The northern half is a land of forest and morass, plentifully supplied with water in the form of rivers, lakes, and marshes, and broken up by numerous patches of cultivation.

The southern half is, as it were, the other side of the pattern--an immense expanse of rich, arable land, broken up by occasional patches of sand or forest.

The imaginary undulating line separating those two regions starts from the western frontier about the 50th parallel of latitude, and runs in a northeasterly direction till it enters the Ural range at about 56 degrees N.L.
Well do I remember my first experience of travel in the northern region, and the weeks of voluntary exile which formed the goal of the journey.
It was in the summer of 1870.

My reason for undertaking the journey was this: a few months of life in St.Petersburg had fully convinced me that the Russian language is one of those things which can only be acquired by practice, and that even a person of antediluvian longevity might spend all his life in that city without learning to express himself fluently in the vernacular--especially if he has the misfortune of being able to speak English, French, and German.

With his friends and associates he speaks French or English.