At last we emerged from the forests and entered the spacious vastness of the Minnusinsk steppes, crossed by the high red mountain range called the "Kizill-Kaiya" and dotted here and there with salt lakes.

It is a country of tombs, thousands of large and small dolmens, the tombs of the earliest proprietors of this land: pyramids of stone ten metres high, the marks set by Jenghiz Khan along his road of conquest and afterwards by the cripple Tamerlane-Temur.

Thousands of these dolmens and stone pyramids stretch in endless rows to the north.

In these plains the Tartars now live.

They were robbed by the Bolsheviki and therefore hated them ardently.