into the Tekes. On July 2, we left our overnight stay on Tekes at 7 o’clock in the morning, first, we went down the river along a widening valley, which below the coniferous forest zone was overgrown with rich herbaceous vegetation of the European type. After walking for about two hours down a wide valley, we turned to the northwest, began to climb the mountain and by 11 o’clock in the morning reached the top of a not particularly high pass separating the Tekes valley from the valley of the Karkara River, from the pass we came out onto the already familiar Jil-Karagai path , which led us to the Karkara valley, from where we easily reached the Burambai nomads earlier in the evening. In his villages some interesting and even important news awaited us. A very characteristic response to my letter was received from my “Tamyr” - the supreme manap of the Sarybagish, Umbet-Ali. He answered me that he did not agree to any private ransom deal with his enemy Burambai until the general reconciliation of both tribes, in which the scores should be finally settled as to who would remain in debt to whom. The basis of such accounts, according to Kyrgyz customary law, is, first of all, the calculation of the losses of each side in sheep, cattle, horses, camels and, finally, people “black” and “white” bones. All these losses are translated into the number of rams, which at that time served as a monetary unit for monetary calculations. With such calculations, the ratio of one or another value to a ram serving as a monetary unit - a bull, a cow, a horse, a camel and even a “black bone” person - did not present any difficulties, since it was determined by custom, and only the loss of a “white bone” person or recognized by public opinion as a “batyr” was each time subject to a special assessment by mutual agreement. So, for example, the death of the Sarybagish manap Urman should have resulted in an account of several thousand coin units, that is, rams, for the goddesses. As for the prisoners, since they had already become the property of the tribe that captured them, they were exchanged with greater ease one for one, and if there was no one to exchange them for, then the ransom of the “black bone” people was carried out according to a certain indisputable tax, and the ransom of the “white bone” people and “batyrs” took place by mutual agreement. Umbet-Ali refused such and such a private agreement with his enemy Burambai about captives from his family, but informed me that he was sending all four captives in question, including his own sister, to me as his Tamyr , as a gift, leaving me to decide their future fate instead. It goes without saying that I hastened to accept the brought captives, explaining to them that since they had been released from captivity, they could immediately return home, and I suggested to my sister Umbet-Ali, at her discretion, to 177

return either to her husband or to her brother. In response to my question, she explained that Umbet-Ali himself invited her to stay with him forever and live in contentment and honor, but she expressed decisively that she wanted to remain faithful to her duty and return to the family and tribe of her husband, to which she was given voluntarily by her parents. The captives, and especially the daughter of the deceased Urman, were accepted into the family of old Burambai with honor and joy. Having transferred the honorable captives into the hands of Burambai, I only asked him to help me reward Umbet-Ali in a worthy manner for his gift according to their custom, since the captives were returned by me to their families without ransom. Burambay provided me with 12 of the best horses for this purpose, and I added to this six pieces of Caucasian silk fabric, several luxurious Kazan products embroidered with gold, and several items from Zlatoust weapons. Even more important, although very sad, but completely reliable information relating to the fate of my Berlin colleague Adolf Schlagintweit, was brought to me by Burambay’s envoys, who he sent to Kashgar for reconnaissance on my behalf. The envoys, equipped by Burambai two days before my last trip to the Tien Shan to the glaciers of Sary-jas, reached this river somewhat earlier than me and from there, through a bypass road to Kuilya, crossing the Tien Shan through Ishigart, they reached Kashgar on their excellent horses in 8 days of travel, stayed there for several days and returned to Burambai the next day after my return. The envoys who had been in Kashgar before found a big change there. The Chinese authorities had long been expelled by the Muslims, and Kashgar was ruled by a native tyure named Valikhan, who was distinguished by great cruelty. In the winter of 1855-1856, a noble and very learned “frang” arrived in Kashgar and brought with him rich supplies of various items: beautiful fabrics, weapons, watches, telescopes, some instruments and books. At first Valikhan received him well and even, at his request, looked for guides for him among the Kara-Kirghiz, since the “frang” was going to go to Mustag in the spring of 1857, but then Valikhan for some reason did not get along with the “frang” and put him in prison, took all his belongings and, before the onset of spring 1857, ordered his head to be cut off in Kashkar Square. This information was conveyed to me in such detail that it was impossible to doubt the death of the selfless traveler. And everything that it occurred to me to do in order to save Schlagintveit at the time when I first arrived in the villages of Burambai, where there were already vague rumors that Valikhan was holding some noble “Fryang” in prison, turned out to be already untimely. As for collecting more accurate information about the death of Schlagintveit, I decided, upon my return to Omsk, to persistently ask the Governor General to equip for this purpose the only European-educated Kyrgyz - the Cossack Lieutenant Valikhanov in Kashgar, which was subsequently carried out with complete success , and much later, at the site of Schlagintweit’s execution, the Russian Geographical Society erected a modest monument to the brave scientist. During my three-day stay (July 3, 4 and 5) in the villages of Burambai, I, without wasting time, conceived a new journey into the depths of the Tien Shan. Having become fully familiar with the two routes leading through the Tien Shan to Kashgaria (Little Bukharia), 178

namely: the first through Zauku and the Upper Naryn, and the second to Sary-jas and Kuilya, I sought to explore as much as possible the third, which lies entirely in the Chinese limits, namely the famous Musart mountain pass, which serves as the main route of communication for the Chinese between Gulja and Semigrad, cities located along the southern base of the Tien Shan in Chinese Turkestan (Malaya Bukharin). I made the following plan for myself: to go along the path that was already familiar to me to the upper reaches of the Tekesa River, go down along it and choose one of its right tributaries parallel to each other, and, moreover, one that would originate in the famous Musart glaciers, and climb along it to these glaciers in order to view, at least from a distance, the famous Musart mountain pass from one of the neighboring peaks. In my enterprise, I could count, on the recommendation of Burambai, on the assistance of that goddess family, which, constantly roaming Tekes, was in close relations with the Chinese authorities of the Kulja province and at that time (1857) also paid tribute to the Chinese government. On July 6, I had already moved from the village of Burambai to the villages of that very Goddess manap Toksoba, whom Burambai pointed out to me as having retained his ties with China. Toksoba received me very hospitably and promised all assistance in achieving my goal - to reach the Musart glaciers from their western side, completely bypassing the Chinese pickets. Between the tributaries of the Tekes, along which such an ascent could be made, he especially named Karakol (which should not be confused with the other Karakol of the Issyk-Kul system) and Orto-Musart. To carry out my undertaking, I made it as easy as possible for myself by taking only 30 Cossacks with me, leaving the rest with all the camels and packs in the villages of Burambai, whose stay was completely protected from the attack of the Sarybagish. On July 7, I went out with Toksoba to his new nomadic camp on the Sary-Dzhas River, a tributary of the Kegen River (not to be confused with Sary-Dzhas. The Tarim and Lop-Nor systems, which I spoke about above), and spent the night on this river near Toxobs. On July 8, having climbed the Small Sary-jas, I came out to a not particularly high pass, and from it I descended to the Tekes River, which I followed all that day until the Karakol River flows into it. Here at 6 o’clock in the evening I stopped for the night. The air temperature was + 8° C. Hypsometric determination gave 1,960 meters of altitude for the Tekesa valley at this place. On July 9, at five o’clock in the morning, we left our camp on Tekes and two hours later we entered the Karakol valley. We climbed along this valley for three hours, reached the limit of forest vegetation and went out into an alpine valley, where the most extreme goddess nomads of the Toksoba manapa clan were located. Here we stopped before noon at a rest stop in a convenient place where I wanted to leave my detachment so that, lightly with Kosharov, three Cossacks and two goddesses from the Toksoba clan, we would immediately climb the mountain, cross the ridge rising above the Karakol valley, and descend to the Orta-Musart River and find a convenient place to spend the night in the upper part of its course. I intended to use the next three days to climb such peaks adjacent to the source of this river, from which I, without approaching the Chinese pickets and the Chinese caravan route, could survey the Musart 179

mountain pass. My undertaking was made easier by the fact that in 1857 the relations of the Chinese along this pass with Semigrad, which had separated from them and were hostile to them, were very weak. But before we had time to separate from our detachment and begin our journey lightly to Orta-Musart, a messenger from Sultan Tezek suddenly galloped up to us “all covered in foam and dust” with news that immediately changed all my plans. It turned out that Tezek, treacherously captured by one of the younger sultans of the Great Horde, Tarybek, lay chained in his captivity and risked hourly being killed or handed over to his enemies, the Sarybagish. Here’s how it all happened. Among the clans of the Atban tribe, subordinate to the senior Sultan Tezek, was the clan of the younger Sultan Tarybek, whose nomads protruded far ahead of all the nomads of the Great Horde, to the south of the Ili River. During the hot season, Tarybek loved to stay in the cool alpine zone of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, and in recent years he did not even return to wintering grounds in the Ili plain, wintering in the deep and well-protected valleys and gorges of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Thus, Tarybek’s connection with the rest of the clans of the Atban tribe gradually weakened, and he even stopped paying the usual tribute to his senior sultan. Tezek, who arrived after me in the goddess’s possessions with a strong detachment, wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to restore his dominion over the lands he had passed along the way; of your entire tribe. Not suspecting any danger, he came with a convoy of four of his horsemen to the village of Tarybek for negotiations on the mentioned subject and was greeted by the latter with honor. But on the other; the day when Tarybek did not like Tezek’s demands, he was treacherously captured and shackled. On the night that followed, two of Tezek’s horsemen managed to escape. One of them went on his instructions to me, and the other - to his faithful friend, the famous Atban warrior Atamkul, who was in the Boginsky villages with part of Tezek’s detachment. The other two horsemen of Tezek remained in prison with him; Having received unexpected news about Tezek’s fate, I immediately decided to rush to the rescue of my ally at all costs and raised my entire detachment on the return journey. Not having camels with us, we were able to travel with great speed and in the dead of night we had already reached the nomadic camps of Toksoba. Here we rested for several hours while waiting for the horses to change. The next day, July 10, we set out on these fresh horses at dawn, having traveled the entire distance with extraordinary speed, we returned immediately after noon to Burambai, who had already made an order to gather horses and people for our expedition to the rescue of Tezek. By 8 pm everything was collected. Our detachment included: 40 Cossacks of my convoy (10 Cossacks with my packs and Kosharov I left in the villages of Burambai), 200 Atbans under the command of the brave faithful Tezeku Atamkul and, finally, 800 Boginsky horsemen under the command of Burambai’s son Emirzak, whose wife was returned me from enemy captivity. We were equipped in such a way that each of the Cossacks and Atbans had two saddled horses, of which he galloped on one, and the other ran behind him, and he changed from one to the other every thirty miles. Before my departure, I said goodbye forever to the venerable old man Burambai. I thanked him for 180

his assistance, without which I could not have penetrated the valleys of the Tien Shan and the mountainous heights of Tengri Tag and repeated to him my promise to assist with all my might in accepting him as Russian citizenship. Our farewell was all the more touching because each of us was deeply aware of what we owed each other. We set off before 9 o’clock in the evening and, with the help of spare horses, at dawn on July 11, we reached the nomadic camps of Tarybek, located in the depths of one of the valleys of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, on its northern side. Thus, we rode, making only one half-hour stop halfway, about 130 versts in seven hours. About five versts before reaching the village of Tarybek, I stopped our entire detachment in a deep ravine in order to count our forces. It turned out that 40 Cossacks of my convoy were all present, that of the 200 Atbans of Agam-kul there were only 20% lagging behind, but that in the Boginsky detachment of 800 horsemen only 20% arrived, since most of them did not have spare horses. With all this, it was impossible to wait for the arrival of the laggards, since the rumor of our arrival could reach Tarybek, and he would have time to finish off the captive Tezek. Therefore, I immediately selected a hundred of the best horsemen and galloped to the aul, and ordered the rest to position themselves so as to cut off the entire aul’s exit from the valley in which it was camping. At the same time, I, however, gave strict orders not to take any hostile actions against the village, trying to capture only Tarybek alone. We found the entire vast village in complete and picturesque migration. Tarybek’s brother Sauryuk came out to meet me and explained that Tezek was no longer in the village. He fled at night with one of his horsemen, and the other, who remained in custody, was immediately introduced to me and confirmed the news about Tezek, claiming that his Sultan was now completely safe in the villages loyal to him. Tarybek was also not in the village; he galloped off to the mountains at dawn, as soon as he received the first news of our approach. I explained to Sauryuk that we had no intention of undertaking anything hostile against the village and did not even want to prevent his migration, but we would certainly have captured the entire village with its herds if Tezek had not been alive or he had been handed over to the Sarybagish. Thus, our entire expedition was successfully completed. I said goodbye to Emirzak, who with his horsemen returned to his father, collecting stragglers along the way, and to Atamkul, who with his horsemen headed to his village, which was not particularly far from where we stopped, and Atamkul made me promise that I I’ll visit him. I received the same invitations from Tarybek’s brothers - Sauryuk and Basurman. Due to the need for these visits and in anticipation of my remaining Cossacks, packs and the artist Kosharov at Burambay, I spent almost six days in the Atban nomads of the Trans-Ili Alatau, getting acquainted with the way of life and the life of the only Kyrgyz-Kazakh tribes, whose representatives could be considered real highlanders. These days, I visited Atamkul, Tarybek’s brothers - Basurman and Sauryuk and his nephew and waited for the arrival of my camels and packs and Kosharov with ten Cossacks. Envoys also arrived to me from Tezek and from the bailiff of the Great Horde, to whom I sent a letter with the news of my return to the boundaries of the possessions of the Great Horde. The 181

Atbanian Bek and the Cossack Yanovsky, sent by me to find Tarybek, also returned to me with the news that he should go and confess to Tezek, which was confirmed by the messenger of Tezek himself. During my stay in Sauryuk’s aul, one of his relatives returned there, who barely made it to his aul on foot, saving his life, one might say, by a miracle. He was traveling with three of his fellow villagers near the Suok-togoi tract, where, after the confluence of three Merke with Kegen, the connected river breaks through steep cliffs through a terrible porphyry gorge with a noisy waterfall. Here the Atbans met with the Sarybagish Baranta, who captured three of them, while the narrator managed to jump with his horse into the stormy Kegen River, which he, however, failed to cross; a frantic stream drew him into a waterfall, which carried him through the gorge. The horse crashed on the rocks, but the rider, severely wounded, was thrown ashore and crawled to a safe place, from where he managed to reach his village within three days. On July 17, in the afternoon, interested in the story of Sauryuk’s relative about how he was carried by the waves of a stormy river through the Suok-togoi waterfall, I went lightly to the place where the Kegen River, at its confluence with the three Merkes, enters that picturesque gorge, through which she is washed by an unusually noisy waterfall between sheer cliffs. Having reached this place in the evening, I stopped here for the night. On July 18, a hypsometric measurement gave me 1,220 meters of absolute height for the river level above the waterfall. The air temperature here at 7 o’clock in the morning was +17° C. At this hour I set off from my overnight stay, stopped at the village of Sauryuk and took with me my entire detachment, so that, upon reaching the Chilika River, I could explore its beautiful and wide longitudinal valley separating both parallel chains of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Having reached the Chilika River in the evening, we found a comfortable overnight stop on its bank so that the next day we could continue our journey up its valley. On July 19, we left our overnight camp at about 8 a.m. and about three miles later we encountered the first outcrops of porphyry. Then our road left the river bed and headed through the porphyry hills, sometimes moving away from the Chilika current, sometimes getting closer to it. The soil was rocky, rather barren, and its vegetation resembled the flora of some coastal areas of Issyk-Kul, which had a steppe character. The following grasses grew here: chea (Lasiagrostis splendens), feather grass (Stipa capillata), Andropogon ischaemum, Setaria viridis, and from other families some characteristic plants of the southern Russian steppes: a herbaceous type of non-climbing clematis with large dense purple flowers (Clematis integrifolia), catnip (Nepeta ucrainica), and from solonetz plants Brachylepis salsa. Many shrubs grew on the rocky areas - meadowsweet (Spiraea hypericifolia), Siberian acacia (Robinia pygmaea), wild cherry (Prunus prostrata), Ephedra vulgaris. These shrubs were often intertwined with Djungarian clematis (Clematis soongarica). After three hours of travel, we reached the first right tributary of the Chilik we encountered, the Karabulak. Between Karabulak and the next tributary - Kaindy - the Chilik valley gradually turned directly to the west, completely assimilating the character of the main longitudinal valley of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Outcrops of sedimentary rocks appeared: first shale, and then 182

limestone. I spent about two hours looking lightly into the transverse valley of Kainda, while my main detachment continued on its way along the Chilika valley. The Kaindy River interested me because it got its name from the birches growing in its valley. And in fact, I found luxurious forest vegetation in this valley. In addition to birch (Betula albae), it grew: poplars, two beautiful species of tala (Salix purpufea and S. sibifica), rowan with very large berries (Pyrus aucuparia), not quite different from our European one, boyar (Crataegus pinnatifida), argay ( Cotoneaster nummularia), and finally slender spruce (Picea schrenkiana). It is remarkable that all the right tributaries of the Chilik, starting from Kainda, flow in transverse valleys parallel to each other and originate in the eternal snows of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau. At the tops of almost each of these rivers there is a pass leading to the southern side of this chain (which from the side of Issyk-Kul is called Kungey Alatau), to the lake, where other rivers flow from the same passes. But both such rivers, flowing in opposite directions from the same peak, that is, the Chilik tributary and the Issyk-Kul tributary, have the same name: for example, Kaindy, Shaty, Kurmenty. Since, having returned to my detachment, I continued to walk up the wide Chilik valley away from the river, we had to cross easy passes separating the transverse valleys from which the right tributaries of the Chilik flow. So, from Kaindy we went out to the Shaty River, at the tops of which there is an interesting high pass, which we had already climbed from its southern side, along the Shaty River, a tributary of the Issyk-Kul. That is why I no longer looked into the valley of the Shata River, a tributary of Chilik, but crossed an easy pass to the Kul River, into the valley of which I also traveled lightly, encountering porphyry outcrops all the way to Kul. From the Kulya River, through an easy pass, I had already crossed to the Kurmenty River, which I chose for my overnight stay. All this, together with excursions to the transverse valleys, took us all day. I was attracted to these transverse valleys by the luxuriant vegetation on the excellent soil, sharply different from the barren rocky soil of the banks of Chilik. On the banks of the Kurmenta River, we chose an overnight stay slightly above its exit from the transverse valley, in a grove consisting of poplars, mountain ash, thala, black barberry (Berberis heteropoda), intertwined with another species of clematis (Clematis orientalis). There were a lot of blue onions (Allium coeruleum) growing near the overnight camp. Having decided to devote the entire next day to climbing the interesting high Kurmentinsky pass from its northern side, I fell soundly asleep in my tent to the sound of a fast and foaming mountain river that had become usual for me. On July 20, at five o’clock in the morning, I began my ascent lightly, with Kosharov, 3 Cossacks and 2 Kyrgyz to the Kurmentinsky pass, which turned out to be one of the most interesting high passes leading from the longitudinal Chilik valley to Issyk-Kul. Half an hour from our lodging for the night we encountered outcrops of siliceous shales, and an hour later limestones with fossils, which turned out to be undoubtedly belonging to the Devonian system. The vegetation of the lower part of the Kurmenta valley had the character of the vegetation of the agricultural colonization zone of the Trans-Ili region, but, as coniferous trees appeared in it, it gradually turned 183

into the vegetation of the forest zone. At first our road followed the left bank of the Kurmenta, but in the third hour of our journey it deviated from the river, bypassing the steep cliffs of its left bank, and began to climb strongly up the mountain, passing through a zone of coniferous forest, where the grassy vegetation gradually began to take on a subalpine character. It was here that I managed to find three completely new plant species. One, from the fume family (Fumariaceae), later received the name Corydalis semenovi; another, from the umbrella family (Umbelliferae), was named Peucedanum transiliense; the third, from the same family, even turned out to be a new genus, named by Regel in my honor Semenovia transiliensis [Here is a complete list of 80 plants collected by me on this day (July 20) in the forest zone: Clematis soongorica, C. orientalis, Atragene alpina, Thalictrum minus, Th. simplex, Ranunculus polyanthemus, Delphinium jcaucasicum, Aconitum lycocotonum, Berberis heteropoda, Chelidonium majus, Corydalis semenovi n. sp., Helianthemum sbongoricum, Porygala vulgaris, Dianthus crinitus, Vaccaria vulgaris, Silene Hthophila, Stellariaglauca, Cerastium vulgatum, Linum perenne, Hypericum perforatum, Geranium albiflorum, Maedicago talcata, Astragalus vicioides, Lathyrus pratensis, Spiraea media, Alchemilla vulgar is, Rosa pimpinellifolia, Pyrus aucuparia, Cotoneaster nummularia, Bupleurum ranunculoides, Libanotis condensata, Peucedanum transiliense n. sp., Chaerophylium phallerocarpus, Aulacospermum anomalum, Semenovia transiliensis n. sp., Patrinia rypestris, Scabiosa ochrolleuci, Tanacetum fruticulosum, T. transilianse, Achillea milfefolium, Artemisia dracunculus, Ar. absinthium, Gnaphalium sylvaticum, Doronicum oblongifolium, Saussurea salicifolia, Glossocoma clematidea, Campanula glomerata, Adenophora polymorpha, Myosotis sylvatica, Euphrasia oficinalis, Rhinantus cristagalli, Pedicularis comosa, Origanum Jyulgare, Nepeta ucranica, Dracocephalum im berbe, Dracocephalum altaiense, Phlomis alpina, Larnium album, Polygonum Viviparum, Polygonum Bistorta, Eupliorbia Pachyrhiza, Salix Stbirica, S. Purpurea, Populus Laurifolia, Picea Schrenkiana, Juiiparus Sabina, IRIS GULDENSTADTT Iana, Orithya Heterophylla, Allium Jscliosnoprasun, A. Coeruleum, A. Sticktum, Carex Nitida, C. Nutans, Festuca altaica, Brachypodium pinnatnum, B. sehrenkianum, Poa alpina, Poa nemoralis, Avena pratensis, Phleum alpinum.]. Finally, we left the forest vegetation, and tall spruce trees gave way to subalpine shrubs, such as juniper (Juniperus sabina) and tuye-kuyryuk (Caragana jubata), meadowsweet (Spiraea oblongifolia) and an unknown Potentilla fruticosa. Sedimentary rocks, not reaching the border of forest vegetation, were replaced by crystalline rocks, namely diorites. The road became rocky, the climb was very steep, and the vegetation above the forest trees acquired a high-alpine character. Among the high-alpine plants, a completely new species of the genus Astragalus was found, later named Oxytropis heteropoda, and another I found here on this day (July 20) turned out to be Himalayan (Oxytropis cashmiriana) [Here is a list of 55 plants collected by me on this day (July 20) ) in the alpine zone: Thalictrum alpinum, Anemone narcissiflora, Ranunculus altaicus, Oxygraphis glacialis, Callianthemum rutaefolium, Trollius patulus, Hegemone lilacina, Isopyrum anemoides, Papaver alpinum, Erysimum cheirantus, Viola grandiflora, Parnas184

sia laxmanni, Dianthu s alpinus, Silene graminifolia, S. lithophila , Lychnis apetala, Alsine biflora, Cerastium trigynum, C. lithospermifolium, Cerastium alpinum, Geranium saxatile, Caragana jubata, Oxytropis heteropoda n. sp., Ox. cashmiriana, Hedysarum lobscurum, Spiraea oblongifolia, Potentilla pensylvanica, Potentilla fragiformis, Sedum coccineum, Saxifraga flagellaris, S. sibirica, S. hirculus, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Angelica decurrens, Aster alpinus, A. flaccidus, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Erigeron alpinus, Rhinactian a limonifolia, Tanacetum pulchrum, Scorzonera austriaca, Primula nivalis, Cortusasemenovi, Gentianaaurea, G. kurroo, Pedicularis versicolor, Gymnandraborealis, Oxyriareniformis, Thesium alatavicum, Alliumsemenovi, Luzula campestris, Eriphorum chamissonis, Carex stnophylia, Carex atrata, Carex frigida.]. A path rising steeply along a river falling in cascades led us to a picturesque alpine lake occupying a basin surrounded by rocks. On the southern side of the lake, these rocks were especially steep and looked like a high wall with battlements, in the middle of which there was a slight notch, indicating a mountain pass. The snow on the northern slope descended (July 20) almost to the shore of the lake, into which the stream fed by this snowy clearing flowed. Another stream flowed into the lake from the west-southwest. Having crossed this last one, we began to climb in a zigzag along the rock cliff onto the steep wall of the mountain pass. The clouds that had gathered above us burst into a strong snow storm, which covered us with flakes of snow throughout our half-hour ascent. We covered the entire distance from the border of the coniferous forest to the top of the pass in two hours. When we climbed the Kurmentinsky ridge, the wind had already scattered and carried away the snow clouds, and a vast view of the southern side of Kungei Alatau, the blue surface of Issyk-Kul and the distant majestic snow chain of the Tien Shan opened up in all its splendor. The mountain ridge, into which the Kurmentinsky mountain pass was only slightly cut, descended on the southern side as steeply as on the northern side, about 300 or 400 meters. And on the other side there was an alpine lake, from which the South Kurmenty River quickly rushed to the south , flowing in cascades towards Issyk-Kul. To the left, above the very shore of the alpine lake, a high and steep granite cliff rose. Below at our feet lay the vast surface of the blue lake, the familiar Kurmentinskaya Bay, which was clearly visible, as if on a relief geographical map. We reached the top of the pass at two o’clock in the afternoon. The temperature was +4° C. Hypsometric measurements gave me 3,390 meters for the height of the pass. Having admired the wonderful view of the blue lake and cast a farewell glance at the entire continuous snow-white chain of the Tien Shan, we went down the same road to the camp of our detachment on Chilik and reached it after sunset. On July 21, we descended from our overnight stay in the Tabulgata valley to Chilik and crossed this high-water river to its left bank with great difficulty and danger. The transition over huge rocks, over which a stormy and foamy river rushed, was very difficult. The rams that we drove in front of us had to be transported one by one on horses; Even our dogs, who accosted us on the field of the Zaukino massacre, could hardly swim across the river: easily carried away by its rapid current, they were thrown out by chance on one bank or 185

another. If they hit the right one, they patiently ran up the river along the bank and, having reached the ford, threw themselves into the water again. If we reached the left bank, we easily ran to our halt, which we arranged there after crossing the river. It was especially difficult for our camels to climb the left bank ledge along the slippery path. The difficult crossing took us half a day. The woody vegetation of the Chilika Valley at this location consisted of two species of tala (one very narrow-leaved), birch (Betula alba), common aspen (Populus tremula), rowan (Pyrus aucyparia) and a small number of slender spruce (Picea schrenkiana), and of shrubs - two species of honeysuckle (Lonice ratatarica and L. coerulea), blackberry (Berberis heteropoda), wild cherry (Prunus prostrata), currant (Ribes heterotrichum) and sea buckthorn (Hypophae rhamnoides). Having walked about eight miles up the Chilika valley, we reached its left tributary Taldy-Bulak, but between it and the next tributary Kuturgu we began to climb up the mountain along a rocky slope. The ascent was very difficult, the outcrops consisted first of siliceous shale, and then of porphyry and diabase. When we reached half of the ascent ahead of us, the day was already so inclined towards evening that we decided to stop here for the night on a beautiful spring between the rocks and thickets of the local species of nettle, with strongly cut leaves and coarsely fibrous stems, like hemp ( Urtica cannabina). It is remarkable that in this plant zone I also found wild hemp (Cannabis sativa). On July 22, we left our overnight stay at 7 o’clock in the morning. Near it, in limestone outcrops, I found many fossils characteristic of the Carboniferous system, such as Productus giganteus, Pr. semireticulatus, as well as several species of corals. In some places this limestone was broken through by porphyries and had a dip of 40° to the south. Having reached the Kuturgu River and rising to its source, we finally climbed to the top of the ridge, which here forms a kind of plateau with beautiful subalpine meadows. After wandering through these meadows for several hours, we reached the Maibulak, which, descending from the ridge to the south, flows into Chilik. Along this Maibulak we went down a little and found a convenient place for our overnight stay [Here are the plants I collected (July 22) in the subalpine meadows of Maibulak: Trollius altaicus, Papaver alpinum, Draba rupestris, Dr. nemorosa, Parmassia laxmannii, Polygala vulgaris, Silene lithophila, Lychnis apetala, Alsine verna. Cerastium alpinum, Cer. triviale, Linum perenne, Geranium rectum, Oxytropis amoena, Hedysarum obscurum, Potentilla pe nsylvanica, Sedum purpureum, Sed, hybridum, Carum bupleuroides, Asperula aparine, Aster alpinus, Calimeris altaica, Eriigeron uniflorus, Cirsium semenovi n. sp., Gnaphalium leontopodium, Serratula lycatifolia, Mulgedium azureum, Adehophora polymorha, Primula longiscapa, Androsace maxima, Cortusa semenovi, Gentiana aurea, Thymus serpyllum, Dracocephalum peregrinum, Leonurus glaucescens, Phlomis alpina, Triglochin maritimum, Allium moschatum, All. steveni, Juncus bulbosus, Carex vulpina, C. caespitosa, Avena lavescens.]. On July 23, having left our overnight stay in the upper reaches of Maibulak, we climbed to the crest of the ridge and walked about ten miles, slowly moving along this ridge, through beautiful alpine meadows. The rock outcrops we encountered consisted of limestone, then porphyry, and finally shale. To our 186

left, beyond the wide Chilik valley, rose the peaks of the southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau, bearing wide glades of eternal snow on their northern slopes. Below, at our feet, ahead of the Chilik flow, we could see three parallel valleys of the three transverse tributaries of the Chilik, flowing into it above the Kuturga River. All these three valleys were called apricot valleys (1, 2 and 3 Uryukty). Having walked another fifteen miles along the plateau ridge along which we followed, we finally reached its climax at 11 o’clock in the morning. The temperature was +7.8° C. The mountain peak turned out to be, according to my hypsometric measurement, 2,890 meters of absolute height. The rest stop where I made my observation was at the foot of a large rock consisting of clayey shale with a fall of 65° to the south. The flora here was already completely alpine [I collected the following plants here: Thalictrum alpinum, Ranunculus altaicus, Hegemone Jlilacina, Papaver alpinum, Corydalis gortchakovii, Draba pilosa, Dr. rupestris, Viola biflora, V. grandiflora, Parnassia laxmanni, Lychnis apetala, Alsine verna, Cerastium alpinum, Geranium saxatile, Astragalus vicioides, Potentilla fiivea, Sedum hybridum, Saxifraga flagellaris, S. sibirica, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Aster alpinus, Erigeron uniflorus, G naphalium leontopodium, Doronicum oblongifolium, Saussurea sorocephala, Primula nivalis, Androsace maxima, Cortusa semenovi, Gentiana amarella, G. aurea, G. kurroo, Eritrichium villosum, Pedicularis versicolor, Gymnandra tiorealis, Dracocephalum altaiense, Dr. ruyschiana. v. alpinum, Oxyria reniformis, Polygonum viviparum, Heningia robusta.], and the view from this peak was extensive and delightful. A wide longitudinal valley cut far and deep between the two parallel chains that make up the Trans-Ili Alatau. The entire upper half of the Chilika River flows in it, fed by numerous tributaries parallel to each other, of which the right ones flow in the transverse valleys of the southern chain, and the left ones in the transverse valleys of the northern. The slopes of both parallel chains bore wide glades of eternal snow, but the southern chain, which had less dissection between its snowy peaks, rose as a solid wall, and the snowy peaks of the northern chain were more individualized and seemed even higher. To our right, at our feet. several springs flowed, which, when connected, gave rise to the Jenishka River, flowing in a very narrow gorge parallel to the Chilika valley. Behind this gorge, the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau rose majestically with its snowy peaks, connecting with which our ridge went, turning to the west-northwest. From the peak we had reached, we had already begun to descend into the Chilika valley. At first we walked, descending, through alpine meadows, but after five miles we began to quickly descend along a clayey white-yellow path, which consequently received the name Ak-kiya, into the forest zone [During the descent along the Akkiya road, I managed to find a new species of plants from the Asteraceae, which later received the name Cirsium semenovi. Of the other plants encountered on this descent, the following attracted my particular attention: Potantilla viscosa, Galium saxatila, Brachyactis ciliata, Alfredia acantholepis, Adenophora polymorpha, Polygonum cognatum, Melica ciliata.]. At the entrance to it, one had to make one’s way through dense thickets of juniper (Juniperus pseudosabina), the woody stems of which, tangled and curling almost spirally, were spread 187

over the rocks, intertwined with honeysuckle and rowan bushes, but in places they rose upward with powerful, although twisted, trees intertwined with the neighboring one. mountain clematis (Atragena alpina). Having passed through these thickets, we entered the spruce forest zone, which descends here along the valley of the Bai-saur river to Chilik. In this area we stopped at 3 o’clock in the afternoon for the night, already in the Chilika valley, between the spruce trees, on the bank of a beautiful stream, which our guides called Chin-bulak. The thermometer showed +18° C in this place, and the hypsometric determination gave me a height of 2,050 meters here, which can be taken as the average height of the longitudinal Chilika valley. I spent my entire evening selecting and reviewing the plants I collected on July 19, 21 and 22 in the valley along its entire almost 80-verst length. The plants collected and registered by me these days in the valley turned out to be no less than 150 species, and this collection had the significance that it fully represented the July flora of the forest zone of the Trans-Ili region (from 2,000 to 2,500 meters of absolute height) on the 80-verst along the valley separating both parallel adjacent chains of a gigantic ridge, which, in turn, serves as the leading ridge in the even more gigantic Tien Shan system. [Here is a complete list of 150 plants collected and recorded by me in the longitudinal valley of Chilika, between 2,000 and 2,500 meters, that is, not above the limits of forest vegetation: 1. Ranunculaceae: Clematis soongorica bunge v. integrifolia, C. orientalis, Atragena alpina, Thalictrum foetidum, Ranunculus acris, R. polyanthemos, Delphinium caucasicum. 2. Berberideae: Berberis heteropoda. 3. Cruciferae: Draba nemorosa, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Thlaspi arvense. 4. Violarieae: Viola canina. 5. Polygaleae: Polygala vulgaris. 6. Sileneae: Dianthus superbus, Gypsophila acutifolia, Vaccaria vulgaris, Sikne litophila, S. saxatilis. 7. Alsineae: Alsine globulosa, Stellaria glauca, Cerastium dahuricum. 8. Hypericineae: Hypericum perforatum. 9. Geraniaceae: Geranium pratense, G. saxatile. 10. Leguminosae: Trifolium repens, Caragana irutescens, Car. pygmaea, Car. jubata, Oxytropis amoena, Astragalus hemiphaea, A. hypoglottia, A. vicioides, A. altaicus, A lithophilus, Vicia cracca. 11. Amygdaleae: Prunus armeniace, P. prostrata, P. padus. 12. Rosaceae: Spiraea hypericifolia, Sanguisorba alpina, Alchemilla vulgaris, Potentilla supina, P. argentea, P. anserina, P. bifurea, P. fruticosa, Corrartmsalessowii. 13. Pomaceae: Cotoneaster nummularia, Pyrus malus, P. aucuparia. 14. Onagrarieae: Epilobium angustifolium, E. latifolium, E. palustre, E. roseum. 15. Crassulaceae: Umbilicus semenovi, Sedum hybridum. 16. Grossularicae: Ribes heterotrichum, R. atropurpureum, R. rubrum. 17. Umbelliferae: Carum bupleuroides, Bupleurum ranunculoides, Libanotis condensata, Archangelica decurrens, Semenovia transiliensis, Anthriscus sylvestris, Chaerophyllum sphallerocarpus, Aulacospermum anomalum. 18. Caprifoliaceae: Lonicera tatarica, L. xylosteum, L. hispida, L. coerulea, L. microphylla. 19. Rubiaceae: Asperula aparine, Galium breale, G. verum. 20. Valerianeae: Patrinia rupestis. 21. Dipsaceae: Scabiosa ochroleuca. 22. Compositae: Galatella punctata, Erigeron acris, Achillea millefolium. Artemisia dracunculus, Art. sacrorum, Art. vulgaris, Art. rupestris,

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Senecio sibiricus, S. paludosus, Saussurea saltcifolia, Tragopogon pratense, Hieracium virosum. 23. Campanulaceae: Campanula glomerata, Adenophora polymorpha. 24. Primulaceae: Androsace septentrionalis. 25. Gentianeae: Gentiana amarella, G. decumbens, G. barbata. 26. Borragineae: Myosotis sylvatica, Cynoglossum viridyflorum. 27. Scrophulariaceae: Veronica spicata, Euphrasia officinalis, Scrophularia incisa. 28. Labiateae: Mentha arvensis, Origanum vulgare, Thymus serpyllum, Ziziphora clinopodioides, Z. tenuior, Nepeta nuda, Dracocephalum altaicum, Scutellaria orientalis, Leonurus glaucescens, Lamium album. 29. Chenopodiaceae: Blitum vigratum, Eurotica ceratoides. 30. Polygoneae: Rumex acetosa, R. aquaticus, Polygonum cognatum, P. bistorta. 31. Eleagneae: Hippophae rhamnoides. 32. Euphorbiaceae: Euphorbia polyrhiza. 33. Salicineae: Salix purpurea, S. sibirica, Populus laurifolia. 34. Betulaceae: Betula alba. 35. Qnetaceae: Ephedra vulgaris. 36. Abietineae: Picea schrenkiana. 37. Cupressineae: Juniperus sabina. 38. Urticeae: Urtica cannabina. 39. Cannabineae: Cannabis sativa. 40. Orchideae: Piatanthera viridis, Orchis latifolia. 41. Liliaceae: Allium schoenoprasum, A. coeruleum, A. steveni, A. strictum. 42. Cyperaceae: Carex paniculata, � punctata. 43. Gramineae: Elymus sibiricus, E. junceus, Triticum cristatum, Poa nemoralis. Atropis convoluta, Deschampsia caespitosa, Calamagrostis dubia, C. epigeios, Agrostis alba, Milium effusum, Lasiagrostisisplendens, Stipa capillata, Phleum boehmeri, Setaria viridis, Andropogon ischaemum.] Upon careful examination of this list, one cannot help but notice a significant proportion of tree-like plants in the flora of the longitudinal Chilik valley (more than 20%), of which only seven species are found in our Central Russian flora. This, however, finds an explanation in the fact that the entire Chilik valley, separating two parallel chains of the Trans-Ili Alatau, lies entirely in the forest zone of a high mountainous country. But it is even more striking that among the grassy vegetation of the Chilik valley, 56% belong to the ordinary flora of the European-Russian plain, and this serves as a sure indicator that the entire Chilik-Kebin longitudinal valley, separating both snow chains of the Trans-Ili Alatau, represents an area suitable for its climatic conditions. conditions for culture and settled colonization. On July 24, we left our overnight stay at Chin-bulak in the Chilik valley at 7 o’clock in the morning and began to climb steeply up the mountain between Chin-bulak and Dolon-bulak, encountering rocks that first consisted of gray wacke and then granite. At first we passed through a forest zone, which entirely contained the longitudinal Chilik valley, but after the spruce gave way to juniper, we already entered the zone of alpine meadows. However, here we soon came across such a continuous ridge of rocks, which in Alpine terminology is called Felsenreem (sea of rocks). All our efforts to cross this ridge on horses and camels were unsuccessful. Even my horse, which was handled with special care, was badly wounded. I was forced to stop my entire detachment, directing it along the roundabout route indicated by the Kirghiz guides, to the place I intended that day for an overnight stay in the upper reaches of Mai-bulak. I myself, without abandoning my intention to reach the snowy ridge of the northern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau rising in front of me and measure the height of the snow line of the southern slope of this chain, continued my journey lightly, accompanied by Kosharov, 189

three Cossacks and one Kyrgyz. We went on foot, and somehow dragged our horses little by little over a ridge of rocks, behind which we again mounted our horses and climbed without much difficulty to the top of the ridge along a snow clearing, which was about a mile wide and descended rather gently from the top of the ridge. This ridge, according to my hypsometric measurement, turned out to be 3,740 meters in absolute height, and the height of the snow line on its southern slope was determined to be 3,700 meters [The vegetation between the snow line and the upper limit of forest vegetation was high alpine and consisted of the following plants: Thalictrum alpinum, Ranunculus altaicus, Oxygraphis glacialis, TrolHus patulus, Hegemone lilacina, Aconitum rotundifolium, Papaver alpinum, Corydalis gortchakovii, Draba lactea, Parrya stenocarpa, Chonspora sibirica, Viola jgrandiflora, Lychnis apetala, Bryomorpha (Arenaria) rupifraga, Alsine verna, Cerastium alpinum, Geranium saxatile, Oxytropis amoena, Astragalus vicioides, Dryadanthe bungeana, Potentilia nivea, Saxifraga flagellaris, Sax. hirculus, Chrysosplenium hudicaule, Sedum coccineum, Aster alpinus, Aster flaccidus, Erigeron uniflorus, Gnapnalium leontopodium, Doronicum oblongifolium, Saussurea pygmaea, Saussurea sorocephala, Primula nivalis, Pr. longiscapa, Cortusa mathiolte, Gentiana aurea, Gent. kurro, Arnebia jperennis, Eritrichium villosum, Pedicularis doli chorhiza, Gymnandra borealis, Dracocephalum imberbe, Dr. altaiense, Oxyria reniformis, Polygonum viviparum, Luzula campestris, Carex atrata.]. I took the measurement around noon, under a completely cloudless sky and a temperature of +5° C. To the north the ridge fell very steeply into the abyss; continuous eternal snow, with very clear bedding, descended on the northern side much more than on the southern side, at least a hundred meters. The view from the top of the ridge to the south side was very extensive and delightful. Ahead of us, beyond the wide Chilika valley, stretched the entire southern chain of the Trans-Ili Alatau (Kungei-Alatau), which bore an uninterrupted strip of eternal snow on its northern slope. It hid Lake Issyk-Kul from us, but behind it, in the distant southeast, the snowy Tengri Tag with its characteristic giant Khan Tengri was visible. Below, at our feet, the entire Chilika valley was covered with foggy clouds. But in the southwest, at the Chilik-Kebin junction, connecting both chains of the Trans-Ili Alatau, snowy glades shone. We tried to make our descent from the high ridge as quickly as possible, but when we reached the largest part of this descent, it was already dark, and we had to descend from a steep wall of rocks, leaving ourselves completely to the instinct of the Kyrgyz horses, remarkably accustomed to mountain travel. When we finally reached the foot of the rocky wall from which we had descended, we decided to spend the night here before reaching our camp on Mai-bulak. On July 25, getting up at 5 a.m., out of curiosity, we examined the rocky wall from which we had descended, and descending from it seemed completely impossible to us. This proved to us that the instinct of horses is sometimes more accurate than the human eye. Setting off along an incomparably easier road, two hours later we reached our detachment’s overnight camp on Mai-bulak. The place turned out to be, according to my measurements, at 2,360 meters of absolute height. We set off with our detachment before noon at a temperature of 22° C. Not far from my tent, located between the spruce 190

trees, a beautiful spring running from under the stones, which had a temperature of +4.4° C. The spruce trees rose another 50 meters above our overnight stay. After the entire detachment left, we quickly climbed to a relatively low pass, which turned out to be at 2,480 meters of absolute height, at a temperature of 11°C. From here we quickly began to descend diagonally through the ridges, trying to get closer to the deep valley of the Jenishke River. The rock outcrops we encountered consisted of porphyry, and the vegetation zone we passed through was a spruce forest zone. When, having walked about fifteen miles, we became very close to the Jenishke River, we quickly began to descend into its narrow gorge through rocks consisting of siliceous slate, while on the left bank of the gorge porphyry rocks rose steeply. There were few meadow areas in the narrow valley, but the forest vegetation was rich. We present here a fairly complete list of the flora of the Jenishke valley according to our collection and diary on July 25 because the difference in the floras of the parallel and almost equally deep valleys of Chilik and Jenishke is determined by the narrowness and tightness of the latter and the greater rate of fall of the mountain rivers flowing in Jenishke []Here is a list for the collection and records on July 25: Atragene alpina, Thalictrum minus, T. simplex, Ranunculus polyanthemos, Trollius patulus, Aquilegia vulgaris, Delphinium caucasicum, Aconitum lycoctonum, Berberis heteropoda, Papaver alpinum, Arabis. pendula, Draba muralis, Chorispora bungeana, Sisymbrium brassicaeforme, S. sophia, Erysimum cheirantus, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Thlaspi arvense, Parnassia palustris, P. laxmanni, Polygala vulgaris, Silene inflata, S. saxatilis, Arenaria serpyllifolia, Stellaria glauca, Geran ium saxatile, G. collinum, Impatiens parviflora. Evonimus semenovi, Caragana pygmaea, Astragalus hemiphaea, A. hypcglottis. A. alpinus, Vicia craae, Lathyrus pratensis, Hedysarum obscurum, Spiraea hypericifolia, Sanguisorba alpina, Potentilia anserina, Rubus caesius, Rosa pimpinellifolia, Cotcneaster nummularia, Pyrus aucuparia, Epilobium angustifolium, E. palustre, Sedum purpureum, S. hybridum, Ribes hetero trichum , R. rubrum, Heogaya simplex, Archangelical decurrens, Lonicera xylosteum, L. hispida, L. microphylla, L. coerulea, L. tatarica, L. karelini, Asperula aparine, Galium boreale, G. verum, Valeriana officinalis, Scabiosa caucasica, Rhinaitina jlimoniifolia, Erigeron acns, Achillea millefolium, Tanacetum fruticulosum, Artemisia jdracunculus, Art. scoparia, Art. vulgaris, Art. rupestris, Art. sacrorum, Gnaphalium leontopodiurh, Senecio vulgaris, S. praealtus, S. sibiricus. S. paludosus, Saussurea pycnocephala, Centaurea ruthenica, Carduus crispus, Cirsium lanceolatum, Tragopogon pratense, Ecorzonera purpyrea, Crepis multicaulis, Campanula glomerata, Adenophora polymopha, Cortusa mathioli, Gentiana amarella, G. aurea, Echinospermum microcorpum, Hvosciamus pusillus, P edicularis comosa, Nepeta nuda, Dracocephalum imberbe, Dr. peregrinum, Leonurus glaucescens, Lamium album, Phlomis tuberosa, Plantago major, Chenopodium hybridum, Axyris amaranthoides, Rumex aquaticus, Polygonum cognatum, Polygonum convolvulus, P. polymorphum, Euphorbia pachyrhiza, Salix purpurea, S. nigricans, Betula, alba, Picea schrenkiana, Juniperus sabina, Goodyera repens, Allium atrosanguineum, A. steveni. A. oreoprasum. A. oreophilum, Eremurus altaicus, Carex nitida, Triticum cristatum, Tr. repens, Festuca altaica, Atropis 191

convoluta, Melica ciliata, Festuca ovina, Calamagrostis dubia, Cal. epigejos, Lasiagrostis splendehs, Poa nemoralis, Poa altaica. Among these plants, I rediscovered a breed of euonymus, very different from our European ones (Evonymus europeaus, Ev. verrucosus) and subsequently received the name Ev. semenovi.. Having reached the Jenishke River itself at about 6 o’clock in the evening, we stopped here for the night on the very bank of the river in completely clear weather and a temperature of 27 ° C. Hypsometric determination gave us 1,880 meters of absolute height. On July 26, we set off from our overnight stay at 5 a.m. and immediately began to climb steeply uphill along the right side of the valley. When we met on our way the transverse valley of the Jenishke Chin-bulak tributary, we descended into it through a spruce forest and began to climb up the river, encountering outcrops along it first of mica schists and then of granites. In one place, the granite turned out to be broken through by a vein of grunstein, which had a dip of 75° to the south. As we climbed up the stream, the spruce forest gradually thinned out and finally, when we reached the limit of forest vegetation at an altitude of 2,600 meters, it was replaced by juniper ( Juniperus sabina). Then the juniper disappeared, and we went out into the alpine zone, following which we finally reached at 11 a.m. the top of the mountain pass, which turned out to be, according to my hypsometric measurement, 2,880 meters [Here is a list of plants I collected on July 26 in the alpine zone mountain pass leading from the valley of the Jenishke River to the valley of the Asa River: Ranunculus pulchellus, Ran. altaicus, Callianthemum rutaefolium, Papaver alpinum, Barbarea vulgaris, Draba lactea, Dr. rupestris, Eutrema edwardsii, E. alpestris, Viola grandiflora, Parnassia laxmanni, Lychnis apetala, Alsine verna, Cerastium alpinum, Geranium saxatile, Oxytropis amoena, Astragalus hemiphaea, Astragalus alpinus, Astr. nivalis, Dryadanthe bungeana, Sanguisorba alpina, Potentilla gelida, Saxifraga flagellaris, S. hirculus, Sax. sibirica, Chrysosplenium nudicaule, Libanotis condensata, Archangelica decurrens, Aster alpinus, Ast. flaccidus, Erigeron uniflorus, Tanacetum pulchrum, Onaphalium lecntopolium, Primula nivalis, Androsace septentrionalis, Gentiana falcata, Gen. aurea, Gent. kurroo, Gent. frigida, Myosotis sylvatica, Eritrichium villosum, Gymnandra borealis, Oxyria reniformis, Polygonum viviparum, Festuca altaica.]. The thermometer showed 10° C. The descent from the pass was very steep and very dangerous. He led us to one of the upper reaches of the Asa River, namely to Asynin-Bulak, which we reached at 5 o’clock in the afternoon at a temperature of +18.6 ° C. Here we stopped for the night, where the hypsometric determination gave us a height of 2,420 meters. The spruce forest rose another 180 meters above our overnight stay. The transverse valley of Asynin-bulak, in which we stopped, flowed into the longitudinal valley of the Asa River. On July 27, we set off from our overnight stay on Asynin-Bulak at 5 a.m. and quickly descended into the wide longitudinal valley of the Asy River. Turning along it to the west, upstream of the river, and walking along it about fifteen miles through the forest zone, we encountered outcrops of only porphyry, and by 8 a.m. we had already reached the limits of forest vegetation and quickly began to climb uphill through alpine meadows to the pass separating the longitudinal the Asa Valley from the headwaters of the Turgen River, 192

which has long been familiar to us, flowing along the northern slope of the Trans-Ili Alatau into the Ili River. Coming out of the Asa valley, I completed a floristic study of all the main longitudinal valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau, of which the two most significant (the Kebina and Chilika rivers), stretching from E to W in one line, dissect the gigantic ridge into northern and southern snow chains, and others two parallel to them, but less significant longitudinal valleys (Jenishke and Asy) represent, as it were, lateral folds formed during the uplift of two colossal parallel mountain ranges. Generally speaking, the division into parallel chains and the formation of very long valleys longitudinal to the axis of the mountain range, stretching from east to west, constitute a characteristic feature of the entire Tien Shan. In terms of their geological structure, all these longitudinal valleys have a clear similarity to each other, but in terms of climate and vegetation, the valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau are very different from the central Tien Shan ones. All four valleys of the central Tien Shan that I visited and explored were Sarydzhasskaya, which belongs to the Ak-su river system, and therefore the Tarim and Lob-nor lakes; the valleys of Kok-Jara and upper Karkara, belonging to the system of the Ili River and Lake Balkhash; the valley of the upper Naryn, belonging to the Yaxartes or Syr Darya system. and therefore, the Aral Sea, lie above the limits of forest vegetation, and therefore are inconvenient for agricultural colonization. On the contrary, all four named longitudinal valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau (the Kebina, Chilika, Dzhenishke and Asa rivers) lie entirely in the zone of forest vegetation, and therefore are convenient for agricultural colonization and especially for cattle breeding. As for the flora of these last four valleys, it has great features in comparison with the steppe, purely Asian flora of the Ili Lowland, on the one hand, and the highalpine flora of the alpine zone, on the other. One of these features is expressed in the fact that the proportion of plant species belonging to tree species in these valleys is incomparably greater than in the areas of the Trans-Ili region, belonging to the steppe and purely agricultural, and even more so to the alpine zones, accounting for more than 20% of all plants these valleys. In contrast to the grassy vegetation of the same valleys, most of which belongs to European forms, the woody vegetation has a different character. Of the 36 tree and shrub species I found here, only 7 turned out to be common with our Central Russian lowland vegetation, namely: birch (Betula alba), bird cherry (Prunus padus), apple tree (Pyrus malus), mountain ash (Pyrus aucuparia), bramble (Rubus caesius ), our forest honeysuckle (Lonicera xylosteum) and red willow (Salix purpurea). The remaining tree species that I found in the Trans-Ili Alatau belong to forms alien to us, which have their distribution center in the Central Asian highlands, namely in Dzungaria. Of these, 9 do not leave Dzungaria, but 10 are common to the entire Altai-Sayan mountain system, and 2 of them reach the subpolar areas of Siberia and even European Russia through the Siberian Plain; finally, 8 breeds appear in the Caucasus. As for herbaceous plants, of the 175 species that I found in the longitudinal valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau, 57% belong to ordinary species, widespread throughout our Central Russian Plain, imperceptibly passing into the Siberian Plain, and only the remaining 43% can be considered more or less Asian plants, including 19% do not leave the Dzungarian Highlands, 193

12% are common to this highland with the Altai-Sayan mountain system and should be revered as indigenous Siberian plants, and the other 12% pass through the Kyrgyz steppes into the Aral-Caspian lowland and reach the foothills of the Caucasus . The smaller and narrower longitudinal valleys of Alatau differ from the wider ones in that, with their steeper slopes, alpine streams quickly reach the bottom of these valleys and quickly bring with them the seeds of mountain plants of the alpine zone, which often develop in these valleys. I return to my journey. On July 27, at about 9 o’clock in the morning, following up the longitudinal valley of Asa, I had already left the forest vegetation and began to quickly climb the pass. Before noon we had already reached its peak, which, according to my hypsometric determination, turned out to be 2,520 meters. The thermometer at noon showed +12° C. The descent to the other side of the pass led us to the Oy-Dzhailau River, which turned out to be one of the tributaries of the Turgen River known to us. The vegetation on the pass itself and its descents was alpine [Here is what was written in my diaries on July 27 in this zone: Trollius patulus, Papaver alpinum, Draba hirta, Eutrema alpestre, Parnassia laxmanni, Cerastium lithospermifolium, Geranium saxatile, Astragalus alpinus, Sanguisorba alpina, Saxifraga hirculus, Sax. flagellaris, Libanotis condensata, Archangelica decurrens, Erigeron uniflorum, Aster liaccidus, Artemisia sericea, Gnaphalium leontopodium, Taraxacum steveni, Androsace septentrionalis, Gentiana falcata, Gent. frigida, Gent. aurea, Myosotis sylvatica, Oxyria reniformis, Carex artata.]. Having entered the forest zone, we passed through it along the left slope along the ridges and, crossing the left tributaries of the Turgeni, finally reached the confluence of its two main branches and stopped here at 7 o’clock in the evening for the night in the midst of the luxurious vegetation of the lower forest zone, which consisted exclusively of deciduous trees: birch, poplar (Populus raurifolia), apple tree, apricot (apricot) and Trans-Ili maple (Acer semenovi), and among shrubs - buckthorn (Rhamnus catharctica) and argay (Cotoneaster nummularia), euonymus (Evonymus semenovi), blackberry (Berberis heteropoda), boyar (Crataegus multifida) and honeysuckle (Lonicera coerulea). Of the herbaceous plants, Echinops ritro was the most striking with its light blue balls. Apricot and maple reached their upper limit here. The altitude of our overnight stay was 1,280 meters. On July 28, having left our overnight stay at 7 o’clock in the morning, we went down the Turgen and at 11 o’clock in the morning we reached the exit of this river to the foothills. Here we made a halt at a place where the height turned out to be, according to my measurement, 950 meters. The thermometer at 11 o’clock in the morning showed +29° C. Having entered the plain, we turned along the well-known road to the west through the sun-scorched steppe foothills and at a fast pace reached by 6 o’clock in the evening the outlet of the Issyk River, which was well known to us, on which we stopped camp at an absolute altitude of 940 meters. Already at dusk we made another trek to the exit of the Talgar River from the mountains, where we stayed for the night. On July 29, we left our overnight stay before 8 a.m. and, after a quick march, returned to Vernoye, where a most cordial welcome awaited us. Almost the entire population of the city, with all the authorities at their head, warned the day before about the return of the 194

expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, was waiting for us in the main square of the city, where we dismounted our horses in front of the church building that was quickly moving forward. Indeed, the first scientific expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, which visited the young Russian region that was just emerging in the depths of the Asian continent beyond the Ili River, aroused universal and deep sympathy. Russian peasant settlers, already quite familiar with the extraordinary freedom of the wonderful land, rejoiced: learned people came to study their benefits and needs. The Cossacks settled in Verny, descendants of Ermak’s associates, recognized our expedition as theirs, not only because they were involved in direct participation in it, but also because wandering full of surprises in lands hitherto inaccessible to the Russians, and indeed in lands unknown to the Russians, excited They have living memories of the exploits of their ancestors during the occupation of Siberia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, the small intelligentsia of Verny, keenly interested in the future of the region, were very conscious of the consequences caused by the successfully completed expedition. There was no end to the questions of those most conscious of the future of the Trans-Ili region. Having familiarized himself from my answers with the boundaries of the possessions of the Bogintsy, the acceptance of which into Russian citizenship would have secured for Russia not only the possession of the Issyk-Kul lake basin, but also the entire northern slope of the gigantic Tien Shan and the Musart mountain passes, Colonel Peremyshlsky, with his innate sound mind and knowledge of the life of nomads, I understood very well that the Sarybagish, hostile to us, placed between two fires - between the Kirghiz, protected from raids by the Russian authorities, and the unbridled and stronger nomads of the Kokand Khanate, would very soon follow the example of the Godgins and wish to enter the Russian citizenship, as came one after another, for the same reasons, in the 18th century, the tribes that were part of the Middle and Greater Kyrgyz hordes. To the head of the Verny artillery, Colonel Obukh, as the most educated and developed of the local intelligentsia, I decided to explain my opinion about the necessity and even inevitability in the near future of moving our state border from the long Orenburg-Siberian-Irtysh line to the line connecting Vernoye, or, better say, the western tip of Issyk-Kul, with a settled point already located on the lower reaches of the Syr Darya - Fort Perovsky. It seemed obvious to me that an expedition would be equipped in the near future to reconnaissance and occupy such a border line and that for successful action such an expedition should be equipped from Verny and based on the Trans-Ili region. I stayed in Verny for only three days. On the one hand, I was in a hurry to take advantage of the rest of the autumn in order to complete my scientific research in the Semirechensky region by exploring the interesting area of Katu in the Ili Plain and visiting the flowering Lepsinskaya village in the mountain valley of the Semirechensky Alatau, as well as visiting Lake Ala-kul and Tarbagatai, which were of keen interest to me ridge. On the other hand, my further stay in Verny was useless, since on the third day after my return the city was already immersed in its usual alcoholism, and I could only observe the causes and consequences of this sad phenomenon, which half a century ago had such a widespread distribution in our outskirts. It seemed that the gov195

ernment was trying to fight this evil, at least on our Central Asian outskirts, with rather radical measures. In the newly populated areas of Central Asia, the Semirechensky and Zailiysky regions, not only was distilling prohibited, but also the import of alcoholic beverages there. But it was impossible to fight the tavern production of vodka by the local population of the region. Enterprising Cossacks smoked vodka in the most primitive ways from raisins, brought in huge quantities on camels from Tashkent. Regardless of this, the all-powerful tax farmer, who was under the special patronage of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia, with whose members he so willingly shared his profits, sent, despite the ban on the import of alcoholic beverages, caravans of his tax-farm vodka from all the villages of the Siberian-Irtysh line to the Semirechensky and Zailiysky regions through the Kyrgyz steppe to Ayaguz, Kopal and Vernoye. A bottle of this vodka cost three rubles in Kopala and Verny, that is, the price for which a bottle of champagne was sold in St. Petersburg and Moscow at that time, and such a high price did not have the slightest effect on stopping or limiting drunkenness, but the very wealth of the young Russian outskirts greatly contributed to the consumption of alcoholic beverages, since it justified the tax farmers’ expression that it was not only the stomach that drank, but also the pocket. Obviously, the ban on smoking and the import of vodka into the region turned out to be an insufficient means to combat drunkenness, because it was impossible to monitor the implementation of these prohibitions due to the local conditions of the country. To combat alcoholism in our remote outskirts, other, more subtle measures were needed. I left Verny on the afternoon of September 2, 1857, in my tarantass and, having crossed the first deep ravine on a beautifully built wooden bridge, I found myself in the Ili steppe, which at that time of year had been turned by drought into a dusty, ashen-colored surface, on which only a group of no more than six species of semi-dried plants, namely licorice root (Glycyrrhiza asperrima), another legume plant (Sophora alopecuroides), two species of wormwood (Artemisia maritima, Ar. oliveriana) and two more species of Asteraceae (Echenais sieversii and Acroptilon picris). Built from a beautiful spruce forest halfway from Verny to Iliysk, the Almaty picket was decorated with a superstructure in the form of a mezzanine, serving as a good observation point for the Ili Plain. When we approached the banks of the already low-water and quiet Almaty River, the vegetation revived and became diverse. The following plants were still in bloom on the damp soil: ranunculus sceleratus, malvaceae Althea officinalis and Alth. nudiflora, from legumes Medicago falcata, Trigonella polycerata, Melilotus alba, from Asteraceae Onopordon acanthium, Cousinia tenella, Cous. platylepis, Heteracia scovitzii, from the convolvulaceae Convolvulus arvensis, from the borage Anchusa italica, from the scrofulariaceae Verbascum speciosum, from the family Plumlagineae Goniolimon speciosum, from the saltworts Axyris amaranthoides, Atriplex laciniata, from the grasses Phragmites communis, Aeluropes littoralis, and from shrubs Lycium blooming at this time turcomanicum. The sun was already setting when I left the Almaty picket, and the full moon was rising majestically over Turaigyr. At the base of the Trans-Ili Alatau, a cloud of smoke indicated a forest fire in one of the gorges of the ridge. Dry fog formed a transparent haze in front of the ridge. The snowy 196

peaks of the Talgar group still shimmered with their pink shine. and seemed small, although completely clear. With sadness I cast a farewell glance at the snowy highlands of Central Asia, where, in the words of the great poet, I had been for many years ”MY SOUL’S DESIRABLE LIMIT” Delayed at the Talgar Ford by the difficulty of the crossing (we broke the drawbar of the tarantass on it), we reached the Ili picket only in the dead of midnight. On September 3 I went on an excursion to the steppe on the northern side of the Ili River. Woody vegetation between the Ili and Chingildi pickets consisted of the following trees and shrubs: Populus euphratica, Pop. pruinosa, Berberis integerrima, covered at this time with beautiful round pink berries, Eleagnus hortensis, Caragana frutescens, Car. tragacanthoides, Halimodendron argenteum, Rosa gebleriana, Hultheimia berberifolia, Tamarix elongata, Tam. pallasii, Tam. hispida, Stellera stachyoides. During the excursion, we reached the Chingildiy picket only at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and here we examined a spring that was still unfamiliar to us, the temperature of which turned out to be 13.2°. In the middle of its round pool, water beat forcefully. Small fish that looked like loaches swam in the spring. We left Chingilda at sunset and reached the Karachekin picket at night, where we spent the night [Here is a list of herbs that were still in a recognizable form (in bloom or with fruit) in the Ili Plain on September 3, 1907: Silene nana, Geranium divaricatum, Erodium semenovi, Tribulus terrestris, Haplophilum sieversii, Orobus semenovi, Alhagicamelorum, Ammodendron sieversii, Karelinia caspia, Achillea trichophyua, Saussurea semenovi, Cousinia tenella, Cous, affinis, Amberboa odorata, Centaurea pulchella, Cent. squarrosa, Mulgedium tataricum, Cynanchum acutum, Convolvulus subsericeus, Conv. semenovi, Heliotropium europaeum, Nonnea picta, Linaria odora, Veronica nudicaulis, Lallemantia royleana, Lagochilus pungens, Eremostachys rotata, Er. mollucelloides, Statica otolepis, Blitum polymorphum, Halostachys caspia, Salsolalanata, Sals. brachiata, Girgersonia oppositiflora, Nanophytum erinaceum, Calligonum leucocladum, Atraphaxis, spinosa, Atraphaxis laetivirens, Atr. lanceolata, Atr. pungens.]. On September 4 we set off at dawn. Stopping halfway to KuyanKuz station, I took an excursion to the neighboring mountains. The nearest of them - Arkarly - stood only three miles away from the road behind the river of the same name. They consisted exclusively of porphyry and had a direction from E-N-E to W-S-W. Having reached from here through the undulating steppe to Kuyan-Kuz, we continued our excursion to the small mountain group of May-Tyube, ten miles away from here. I had already visited this group in May 1857 and here I then found two new breeds of astragalus, which later received my name from the botanist Bunge (Oxytropis semenovi and Astragalus semenowi), which had already bloomed at that time of year. From a distance, two pointed hills attracted attention with their shape. The outcrops I encountered on the way to the first of these hills consisted of light red striped porphyry interspersed with green mineral; but the hill itself, rising on the river bank, consisted of very dark porphyry, resembling basalt. Further, towards the mid197

dle of the mountain, first a conglomerate was encountered, and then a diabase. The second pointed hill was located at the end of the group near the bend of the river and consisted of very dark porphyry. From here we headed back and walked diagonally across the entire May-Tyube, encountering on the way again outcrops of diabase, followed by porphyry. The nature of the vegetation was completely steppe, with cherry bushes (Cerasus prostrata) and beautiful, somewhat prickly Aeanthophyllum spinosum, Atraphaxis pungens, Atr. lanceolata, as well as Lallemantia royleana, Centaurea pulchella, Cent. squarrosa, Ruta dahurica. Having finished our interesting excursion on May-Tube, we reached Altyn-emel at 7 1/2 o’clock in the evening at 19° C. The hypsometric determination gave us 1,120 meters of absolute height here. This is where we spent the night. On September 5, we hit the road early in the morning, heading to the Altynemel mountain pass. The day was dry and hot, and the steppe presented an original sight. It burned to the northeast of us for several square miles, and we had to make our way carefully past the huge fire so as not to get caught in the wind that was blowing it away. The first exposures as we ascended the mountain pass consisted of shale, and then we encountered exposures of porphyry, which accompanied us to the very top of the pass, the height of which, according to my hypsometric measurement, turned out to be 1,520 meters absolute height. The plants that particularly caught my attention at the top of the mountain pass were the Lamiaceae - Dracocephalum nutans var. alpina and Nepeta densiflora, and from high mountain shrubs - juniper (Juniperus sabina). Having passed the pass, we descended from it along the Altyn-Emel spring and then turned east through the spurs separating from the ridge. Of the rocks, we encountered outcrops of diabase first, and then melafyre. Near the road, not far from it, I noticed outcrops of lead ores. When we finally reached the valley, to the right, far from us, the Kalkan Mountains became visible on the Chinese border, separated from the tip of the Katu Mountains - the goal of our trip. The barren plain over which we followed was strewn with stones and boulders, among which syenite predominated. Having crossed the Bish-Bulak river, where we also encountered lead ores, we headed to the separate Bish-tau hill, remarkable in that it consists of porphyry, raising layers of siliceous shale, limestone and dolomite. In one place I noticed metamorphosed limestone. Further, through Tulka-Bulak, the banks of which were overgrown with thaw (Salix viminalis) and buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), we headed into the diagonal of a transverse valley, which retained the same barren character. When we reached the Aino-Bulak River, the character of the area changed. The soil became fertile, and we saw here the beautiful arable lands of my friend Tezek, in whose fields the millet harvest was excellent. Here we settled down for the night at 7% of the evening. The temperature was 22.5° C. The hypsometric determination gave me 1,040 meters of absolute altitude for our overnight stay. On the Alatava ridge, which shimmered even after sunset, snow stripes and spots were visible. On September 6, having left our overnight stay early in the morning, we set off along the Ainobulak Valley. The soil was less rocky than on the previous day, but still quite poor in vegetation at this time of year. I noticed only two species of wormwood (Artemisia oliveriana and Art. maritima) and Peganum harmala. 198

Many dangerous karakurts were crawling across the steppe. In some places there were salt marshes. Finally, the appearance of chia (Lasiagrostis splendens) and cereals marked more fertile soil for a rather extensive oasis, crossed by several rivers called Konur-Uzen. The shrubs here grew Caragana pygmaea, Car. tragacanthoides, Atraphaxis lanceolata, Atr. pungens, from the halophytes Statice otolepis and the Statice breed that I found again that day in a somewhat faded form, which later received the name Statice semenovi, Halostachys caspia, Chenopodium botrys, Salsola lanata, Sais, brachiata, Sais, rigida, and from steppe grasses: Althaea officinalis, Alth. nudiflora, Galatella punctata, Saussurea sp., Salvia sylvestris, Ceratocarpus arenarius. Soon after noon we arrived in the village of Tezek himself, who greeted me with great joy and introduced me to his entire family, including his boy son, of whom he was especially proud and on whose head he put a rich velvet cap of Kazan product, embroidered with gold, donated by me. and turned out to be not large enough for Tezek’s huge head. It goes without saying that we spent the entire afternoon and spent the night in Tezek’s luxurious yurt. On September 7, we left the village of Tezek no earlier than 8 o’clock in the morning and headed southwest of his camp to the Katu Mountains, which were quite close from there. Having crossed the Kok-Terek river, we crossed the entire fertile oasis of Konur-Uzen and turned sharply into the Katu Mountains, which on their northern slope consisted exclusively of porphyry. Their vegetation was completely steppe: steppe (non-climbing) loaches (Convolvulus subsericea, Conv. pseudocantabnca, Conv. semenovi, Eremostachys rotata, Lallemantia royleana, Ceratocarpus arenarius, Atraphaxis lanceolata, Lasiagrostis splendens). The outcrops consisted of very dark crystalline rock, similar to melaphyre, which uplifts layers of conglomerate. Having left on the southern slope of the Kathu Mountains, I found myself in an area similar to sulfatara. It was surrounded by conical hills of equal size, in three places forming rather high groups and in some places broken through on their southern side. These hills consisted of the same dark rock. I came across two sulfa pits: one in the northeastern edge of the mountain group, the other in the southwestern corner. That sulfur came out here by sublimation in the form of vapors from under the soil is proven by the filling of cracks with sulfur, as in the Pozzuola sulfatara, the formation of gypsum crystals in these cracks, as well as the influence of the sublimation of sulfur through cracks on the dark rock, which is completely white here. Only the sulfatara, apparently, had long since died out, and no vapors were coming out anywhere, although the smell of sulfur, approaching the extinct sulfatara, was sensitive even from a distance. Of course, the entire chemical process that once took place here could be explained by a prolonged underground fire of coal seams, so widespread higher up in the Ili Valley. Having passed the sulfatara diagonally, I came across a quartz vein with an iron sheen to the southwest of it. Ahead of us rose a small hillock that gave the floor its name. Aktau (white mountains) from its white color, similar to the color of the whitened sulfatara rocks. In Aktau there were deposits of alum and, as local Kyrgyz claimed, ammonia. The Chinese left everywhere here traces of their development experiments for sulfur, alum and ores, according to their testimony, iron and silver-lead, as in Kalkan. On our further journey, 199

the vegetation apparently changed, but it had already dried out and faded so much that I could not establish the nature of the plant formation and could only identify a few species of plants, among which I noticed the pale yellow Statice semenovi. About five versts northeast of the sulfatara we came across beautiful wells with water, picturesquely overshadowed by still fresh tall reeds (Phragmites communis) and Eragrostis poaeoides. The autumn entomological fauna of this area seemed quite rich to me; By the way, beautiful Coleoptera of the genus Prosodes were slowly crawling along the stones. From a distance we saw herds of swift-footed kulans (Equus hemionus) [Single individuals of kulans are still found between the Ili and Kara-tal rivers (see V.N. Shnitnikov. Mammals of Semirechye, 1936, ed. Academy of Sciences, p. 148 (L. B.] and saiga (karakuyryuk) [According to Shnitnikov (p. 127), another local antelope, the goitered gazelle, is called karakuyryuk. Both saiga and goitered gazelle are still found south of Balkhash (L.B.).]. The Katu group rises slightly above the Konurulen Plateau. In the distance beyond Aktau the wide ribbon of the Ili River glittered, and behind it the jagged profile of Mount Boguty was visible. Late in the evening we returned from our trip to the Katu Mountains for an overnight stay in the villages of Tezek. On September 8, we left Tezek only in the afternoon, finally saying goodbye to him, and, having crossed the rocky Konurulen plateau, we reached the foot of the Alaman Mountains and stopped here for the night at the exit of the Karakol River from the mountains. On September 9, early in the morning, we climbed the Karakol mountain. The first outcrops we encountered consisted of light gray diorite porphyry. Following the upstream of the Karakol, we little by little entered the longitudinal waterless valley of the Alaman ridge and followed it to the E-N-E. From here we saw the first spruce forest that we encountered on the southern slope of the ridge, but it huddled on the slopes of the longitudinal valley facing north. Then we came to the Bukon River, which is formed here from the confluence of two branches, and followed the eastern branch to its top. All the outcrops along our route consisted of diorite porphyry. Next, we turned somewhat to the northeast, crossing the tops of rivers flowing to the east, and began to climb the slope of crystalline rocks, raising giant layers of sedimentary, namely siliceous slant with a dip of 45° to the southeast. With easy passes we reached the culmination point of the entire mountain pass through the Alaman ridge, which turned out to be here, according to my hypsometric measurement, at 2,470 meters of absolute height. The measurement was made at 11 a.m. at a temperature of 14° C. All outcrops on the pass consisted of red porphyry. The view to the east-south-east of the blooming Chinese Ili province with its villages immersed in green trees, up to and including Ghulja, was extensive and delightful. The Ili current in a transparent atmosphere was indicated by a light ribbon. Behind this current, a clear atmosphere allowed us to see first the Nan Shan, that is, the foothills of the Tien Shan, and then a row of clouds indicated the direction of the Tien Shan itself, where the Musart mountain pass was located. Having looked around from the top of the pass, we began to quickly descend to its northern side, following along the river, which below its upper reaches was already accompanied by a spruce forest, at the lower limit of which we spent the afternoon. From here we came 200

out to a longitudinal valley formed by the upper reaches of the Burokhudzhir River and called Saz. Throughout the descent into it, the rock in all its outcrops consisted of syenite. The Saz valley, despite its considerable width, the softness of its slopes and the constancy of its direction from east to west, slowly rose. Having passed the sources of Burokhudzhir, we found ourselves on the Yugentash pass, the absolute height of which turned out to be, according to my hypsometric measurement, 1,880 meters. The thermometer at 2 o’clock in the afternoon showed 17°C. At first we descended from the pass along the KeskenTerek River, but then the river moved away from us to the left, and we no longer went out onto it, but walked along a slope, without leaving its longitudinal valley, and crossed three of its tributaries, called Uch-su. Throughout our journey through the Yugentash Pass, we saw vast patches of eternal snow below us, and the vegetation was completely alpine, among which the alpine poppy (Papaver alpinum) was especially striking. We descended along the slope of a wide longitudinal valley with light ridges, constantly keeping in mind at the bottom of the valley the light winding ribbon of Kesken-Terek, but finally we turned to the right of a separate Argal-Tyube hill and, not reaching five miles to the low Agan-Katy pass, we spent the night in the villages of the Suvan tribe of the Great Horde. On September 10, early in the morning we went to the villages of our old acquaintance Adamsart, which were five miles away from us, and only in the afternoon we set off again, crossed Agan-Khaty, went to the Kok-su River and by the evening reached the Dzhangyzasach picket. On September 11, at 8 1/2 o’clock in the morning, I was already at Karatal, where, at a temperature of 18° C, I determined the height of the Karatal valley to be 670 meters. On September 12, I returned to Kopal, where I stayed for three days, determining the height of Kopal on its area of 1020 meters. The meeting with Colonel Abakumov was most cordial, and he rendered me a significant service by sending my heavy carriage with all my collected collections by postal road to Semipalatinsk and arranging for me a detour route in the lightest cart through the flourishing Russian settlements of the northern part of the Semirechensky region, Lepsinsky and Urdzharsky. My dear companion, who accompanied me on all my Tyanyan and Trans-Ili travels in 1857 and endured all the labors and dangers of the journey with remarkable selflessness, the artist Kosharov, who was in a hurry to return to Tomsk to begin teaching at the gymnasium, parted with me and rode in my tarantass along the postal route to Semipalatinsk, in order to get from there to Tomsk by crossroads. Seeing him off on September 15, I moved on that day from Kopal to Arasan. On September 16, early in the morning, I left Arasan through Keisyn-auz. Moving through Biyon, I noticed a plant I had never seen before - a species of cattail (Typha stenophylla). On Keisyn-Auz itself I noticed entire thickets of wild low-growing cherries (Cerasus prostrata). The height of the pass turned out to be, by my definition, 1,160 meters of absolute height - only 210 meters higher than Arasan. But the descent to the northern side was incomparably longer, and at the end of it the Lepsinsky road separated from the main Semipalatinsk highway. About seven versts from the section of the road we reached the Ak-Su River. Our road passed through the steppe from west to east along the base of the ridge. A strong westerly wind, 201

blowing in the morning, rolled in front of us completely dried stems of various plants, called here “tumbleweeds,” between which I noticed Ruta davurica. All the vegetation here has burned out and faded. There has been no rain here since June 15th. On the Ak-Su River they harnessed beautiful Kyrgyz horses for us, and we rushed quickly through the hummocks and ditches. In the Ak-Su River I noticed boulders of slate and granite. Beyond the river, the steppe did not change its character for twenty versts to the Baskana River and another ten versts to Sarkan. It was covered with tall, faded vegetation of once luxuriant grasses, between which I noticed the characteristic types of Althea, Sophora alopecuroides, Salvia sylvestris, Lasiagrostis splendens. Sarkan, like Ak-su and Biyon, emerged from a narrow gorge of the low Arasan chain, which is a fairly flat ridge stretching from west to east. But behind the Baskan mountains already appear, forming the glacis of the main Alatava ridge, stretching from W-S-W to E-N-E. Baskan is a fairly significant wide river, fast and winding, bordered by a number of huge boulders, consisting mainly of granite. Between the plants on its bank I noticed Atraphaxis lanceolata bushes. Here we changed horses again and continued our way through very hilly country. Most of the hills were covered with drifts overgrown with faded turf. In some places near the road, outcrops of clayey shale with an unclear trend came to the surface. It was already dark halfway down the road, and only at night did we reach our overnight stay on the Terekty River. The west wind, which had been blowing all day, finally broke into a storm and heavy rain. The night was cold, and it was impossible to pitch a tent. The Cossacks fell asleep near the bright lights lit by the rich wedding train, which was traveling to the wedding in Kopal from Chubar-agach (Lepsinsk), where there was no priest. In the second half of the night of September 17, the stars began to shine. The morning was frosty, but there was little frost. The Terekty River, where we spent the night, flowed in a shallow valley in the foothills, no more than half a mile wide. In the valley grew a grove of centuries-old, but rather rare poplars (Populus laurifolia), of which no more than two or three hundred could be counted. The view across the valley to the snow squirrels of the Semirechensky or Dzungarian Alatau closing it was very beautiful. The glades of eternal snow expanded greatly overnight due to freshly fallen snow. The temperature was low during the day too. We left our overnight stay early in the morning. Our road ran through hilly, almost mountainous terrain; but we encountered very few rock outcrops. These outcrops consisted of siliceous shale grading into hornfels, with very unclear bedding. The vegetation had already faded to a large extent, but some steppe grasses were still blooming, such as Berteroa incana, Althea officinalis, Tanacetum fruticulosum, Saussurea coronata, Salvia sylvestris, Nepeta ucranica, Salsola affinis. Far away from us, on the low foothills, a forest could be seen here and there. These foothills obscured the main snow chain. After several easy passes, twenty versts from our overnight stay on Terekty, we began to descend into the valley of the Lepsy River and finally saw the Chubaragach, or Lepsin, settlement, located at the confluence of two branches that form this river in the longitudinal valley of the Semirechensky Alatau, shaped an elongated ellipse twelve miles long and up to 7 wide, closed on all sides by mountains; the main axis of this ellipse was directed 202

from northeast to southwest. Both merging branches originated in a high chain bordering the elliptical valley from the southeast, and after their merger the connected river (Lepsa) broke through the wild gorges of the less high chain bordering the elliptical valley from the southwest. In 1857 there was no road through this gorge; it passed through a not particularly high and treeless pass of the northwest chain. The southeastern chain, higher than the northwestern one, had snow glades at its peaks, and its slope, facing the elliptical valley, at the bottom of which the Lepsinsky settlement was located, all covered with a variety of deciduous forest, was called Chubar-agacha (variegated forests) and fully justified it, especially in its wonderful autumn decoration. The settlers of this Russian colony in Central Asia, both peasants and Cossacks, were extremely pleased with the climatic conditions of the country and, in particular, with its freedom and fertility, although, being unaccustomed to local climatic conditions, illnesses were frequent at first. But these diseases depended primarily on conditions inevitably associated with the process of colonization itself. The prevailing diseases - scurvy, dysentery in children and fever - were especially due to inability to adapt to local conditions, lack of shelter in a climate that was quite rainy and subject to rapid temperature changes, insufficient medical care, poor care for children during the first intensive field and military work, and abuse of fruits and berries. In 1857, 105 dessiatines of winter bread (rye), 753 dessiatines of spring bread (245 dessiatines of wheat, 210 eggs, 194 oats, 60 barley, 25 millet, 19 peas) were already occupied by crops in the Lepsin settlement. In addition, there were 30 dessiatines of flax and 1 dessiatine of hemp. The harvest of these grains over the past three years was as follows: millet - 40, wheat - from 15 to 20, rye and egg - from 12 to 15, oats - from 6 to 10. The yields of flax and hemp were also excellent. In the Chubaragach Valley, with a fairly rainy climate, especially in the first half of summer, grain crops do not need watering, but when watered (no more than once during the entire summer), they produce more grain. Feed for livestock is incredibly good, since the grass grows here no less luxuriously than in the best Altai valleys. Only some vegetables, namely cucumbers, watermelons and melons, do not ripen due to early frost, which is the only defect in the excellent climate of the Chubaragach Valley. During the entire time of my visit to this valley (in the middle of September 1857), the temperature in the mornings was low and frost began already from the beginning of September. On September 18, early in the morning, I took a horseback ride into the mountains, accompanied by two Cossacks who were well acquainted with the surrounding area, heading towards the very mountain pass along which Karelin climbed to the Semirechensky Alatau in 1840. Our ascent began already one mile southeast of the village. The entire mountain slope was covered with a beautiful deciduous forest (chubar-agach), which included the following trees and shrubs: aspen (Populus tremula), poplar (Populus nigra, P. laurifolia), birch (Betula alba), several species of willow (Salix pentandra, S. fragilis, S. alba, S. amygdalina, S. purpurea, S. viminalis, S. stipularis, S. capraea, S. sibirica), wild apple (Pyrus malus, P. sieversii), rowan (Pyrus aucuparia ), bird cherry (Prunus padus), and from shrubs two types of boyar - red and black (Crataegus sanguinea, C. melanocarpa), argay (Cotoneaster nummularia, Poten203

tilla fruticosa), raspberry (Rubus idaeus), wild gooseberry and currant (Ribes aciculare, Rib. heterotrichum, R. rubrum), buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), Siberian acacia (Caragana frutescens), honeysuckle species (Lonicera tatarica, L. xylosteum, L. hispida, L. coerulea, L. microphylla), viburnum (Viburnum opulus) , cherganak (Berberis heteropoda). The densely growing trees in some places were heavily intertwined with local vines: clematis species (Clematis orientalis, Atragene alpina) and hops (Humulus lupulus). There was no coniferous forest in Chubar-Agach yet. Rising in the direction of the south, we crossed the spring, which the Cossacks called Beremesev, and five miles from the village we went to a more significant tributary of the Bolshaya Lepsy, along which timber was being cut. The rock outcrops I encountered along the way consisted of greywacke shale with unclear bedding and barely reaching the surface of the soil. On the tributary of the B. Lepsy there were also coniferous trees (Picea schrenkiane). At the headwaters of this tributary we began to climb strongly uphill, first to the southeast, then gradually turned, first to the east and finally to the northeast. The motley forest (chubar-agach) was gradually replaced by grasses, although faded, but taller than a rider on a horse. These herbs belonged to the families of mallow (Althea ficifolia), umbrella (Sium lancifolium, Bupleurum aureum, Bupl. exaltatum, Conioselinum fischeri, Ferula soongorica, Anthriscus sylvestris, An. nemorosa, Conium maculatum, Schrenkia vaginata), asteraceae (Inula halenium, Lappa tomentosa , Cirsium heterophyllum, Cirsium arvense, Onopordon acanthium), cereals (Dactylis glomerata, Elymus sibiricus, Deschampsia caespitosa, Calamagrostis sylvatica, Milium effusum, Lasiagrostis splendens). In places these grasses were heavily entwined with mouse peas, which reached their top. Sometimes luxurious thickets of grass interspersed with groves of trees, of which groves of apple trees had the appearance of garden plantings; The apples were already completely ripe at this time of year and seemed very tasty to us. With our further ascent, the slate was suddenly replaced by granite, first fine-grained, emerging to the surface as a stock, and then coarse-grained. Ugly spruce trees still clung to its flat rocks, but then the forest vegetation finally disappeared. From the bushes grew Potentilla fruticosa and apra (Juniperus sabina), crawling along the flat rocks. But these flat rocks were soon replaced by sharply protruding ones in the form of teeth or vertically placed books. Our road, having climbed the ridge separating the tributary of the Lepsy from its main current, went further through easy passes, meandering between the rocks almost at the same level, only slightly rising, and the vegetation here was already completely alpine, although already very faded, but still I could distinguish some plants, such as: Papaver alpinum, Alsine verna, Cerastium maximum, Ledum gelidum, Arnebia perennis, Aster alpinus, Ast. flaccidus, four species of gentians (Gentiana aurea, G. frigida, G. macrophylla, G. verna and Dracocephalum altaiense). As we walked forward, we encountered more and more piles of fresh snow between the rocks, filled with blizzards. The wind was unbearable in its strength and cold. We were forced to turn to the west and even to the northwest in order to get on the descent into the main Lepsa, and thus from the granites we again came out onto the shales, the strike of which this time was completely clear, and the dip was almost vertical (85 ° N 204

-Z). From here we had a wonderful view of the highest part of the Semirechensky Alatau. It is here that the upper valley of the Lepsy, bending ten miles, changes its direction: it was directed from W-N-W to E-S-E, perpendicular to the axis of the ridge, but here it turned almost at a right angle and flowed from S-S -W to N-N-E, that is, almost from S to N, longitudinally relative to the strike of the shales. At the head of the valley was the most significant of the squirrels, and from it a wide mantle of snow descended to two or three sources of the Lepsy. The upper longitudinal valley of the Lepsy was a little more than a mile wide, its slopes were soft, and the bottom was overgrown with spruce, although quite sparsely, since forest vegetation here already reaches its limit. The Lepsa River meanders through the valley, like Chilik, but when this river turns at a right angle, it breaks through a transverse valley, where it is directed across the strike of shale in the rocky cheeks, between which, encountering an obstacle, it forms a lake. Therefore, although there is a mountain pass to China in the upper reaches of the Lepsy, local residents preferred to get there through high rocks and passes, bypassing the upper valley, which in 1857 was considered inaccessible. My intention to get through the Lepsinsky passage to the Chinese side was not crowned with success. Having seen with my own eyes that the mountain pass was covered with snow at that time, and the weather ahead was unfavorable, I decided to go back. There was no need to go down to the upper Lepsy valley, and we returned along the same road along which we had ascended. It was getting dark when we reached the granite teeth, and already in the darkness of the night we descended to the first spring, where we spent the night in a beautiful grove consisting of birch, aspen and apple trees. This passage was the same one along which Karelin passed in 1840. On September 19, we returned to Chubar-agach along the same route, in cloudy weather. From the mountains, the entire village seemed like a chessboard. It was visible how, flocking behind the village, the rivers make their way after their confluence through the leading ridge into a wild gorge. In my time there was no road in this gorge, and it was impossible to get to Chubar-agach from the west except through a ridge, although not a high one. Snow in Chubar-Agach itself usually falls completely only in December, and on the western slope of the forward ridge - even later, and lasts only until March. At this time of year a good toboggan run is established here; In general, winter is very mild, and significant cold does not occur at all. After spending the night in the Lepsinskaya village, I decided to leave it on September 20. Waking up at seven o’clock in the morning, I was unexpectedly struck by a completely winter picture. Everything was covered with thick frost. No grass was visible except tall grasses (Dactylis, Calamagrostis, Lasiagrostis), but even those had drooped in their ears under the weight of frost, which completely whitened the laurel-leaved poplars. Thick fog made it impossible to distinguish objects further than two dozen steps. Nevertheless, we set off and, having traveled two miles across the valley, began to quickly climb its slope towards the west. On this way a wonderful sight awaited us. The fog began to quickly thin out and abruptly ended almost like a wall, behind which, upon further ascent, the sky was already clear and transparent. From the top of the pass not a single cloud was visible, the sun was shining warmly 205

and brightly, the thermometer showed 12° C at 8 o’clock in the morning, the snowy peaks of the Semirechensky Alatau were completely cloudless and shone brightly in the sun’s rays, which perfectly illuminated the slopes of the forest zone in its colorful autumn decoration of chubar-agach. Not a single drop of dew was visible on the still fresh grasses of the mountain pass. But at our feet in the Lepsinskaya Valley, the entire wide elliptical basin, twelve miles long and seven miles wide, was a real “mare vaporum”. Its color was milky grayish-white, similar to the color of cumuli clouds. At first it seemed to sway slightly, but from the very top of the pass its surface seemed completely horizontal. Not a single speck was visible on this milky sea, and nothing revealed his character in it. The same hot sun and the same dry atmosphere accompanied us not only on our ascent to the top of the pass, but also on our descent from it into the low valley, during which we became increasingly closer to Lepsa, which had burst out of the gorge and curved like a beautiful ribbon along the valley. On the right bank of the river, a wide space was occupied by Chubaragach arable lands, and on the left, a slightly hilly area, over an area of four to five square miles, represented a huge black spot from the fire that had occurred the previous night. The wind was southwest that night, driving the fire towards Lepsy, but stopping at the coastal ledge. Only in one place did he break down to the river bed, but even here he was stopped by its waves. I drew the attention of the Cossacks accompanying me to the fact that the arable land they occupy on this mountainside is especially convenient for growing melons (watermelons, melons and cucumbers), since there is no early frost here at all. The rock I encountered on the northwestern descent from the mountains was greywacke. It came to the surface as low cliffs without a clear extension. The vegetation had turned yellow and faded, but the most striking features were Astragalus sieversianus, Althaea officinalis and Dipsacus azureus. Having descended from the mountains, we turned north along the hilly terrain. The entire journey across the ridge was ten miles in length, and when descending from it we drove another twenty-five miles to the Chinzhaly River. Gradually descending from the hills, we reached this river, quite narrow and shallow, and moved to its right bank ten miles below the confluence of the Kuyanda River. About five versts further we went to the Kyzyl-Dzhar tract, where our yurts were set up and a change of horses was arranged. In the distance ahead we could see the valley of the Tenteka River. The ridge dividing the rivers, descending, ended here. From here, leaving to the left the arc described in this place by the Chinzhaly River, we headed along its chord through the loose sandy hills to the Saukan Mountains, encountering on our way significant thickets of beautiful red steppe rose hips (Hultheimia berberifolia). On September 21, we left the Saukan overnight stop at 6 o’clock in the morning and first traveled 5 versts through ditches and arable lands of the Kirghiz, and then through dunes, completely similar to those located in the Balkhash basin between Juz-Agach and the Arganatinsky picket; they have the same vegetation, consisting mainly of Statice species (St. gmetini, St. myrianthe) and halophytes in general [Here is a list of plants from the saltwort family (Salsolaceae) growing in the local steppe: Chenopodium acuminatum, Kirilowia eriantha, Camphorosma ruthenica, Kochia arenaria, Echinop206

silon hyssopifolium, Corispermum orientale, Salicornia herbacea, Kalidium foliaceum, Halocnemum strobilaceum, Schanginia linifolia, Suaeda physophora, Horianinowia minor, Salsola kali, Salsola rigida, Haloxylon ammodendron, Anabasis aphylla, Brachylepis salsa, Nanophyton ca spicum, Ofaiston monandrum, Halogeton obtusifolium, Halocnemis crassifolia, Halocnemis sibirica.], for which the Ala-Kul basin on the steppe stretching between the Alatau and Tarbagatai mountains is a real kingdom. We walked through these dunes for about ten miles, and then crossed a salty plain along a smooth and good road and finally saw in front of us the vast flat-shore Lake Ala-Kul, in the southeastern corner of which rose the Aral-Tyube peninsular hill jutting into it. Having approached the reeds that bordered the flat shores of the lake for five miles, we met Kyrgyz herds, changed horses and, turning west, approached a narrow, deep bay of the lake, on which a huge number of ducks and swans swam. The wind was blowing from the northeast with incredible force. This was the famous Yube, about which Chinese chronicles tell that it blows periodically from the island of Lake Ala-Kulya (Aral-Tube), overturns yurts and carries cattle and people into the lake. Indeed, we became convinced that it was impossible to travel by the coastal road to the lake on the day of our arrival and were forced to take a detour. From our overnight stay on Saukan to the reeds we drove thirty-five versts, from the reeds to the ford across the Ala-kul Bay - twenty versts. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon the thermometer showed 16° C. Hypsometric determination gave me the absolute height of the lake at 240 meters. The ford was quite deep, and we transported all our luggage on horses. The water in western Ala-kul was fresh. From the ford we walked another fifteen versts across the isthmus separating the Small, or Western, Ala-kul from the Big, or Eastern, and reached wells, where we found villages in which we spent the night. My acquaintance with the vast lake basin of Ala-kul only confirmed what was first thoroughly clarified in 1840 by the researcher of the Semirechensky Alatau and its neighboring lake basins Balkhash and Ala-kul - Alexander Shrenk. The Ala-kul lake basin in our time (1840-1858) consisted of two main lakes - Eastern and Western. They are separated from each other by a marshy isthmus twenty miles wide, partly overgrown with reeds and dotted with small lagoons, which are connected by a channel. At other times of the year and in other years, the isthmus becomes impassable and is flooded to such an extent with water that both lakes more or less merge into one. It goes without saying that with the low-lying shores of the lake, mostly overgrown with reeds, and significant fluctuations in level from year to year and at different times of the year (fluctuations depending on changes in the amount of water brought in by tributaries and the amount of evaporation) and the very outlines of the lake, like all steppe lakes of the Kyrgyz steppe, cannot be determined with accuracy, and the surface of each of the two lakes can be indicated approximately, namely the Eastern (with 55 versts in length and 40 versts in width) of 1,500 square versts, and the western ( with 40 versts in length and 15 versts in width) no more than 560 square versts. To the left of Western Ala-Kul, towards the north-western tip of Balkhash, stretches the sandy and saline strip of Aitaktyn-kara-kum, which marks, as it were, a trace of the former connection of the Balkhash and Ala-Kul basins, of which the latter represents, as it were, a 207

separated (withered) tip first. The Alakul basin differs from all the other countless lake basins of the low-lying Kyrgyz steppes in that high island or peninsular hills rise from its bottom or from the low-lying shores, called Aral-Tyube (island mountain) and well known to everyone who has ever passed by Lake Ala-Kul. cul. This circumstance allows us to clarify some old interesting historical routes even from the 13th century. So, there is no doubt that the Armenian king Getum, who in the 13th century went to worship the Genghis Khanids in their famous capital Karakorum, located in Mongolia, near the current borders of the Trans-Baikal region, passed by Lake Ala-kul, since he mentions a lake with a high island, and he could not meet another like him on his entire path from the Caspian Sea through the entire Aral-Caspian Lowland. Thus, the tributaries of the Genghis Khanids, the Armenian and Caucasian sovereigns, skirted the Caspian Sea and through Turkmenistan and Turkestan passed Lake Ala-kul and entered Mongolia through those gates of people’s migrations from mountainous Asia, which are located between the Dzungarian Alatau and Tarbagatai. On the contrary, all Russian princes, such as Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (father of Alexander Nevsky) and Alexander Nevsky himself, followed to Karakorum through the Golden Horde on the Volga along the Irtysh line and entered mountainous Asia through the Zaisan Gate, that is, between Tarbagatai and Altai. Information about Lake Ala-kul is already found in Chinese sources, starting with the chronicles of the Yuan (Mongolian) dynasty, from where they became known to European geographers (Ritter and Humboldt). The motley lake (Ala-kul) with a high island hill (Aral-tube), strong winds (yu-be), constantly blowing in one direction from the Aral-tube, were especially interested in Humboldt, who saw both here and in Chinese descriptions of the city’s surroundings The pile in the Tien Shan are probable signs of volcanic phenomena. That is why Karelin, the first Russian traveler who visited Ala-Kul in 1840, made valiant efforts to resolve the issue of volcanism on the Aral-Tyube island. He brought with him a small boat from Zaisan, reached the Aral-Tyube island and, having achieved his goal, came to negative results. The conical island turned out to consist of porphyry, but there were no volcanic rocks either on it or in the coastal boulders of the lake; In some places, only between these boulders were pieces of coal found. Seventeen years later, my research in the Katu hills in the Ili Valley and throughout the Tien Shan between the Musart and Zaukinsky mountain passes also did not confirm Humboldt’s assumptions about volcanic phenomena in Central Asia. I return to my journey. The village in which I spent the night from September 21 to 22 was located at the wells of Kabanda, twenty-three miles north of Western Ala-kul. At 7 o’clock in the evening it was +14°, and the hypsometric measurement gave me 250 meters of absolute height, that is, no more than 10 meters above the level of Western Ala-kul, which was confirmed by the fact that the road from Ala-kul to our overnight stay was almost no rise Did not have. But it seemed to me that the level of Western Ala-Kul is higher than the level of Eastern Ala-Kul. I concluded this from the fact that I encountered a channel directed from the northern end of Western Ala-Kul to the lower reaches of the Urdzhar River. The Kyrgyz called this channel Uali and claimed that when the water stood high in western Ala-Kul, water flowed through it into 208

the Urjar River. Moreover, the rivers flowing into Western Ala-kul (Tentek and Karakol) are hardly less watery than those flowing into Eastern Ala-kul (Urjar and Emil), but the latter lake provides an evaporation surface three times larger than Western Ala-kul. Probably as a result of this, the water in Western Ala-kul is fresh and usable, and in Eastern Ala-kul it is salty, as a result of which the natives often call Eastern Ala-kul Ashchi-kul, that is, a bitter lake. Where did Al get it from? Shrenk for Western Ala-kul is the name Sazyn-kul, I don’t know, but the asked Kirghiz did not know the name and always called Western Ala-kul Ala-kul, and Eastern or Ashchi-kul, or also Ala-kul. Who can be surprised that two neighboring lakes, which in people’s memory constituted one pool and even now sometimes merge into one mirror, are known by the same name. This entire basin could have received the name Ala-kul because rocky, porphyry islands and peninsulas rise from its level in the form of high hills, and the isthmus dividing the entire basin into two lakes consists of alternating lagoons, channels of solonetzes overgrown with halophytes, and extensive reed thickets. If you look at all this from any of the lake or lakeside hills (AralTyube), then the name “Motley Lake” (Ala-kul) finds full justification. Such an explanation could not be given by the Kyrgyz who accompanied me, who had never climbed the Aral-Tyube, and when I asked why they called the lake Ala-Kul, the two most lively of my guides answered: “because on both sides of Ala-Kul you can see motley mountains (Alatau)”, that is, mountains that constantly carry snow spots. On September 22, from our overnight stay at the wells of Kabanda, I set off at about 10 am and, having traveled ten miles to the northwest, reached the Karakol River, and from here I followed through the steppe in the direction of the northeast, in two places I met auls on wells, then , turning to the north, forded the Issyk-su river and, through old arable lands and ditches, reached the Urdzhar village, located only twelve miles from the base of Tarbagatai, by 3 o’clock in the afternoon. At 7 o’clock in the evening I made my hypsometric measurement, which gave the village 280 meters of absolute height; the thermometer showed +7° C. In the Urjar village at the time of my visit (in 1857) there were 80 houses and 940 inhabitants (536 males), 440 horses and 450 heads of cattle. The residents did not breed sheep themselves, since they could be obtained as many as they wanted from the Kyrgyz-Kazakhs. The arable lands of the Urjar settlers were extensive (100 dessiatines of rye, 10 acres of egg, 120 dessiatines of wheat, 106 dessiatines of oats, 14 dessiatines of barley and millet, 17 dessiatines of flax). Rye produced sam-5, but the yields of spring grain were excellent: wheat - sam-8, eggs and oats - more than sam-13. Flax was also born very well. Having spent the night in the Urdzharskaya village from September 22 to 23, I decided to devote the entire next day to climbing Tarbagatai. Leaving the village at 7 o’clock in the morning, I headed first to the west, and then to the west-north-west along the Karabulak river. Soon we came to a spring overgrown with poplars (Populus laurifolia) and shrubs: honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica), buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and dwarf acacia (Robinia pygmaea). The first outcrops we encountered in Tarbagatai consisted of granite. Then there was a very steep climb up the gorge, passing along the line of contact of granites to the north-east with diorites to the south-west. The 209

road went through piles of stones and was very difficult. When we climbed the mountain ridge, we walked through easy passes in a direction to the westnorth-west and, finally, going around the cape separating from the main axis of the ridge, we reached the top of the pass, which our guides called Alet and which consisted of granite. We reached the top of the pass a little before noon. The Celsius thermometer showed +4°. The hypsometric determination gave me 1,960 meters of absolute height for the top of the pass. Patches of eternal snow lay on the neighboring hills. When I climbed one of the peaks of Tarbagatai, an unusually vast view opened up before me. On one (southern) side there was a wide steppe, along which, meandering, as on a map, the Urdzhar River flowed towards the south, and then hundreds of sparkles, interspersed with dark spots, indicated the position of the “motley lake” (Ala-kulya), and behind him, on the distant horizon, the snowy peaks of the Semirechensky Alatau merged with the clouds. On the other (northern) side of the pass lay an even wider but undulating steppe, on which one could discern the meanders of the Bazar River flowing to the north, and further in the foggy distance the outline of the vast basin of Lake Zaisan could barely be seen. Thus, the mountain ridge of high Tarbagatai separated two wide steppe routes, through which from the 2nd century BC until the 13th century from the beginning of it they descended from mountainous Asia, as if through a gate, into the vast lowland of Sikhai (Western Sea), that is, into the Balkhash - the Aral-Caspian basin, those great national migrations that over the course of twelve centuries had a tremendous influence on the destinies of Europe and, in particular, Russia. The nomads who walked through the Zaisan Gate naturally descended along the course of the Irtysh along the Irtysh steppes, and then, along the later Siberian-Irtysh guard line, came out onto the Ural River and thus entered Europe through the wide gates of the vast steppes separating the southern tip of the Ural ridge from Aral Sea. People’s migrations that went through the Alakul (Dzhungar) gates went through them directly into the Balkhash lowland, but some of them, less numerous, turned to the southwest through the Semirechensky region, crossed the Ili River in its lower reaches, went out to the Chu River, and from there - to the Yaxartes (Syr Darya) river and, passing through the steppes of Turkestan and Turkmenistan, skirted the Aral and Caspian seas from the south, and passed to Europe through the Caucasian Isthmus. Other, more numerous masses went around Lake Balkhash from the northern side and followed along the very middle of the Kyrgyz steppe, reaching the Ural River unhindered along them, since the nomads who occupied these steppes not only did not serve as an obstacle to their movement, but were drawn into it, so the migration of nomads was likened to a snow avalanche falling from a mountain peak, carrying with it not only the snow masses through which it passes, but also huge blocks of stone. But the nomadic hordes passing through the Kyrgyz steppes invaded Europe through the same Caspian-Ural gates, since the nomads with their numerous herds and herds were forced to go around on the southern side the vast forests common in the Urals and in the later Ufa province, which were really difficult a surmountable obstacle to the movement of nomads with their herds. Having spent more than an hour on the ridge of Tarbagatai, we began to quickly descend 210

into the Ala-Kul plain and only by midnight returned to the Urdzhar village, where we spent the night. On September 24, I left the Urdzhar village at 7 o’clock in the morning. I followed six miles across the plain to the Urjara River. Behind her began the slow climb up the ridges. Here and there granite and diorite outcrops were visible on the sides of the road. The vegetation consisted of steppe shrubs (Spiraea and Amygdalus) and steppe grasses, among which I noticed Althaea, Eryngium campestre, Dipsacus, Salvia sylvestris, Senecio. Finally, after thirty-five miles, we reached the Terekty River, the course of which was marked by a long row of poplars, and reached the Terektinsky picket. From here, through a ridge, we climbed a mountain ridge, on which we constantly encountered outcrops of granites and diorites and finally reached the main pass - Kotel-asy. Its height, according to my hypsometric measurement, turned out to be 1,040 meters at a temperature of +14° C. From here began the descent to the Karakol River, on which the Karakol picket was located twenty-two versts from the previous picket. The Karakol River, flowing here between granite hills, originates only twenty-five miles from here. One verst from the picket there was a warm spring (Arasan), which had a temperature of 9.8 ° C and flowed from under a granite rock. There are leeches in Arasan. Kirghiz are successfully treated here for rheumatism and other colds. The climate here is much harsher than in the Urjar village and Ayaguz. On September 18 and 19, heavy snow even fell here, while in Urjar there was rain. On September 25, having spent the night at the Karakol picket, I set out further at 7 o’clock in the morning in very bad weather and, having passed through the Upper Naryn picket, reached Ayaguz by 2 o’clock in the afternoon, where I stayed for no more than two hours, and then headed off in a light postal wagon along the main Kopal postal route to Semipalatinsk, where he arrived early in the morning of September 27. I stopped as before at the hospitable Demchinsky, where I found in perfect working order my extensive carriage, left with him by my dear companion, the artist Kosharov, filled with treasures I had collected on the journey of 1357: geological, botanical and ethnographic collections. On that same day, as well as on the following days, F. M. Dostoevsky visited me, apparently in the best mood of spirit and imbued with firm faith in his future. During the three days of my stay in Semipalatinsk, I dined daily with the governor (G. M. Panov), who informed me with pleasure that he was awaiting official notification of the complete amnesty of F. M. Dostoevsky. On September 30, I already left Semipalatinsk, having sincerely said goodbye to my three Semipalatinsk friends, of them to General Panov forever; he died from consumption that was destroying his body three years after my trip. I met the other two in life quite soon, but under very different circumstances for them. F. M. Dostoevsky, from whom I received with particular pleasure his letters and instructions to his loved ones, I saw in St. Petersburg the following year 1858, if not yet in contentment, which he was not destined to enjoy during his life, then on the way to the apogee of his fame as one of the greatest artists of the word. As for officer Demchinsky, brilliant in his time and sympathetic in his good nature and humanity, I met him a few years later in complete poverty and at the beginning of a moral decline due to alcoholism, from which he was, however, saved by being appointed 211

to the modest position of head of a small railway station on the newly opened Kozlovo-Voronezh railway. I arrived in hospitable Barnaul in early October and, as usual, was greeted very cordially by the highly cultured society of “Siberian Athens”. At this time, the general attention of the city was absorbed by rumors about the upcoming liberation of the peasants and about what was happening in European Russia and was supposed to have a huge impact on the future destinies of Russia. It seemed that the city, hidden away from the main Siberian route, in the wilds of Siberia, where neither noble estates nor serfdom had ever existed, cared little about the reform being undertaken, but the cultural Russian society of Siberia could not remain indifferent “to the distant noise of struggle ”. At the same time, as representatives of Barnaul society foresaw, the liberation of peasants from serfdom should have had inevitable and, moreover, very undesirable consequences for them in the abolition of compulsory labor not only for miners, but also for the peasants of the Altai mountain district. In relation to miners, who were equated to the position of servants on noble estates, Altai mining engineers did not express excessive fears: they considered it possible to replace compulsory labor in factories and mines with civilian labor, provided that they were given enough time for this reform, since Landless mining workers living in factory villages, tied to the villages by their sedentarism, could hardly find any other profitable income other than the one to which they were already accustomed. But most of all, the Altai administration feared the rapid abolition of compulsory auxiliary work for the rural population of Altai, since the harmonious system of self-remuneration of officials built on these compulsory relations of mountain peasants was bound to inevitably collapse. It goes without saying that I took a very active part in the general discussions about the consequences that the liberation of the peasants would have for the future of Russia. From my conversations it soon became clear that the unexpected news took Barnaul society by surprise and it barely came to its senses that the consequences of the reform threatened it with great disadvantages, and therefore the majority of Barnaul society treated these reforms with fear and apprehension, but a very large minority treated them with generosity patriotic sympathy. It was with him that I agreed in the deep conviction that the heroic Sevastopol war clearly proved the complete failure of the entire state system of Russia, which can only be corrected by a series of reasonable and energetic reforms, and that the first of these reforms can only be the liberation of the peasants from serfdom, and that this liberation cannot happen without assigning to the peasants the land they own. I stayed in Barnaul for only three weeks, which was absolutely necessary to put my extensive collections in order and arrange them, and then at the end of October I was already in Omsk. In Omsk I did not find any changes. Omsk society did not even listen to the “distant noise” of what was happening in Russia. The reforms being prepared there did not worry Omsk society, which was not directly interested in them. It had not yet realized that the liberation of the peasants would inevitably entail a number of other reforms that would change the entire structure of Russian provincial life. Neither the highest ranks of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia, nor the minor officials of the Omsk offices thought that it was possible for the former to receive additional sup212

port from farmers and suppliers of provisions to the troops located beyond the state Siberian-Irtysh border in the Semirechensk Territory, and for the latter the opportunity to extort so openly and with impunity - they will stop. Only the younger generation of officials with higher education, attracted to Siberia mainly through the efforts of Governor-General Gasfort as officials on special assignments and in general his closest collaborators, have not yet lost courage in their difficult struggle against the predation of the old system, but even they, convinced together with the general- the governor, in his powerlessness in this struggle, sought to transition to European Russia. Even the youngest talented and pure-hearted newly developing local figures, like G. N. Potanin and Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, deeply imbued with their aspiration and thirst for knowledge, sought to complete their higher education at St. Petersburg University. I found General Gasfort much aged and dispirited since his trip to the coronation of Alexander II. There they paid little attention to him, and, in the words of one of the “subordinate foreigners” who accompanied him, he, who seemed such a big man in the Kirghiz steppe, seemed very small in the brilliant retinue of the Russian Tsar. In the capitals, no one cared about the Trans-Ili region, and no one appreciated the merits of General Gasfort, who strengthened Russia’s possession of one of the pearls of Russian territory. When talking with me and hearing my stories about the Trans-Ili region and the Tien Shan, the old man became completely animated and, freed from the “delusions of grandeur” that made him ridiculous in the eyes of those around him, quickly moved on to the aspirations hidden in his soul. He saw that his concerns about the correctly understood political interests and benefits of his adopted fatherland found a lively and competent assessment in one of the modest representatives of the Russian learned society. All the energy he discovered during the occupation of the TransIli region awakened again, and he began to ask me what else, in my opinion, remains to be done for the Russian region created by his efforts. I replied that, in my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to give this region strong and invulnerable borders, and for this it is necessary to immediately accept into citizenship the goddesses, and after them the Sarybagish, who, finding themselves in the same critical position as the goddesses, between the hammer and anvil, no more than two years later they will just as persistently ask for Russian citizenship. Thus, the Russian state border, having captured the entire Issyk-Kul basin, will rest on the snowy ridge of the Tien Shan, and the key that closes access to the Trans-Ili region will be easily found by occupying a fortified point in the Chui Valley. Hence, if the Russian government wants to move its entire state border in front of our vast possessions in the Kyrgyz steppes, it will be possible to subsequently reconnaissance and draw a new border from a fortified point on the river. Chu to Fort Perovsky and on the river. Cheese Darya. General Gasfort paid great attention to the considerations I expressed and answered me that, despite the obstacles that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will certainly encounter in accepting the citizenship of tribes listed as subjects of the Chinese Empire and the Khanate of Kokand, he will not hesitate to make a presentation on this subject to the military minister, but that he, for his part, hopes that the Geographical Society, in which there are many General Staff officers among 213

its members, will help familiarize the St. Petersburg government spheres with the situation and needs of the outskirts entrusted to it. Having parted this time forever with the venerable figure, who had rendered me, in any case, undoubted services, and having thanked him on behalf of the Geographical Society for the extensive assistance he had provided to my journey, I also petitioned him on two particular issues. Firstly, I asked him to send Lieutenant Chokan Valikhanov, dressed in his national costume, to Kashgar in order to collect detailed information about the death of Dr. Adolf Schlagintweit, which would be of equal interest to both the Russian and Berlin Geographical Societies, and in general the entire educated world , and also try to collect everything that could survive from the materials he collected, diaries, etc., and then, upon Valikhanov’s return, give him the opportunity, while remaining in the service of the governor general, to come to St. Petersburg for a long time to develop excellent , ethnographic and historical materials he had already collected about the Kyrgyz steppe. At the same time, I promised Valikhanov broad patronage and assistance from the Geographical Society. My second petition was the release of Centurion Potanin from completing his compulsory years of military service in order to give him the opportunity to receive a higher education in St. Petersburg. G.I. Gasfort gladly agreed to both of my requests, explaining to me that he always and everywhere gave a helping hand to all the talented people he met. I stayed in Omsk for only three days and hurried to St. Petersburg, where I was eager for the time of the renewal of Russia that I ardently anticipated. I arrived in St. Petersburg on November 15, 1857.

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