and few raspberries on a hillside near our main camp, the little fruit which the country has afforded us has been red currants. But even those are so exceedingly sour that they set us to work and require with a quantity of sugar to make them pal- table that they have given us little pleasure. But for all its lack of fruit it is a country of exceeding beauty. The dark spruce forests border now them by a grove of poplars or a silvery birch, the beautiful valleys and the rounded and summits are as wild and prime, as nature made them and seem untrodden by its devastating hand of man. Only the blackened trunks of fire swept patches indicates that a human has ever trod the wilderness. In certain spots a few trees have been felled for lumber but these are few, far between, and the beauty of the forests have not been marred. I wonder how long they will remain untouched! Certainly not many years after the Grubi Desert has been crossed by dunes of steel and [illegible] railroad sheds have replaced the gold roofed temples of Therga. I hope I shall not have to see it then, for there are left