The surface is fertile, the rivers are small and not navigable, and the roads are mere footpaths.
Soon after the first appearance (1580) of the Cossacks of Yermak in Siberia thousands of hunters, attracted by the furs, immigrated from north Russia, explored the country, traced the first footpaths and erected the first houses in the wilderness.
A later bridge, the Manhattan, is designed to carry four railway tracks and four tramway lines, with a wide roadway and footpaths, supported by cables 214 in.
The river is here crossed by three bridges; the (upper) steel arch bridge, built (1895) on the site of the former suspension bridge (built in 1869; blown down in 1889; rebuilt as a suspension bridge) near the Falls, is crossed by double carriageways and footpaths and by an electric railway, and is probably the longest bridge of the kind in the world, being 1240 ft.
The east side of the river (known as St Thomas's and Port Tennant) is approached from the west by a road carried over the North Dock Lock and the river by two girder drawbridges, each of which has a double line of roadway (on which tramways are laid), two footpaths and a line of railway.