The Yenisei and its tributaries form the main avenue of com munication north of the trans-Siberian railway, but rivers and roads alike are impassable during spring and autumn. The great military road or Trakt of Siberia passes through the south from Omsk via Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, and traffic along it is by post horse in summer and sledge in winter. Even this road is difficult and in places impassable in spring and autumn. In many places there are no bridges and ferries are used. The effect of the building of the railway in 1891-1905 in these conditions was marked and immediate; villages became towns with large populations in a few years, colonization and settlement near the railway increased, and the possibilities of export produced re markable developments, e.g., the dairy industry. In 1915 a branch from Novo-Sibirsk to Barnaul and Semipalatinsk was opened, with a branch line to Biisk and this line is now being prolonged to link up with the Turkestan and Orenburg-Tashkent railways. The effect on the development of Siberian products, especially grain and coal, should be marked, and settlement will be further in creased. Other branch lines link Tatarskaya, 105 m. E. of Omsk, with Slavgorod and the Kulundinsk steppes, practically unin habited in 1907, but rapidly settled during 1907-12, Taiga with Kuznetsk, and Achinsk with Minusinsk. No branch lines go northward except a short one to Tomsk.
be noted that all these towns are on the railway. Colonization did not begin to any extent, in the west, until the 18th century, when forts were constructed from Omsk south-eastwards along the Irtysh to protect the settlers from Kirghiz raids. Criminal, political and religious exiles were banished to Siberia up to 1900; the first mention of such exile is in 1648. In 1904 exile for political offences was again restored and is still in force (1928). Between 1823 and 1898, 700,000 exiles, with 216,00o voluntary followers passed through Tobolsk. Of the religious exiles the raskolnik or dissenters from the ecclesiastical changes introduced by Nikon, and from the changes introduced by Peter the Great, formed a valuable element among the colonists, being ascetic, industrious and abstemious. Some colonists were peasants ordered to settle at certain places so as to maintain road communication. But the largest element and the most important was the voluntary immi grants, who are still pushing eastwards in great numbers and gradually bringing all the fertile regions of the south of the Siberian Area under cultivation. Between 1896 and 1909 over a million immigrants settled in the Altai region and few returned. Of those settling east of the Yenisei and in the Irkutsk district, many found the climatic conditions impossible and returned west wards. Education varies with accessibility. The large towns on the railways have schools and technical institutions, but the more remote settlements and the nomads, present a difficult problem and among them the illiteracy rate is high. (R. M. F.)