IN the midst of the steppes, of the mountains, of the impenetrable forests of the desert regions of Siberia, one meets from time to time with little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants, built entirely of wood, very ugly, with two churches-one in the centre of the town, the other in the cementery-in a word, towns which bear much more resemblance to a good-sized village in the suburbs of Moscow than to a town properly so called.