In nature, Siberia also found its redemption. In 1764, Catherine the Great ordered rows of silver birches planted along the open road from Yekaterinburg to Tyumen, and had them set so closely together that as they grew to an imperial height their branches intertwined to form an elegantly arched canopy of leaves above. Entering Siberia through this noble arboreal arcade, one could easily imagine that the territory possessed exceptional natural beauties in compensation for the sorrows of its fame. And almost everywhere one turned, that expectation was confirmed. The mountains surrounding Lake Baikal were reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands, and the environs of Minusinsk on the Yenisey compared in scenic beauty to parts of Switzerland or the Italian Lakes. High up in the snow-capped, rugged Altai lay alpine pastures filled with flowers, while the broad, fertile valleys below them were clothed in aspen, larch, and pine. Those seeking harsher vistas would not be disappointed, for Kamchatka offered many spectacles of wild rocky canyons, and swollen mountain torrents “foaming around sharp black rocks, and falling over ledges of lava in magnificent cascades.”554 The peninsula’s great volcanic range itself compared to the Sierra Nevadas for savage wildness, with spurs and foothills that broke the landscape up into deep sequestered valleys of the most picturesque kind. Volcanic eruptions occasionally sent columns of smoke and flame blazing up from the craters, and molten lava flowing in broad fiery rivers down the snow-covered slopes. Yet Kamchatka could also appear quite idyllic, as it did to Kennan in 1866 when, having sailed from America, he first viewed its coast from the other side:
The fog was beginning to break away, and in a moment it rose slowly like a huge gray curtain, unveiling the sea and the deep blue sky, letting in a flood of rosy light from the sinking sun, and revealing a picture of wonderful beauty. Before us, stretching for a hundred and fifty miles to the north and south, lay the grand coast-line of Kamchatka, rising abruptly in great purple promontories out of the blue sparkling sea, flecked here with white clouds and shreds of fleecy mist, deepening in places into a soft quivering blue and sweeping backward and upward into the pure white snow of the higher peaks. Two active volcanoes, 10,000 and 16,000 feet in height, rose above the confused jagged ranges of the lower mountains, piercing the blue sky with sharp white triangles of eternal snow, and drawing the purple shadows of evening around their feet.555
At the entrance to Petropavlovsk, Kennan beheld (to his own surprise) green grassy valleys that stretched away from the rocky coast, rounded bluffs covered with clumps of yellow birch, and a profusion of flowers nestled in “the warm sheltered slopes of the hills.”556 Herds of black and brown bears roamed everywhere over the plains and through the valleys, wild sheep made their home in the mountains, and swarms of ducks, geese, and swans gathered near every marsh and lake. In the Kamchatka River Valley, the strangely opposite yet harmonious autumnal blend of “snow and roses, bare granite and brilliantly colored foliage” challenged the most romantic images of the sublime.
Kamchatka was not alone in evoking such emotions. Far to the southwest, the Sayan Mountains – their great peaks “divided into many tall masses of rock and cliffs of varied shape and size” – conjured up in the mind of one traveler the battlemented citadels of late medieval romance.557 As he crossed the fertile Baraba Steppe, he also saw congregating on the shores of lakes “an enormous quantity of swans, cranes, pelicans, ducks and wild geese,” and in the woods and swamps bittern and snipe, grouse, mountain cock, and other fowl.558 When he came to Krasnoyarsk, it seemed to him “a place where everything is to be found that beautiful Nature brings forth for the enjoyment and the use of Man.”559 A century later, Chekhov unhesitatingly agreed. Though he had found little to cheer his passage across Western Siberia until he came to the Yenisey, he declared it the most magnificent river he had ever seen – “a powerful, turbulent giant which does not know what to do with its enormous power and its youth.”560 Krasnoyarsk on its banks, set against misty and dreamlike mountains, he judged “the best and most beautiful of all Siberian towns. I stood there and I thought: what a full, intelligent and brave life will some day illuminate these shores!” The road from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk led through fruitful valleys, forests, and fir-clad hills, and “one beautiful view after another,” wrote another traveler, “appeared everywhere before my eyes.”561 Then along the Angara (in Maria Volkonskaya’s rapturous description),
as May advances, night entirely disappears, and as the twilight draws near, swans, geese, and duck appear in clouds and the air resounds with the flapping of their wings; their numbers surpass anything that can be imagined, and must be seen to be believed. Each species of bird has its own particular note, and it struck me as a chant, marvelously solemn, a hymn raised by so many millions of creatures in tones which the Creator himself had taught them. Around me, as far as the eye could reach, were countless chains of duck, geese, and graceful Siberian cranes traversing the sky without any interruption, like so many streams all in the same northerly direction; there wasn’t a clear space in the air, and all the expanse of water below, the river and the islands, was completely covered with them, as thickly as the stars stud the firmament on a clear night.562
Perhaps the beauties of such a Siberian summer evening were surpassed only by the transformations wrought by the aurora borealis upon an Arctic winter night. “No other natural phenomenon,” wrote Kennan of his sojourn to the Siberian northeast, “is so grand, so mysterious, so terrible in its unearthly splendor as this; the veil which conceals from mortal eyes the glory of the eternal throne seems drawn aside, and the awed beholder is lifted out of the atmosphere of his daily life into the immediate presence of God.”563 Awakening one night, in the midst of such a display,
the whole universe seemed to be on fire. A broad arch of brilliant prismatic colors spanned the heavens from east to west like a gigantic rainbow, with a long fringe of crimson and yellow streamers stretching up from its convex edge to the very zenith. At short intervals of one or two seconds, wide, luminous bands, parallel with the arch, rose suddenly out of the northern horizon and swept with a swift, steady majesty across the whole heavens, like long breakers of phosphorescent light rolling in from some limitless ocean of space. Every portion of the vast arch was momentarily wavering, trembling, and changing color, and the brilliant streamers which fringed its edge swept back and forth in great curves, like the fiery sword of the angel at the gate of Eden.564
From one end of the territory to the other, Siberia’s melancholy reputation was belied. The “fervent heat” of its summer sunshine took almost every traveler by surprise, as did “the extraordinary beauty and profusion of Siberian flowers.”565 In the Siberian Arctic, summer was sudden yet complete. “There is no long, wet lingering spring,” remarked an admirer, “no gradual unfolding of buds and leaves….The vegetation, which has been held in icy fetters for eight long months, bursts suddenly its bonds, and with one great irresistible sweep takes the world by storm.”566
In time, a more precise knowledge of the landscape was acquired and gaps in the map of the Siberian Arctic were filled in. The New Siberian Islands, a collection of four large and several smaller islands, had been discovered in 1761. In 1770, the four Lyakhov Islands became known after explorers followed the footprints of a herd of reindeer northward across the ice of the East Siberian Sea. In 1819, Alexander I authorized an expedition to trace the northeastern coast of Siberia from the Kolyma River eastward to East Cape, and a young naval officer, Lieutenant Ferdinand Wrangel (later governor of Russian America), undertook to do this by land. Starting in 1820, he made his way from the Kolyma to Cape Shelagsky, which he doubled, but only, he wrote, with