In less than two hours, we were sitting before the glowing fireplace of a comfortable Yakut house, with a soft carpet under our feet; real crockery cups of fragrant Kiakhta tea on a table beside us, and pictures on the wall over our heads. The house, it is true, had slabs of ice for windows; the carpet was made of deerskins; and the pictures were only woodcuts from Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's; but to us, fresh from the smoky tents of the Tunguses, windows, carpets, and pictures, of any kind, were things to be wondered at and admired.

Between the Yakut settlements on the Aldan and the town of Yakutsk, there was a good post-road—really a road; so, harnessing shaggy white Yakut ponies to our Okhotsk dog-sledges, we drove swiftly westward, to the unfamiliar music of Russian sleigh-bells, changing horses at every post-station and riding from fifteen to eighteen hours out of the twenty-four.

On the 16th of November, after twenty-three days of continuous travel, we reached Yakutsk; and there, in the house of a wealthy Russian merchant who threw his doors open to us with warm-hearted hospitality, we washed from our bodies the smoke and grime of Tunguse tents and yurts; put on clean, fresh clothes; ate a well cooked and daintily served supper; drank five tumblers of fragrant overland tea; smoked two Manila cheroots; and finally went to bed, excited but happy, in beds that were provided with hair mattresses, fleecy Russian blankets, and linen sheets. The sensation of lying without furs and between sheets in a civilised bed was so novel and extraordinary that I lay awake for an hour, trying experiments with that wonderful mattress and luxuriously exploring, with bare feet, the smooth cool expanses of linen sheeting.



CHAPTER XL

THE GREATEST HORSE-EXPRESS SERVICE IN THE WORLD—EQUIPMENT FOR THE ROAD—A SIBERIAN "SEND-OFF"—POST TRAVEL ON THE ICE—BROKEN SLEEP—DRIVING INTO AN AIR-HOLE—REPAIRING DAMAGES—FIRST SIGHT OF IRKUTSK

We remained in Yakutsk only four days—just long enough to make the necessary preparations for a continuous sleigh-ride of five thousand one hundred and fourteen miles to the nearest railway in European Russia. The Imperial Russian Post, by which we purposed to travel from Yakutsk to Nizhni Novgorod, was, at that time, the longest and best organised horse-express service in the world. It employed 3000 or 4000 drivers, with twice as many telegas, tarantases and sleighs, and kept in readiness for instant use more than 10,000 horses, distributed among 350 post-stations, along a route that covered a distance as great as that between New York City and the Sandwich Islands. If one had the requisite physical endurance, and could travel night and day without stop, it was possible, with a courier's "podorozhnaya" (po-do-rozh'-na-yah), or road-ticket, to go from Yakutsk to Nizhni Novgorod, a distance of 5114 miles, in twenty-five days, or only eleven days more than the time occupied by a railway train in covering about the same distance. Before the establishment of telegraphic communication between China and Russia, imperial couriers, carrying important despatches from Peking, often made the distance between Irkutsk and St. Petersburg—3618 miles—in sixteen days, with two hundred and twelve changes of horses and drivers. In order to accomplish this feat they had to eat, drink, and sleep in their sleighs and make an average speed-rate of ten miles an hour for nearly four hundred consecutive hours. We did not expect, of course, to travel with such rapidity as this; but we intended to ride night and day, and hoped to reach St. Petersburg before the end of the year. With the aid and advice of Baron Maidel, a Russian scientist who had just come over the route that we purposed to follow, Price and I bought a large open pavoska or Siberian travelling sleigh, which looked like a huge, burlap-covered baby-carriage on runners; had it brought into the courtyard of our house, and proceeded to fit it up for six weeks' occupancy as a bedchamber and sitting-room. First of all, we repacked our luggage in soft, flat, leather pouches, and stowed it away in the bottom of the deep and capacious vehicle as a foundation for our bed. We then covered these flat pouches with a two-foot layer of fragrant hay, to lessen the shock of jolting on a rough road; spread over the hay a big wolfskin sleeping-sack, about seven feet in length and wide enough to hold our two bodies; covered that with two pairs of blankets; and finally lined the whole back part of the sleigh with large, soft, swan's-down pillows. At the foot of the sleeping-sack, under the driver's seat, we stowed away a bag of dried rye-bread, another bag filled with cakes of frozen soup, two or three pounds of tea, a conical loaf of white sugar, half a dozen dried and smoked salmon, and a padded box containing teapot, tea-cannister, sugar-jar, spoons, knives and forks, and two glass tumblers. Schwartz; and Malchanski bought another pavoska and fitted it up in similar fashion, and on the 19th of November we obtained from the Bureau of Posts two podorozhnayas, or, as Price called them, "ukases," directing every post-station master between Yakutsk and Irkutsk to furnish us, "by order of his Imperial Majesty Alexander Nikolaivitch, Autocrat of All the Russias," etc., etc., six horses and two drivers to carry us on our way.

In every part of the world except Siberia it is customary to start on a long journey in the morning. In Siberia, however, the proper time is late in the evening, when all your friends can conveniently assemble to "provozhat," or, in colloquial English, give you a send-off. Judging from our experience in Yakutsk, the Siberian custom has the support of sound reason, inasmuch as the amount of drinking involved in the riotous ceremony of "provozhanie" unfits a man for any place except bed, and any occupation more strenuous than slumber. A man could never see his friend off in the morning and then go back to his business. He would see double, if not quadruple, and would hardly be able to speak his native language without a foreign accent. When the horses came from the post-station for us, at ten o'clock on the evening of November 20th, we had had one dinner and two or three incidental lunches; had "sampled" every kind of beverage that our host had in the house, from vodka and cherry cordial to "John Collins" and champagne; had sung all the songs we knew, from "John Brown's Body" in English to "Nastoichka travnaya" in Russian; and Schwartz and Malchanski were ready, apparently, to make a night of it, send the horses back to the station, and have another provozhanie the next day. Price and I, however, insisted that the Czar's ukase to the station-masters was good only for that evening; that if we didn't take the horses immediately we should have to pay demurrage; that the curfew bell had rung; that the town gates would close at ten thirty sharp; and that if we didn't get under way at once, we should probably be arrested for riotous disturbance of the peace!

We put on our kukhlankas and fur hoods at last; shook hands once more all around; and finally got out into the street;—Malchanski dragging Schwartz off to his sleigh singing the chorus of a Russian drinking song that ended in "Ras-to-chee'-tel-no! Vos-khe-tee'-tel-no! Oo-dee-vee'-tel-no!" We then drank a farewell stirrup cup, which our bareheaded host brought out to us after we had taken our seats, and were just about to start, when Baron Maidel shouted to me, with an air of serious concern, "Have you got a club—for the drivers and station-masters?"

"No," I replied, "I don't need a club; I can talk to them in the most persuasive Russian you ever heard."

"Akh! Neilza!" ("Impossible") he exclaimed. "It is impossible to go so! You must have a club! Wait a minute!" and he rushed back into the house to get me a bludgeon from his private armory. My driver, meanwhile, who evidently disapproved, on personal grounds, of this suggestion, laid his whip across his horses' backs with a cry of "Noo, rebatta!" ("Now then, boys") and we dashed away from the house, just as the Baron reappeared on the steps brandishing a formidable cudgel and shouting: "Pastoy! Neilza!" ("Stop, it's impossible.") "You can't go without a club!" When we turned a neighbouring corner and lost sight of the house, our host was waving a bottle in one hand and a lighted candle in the other; Baron Maidel was still gesticulating on the steps, shouting: "Neilza! Hold on! Club! For your drivers! It's impossible to go so!" and the little group of "provozhatters" on the sidewalk were laughing, cheering, and shouting "Good-bye! Good luck! With God!"

We dashed away at a gallop through the snow-drifted streets, past earth-banked yurts whose windows of ice were irradiated with a warm glow by the open fires within; past columns of luminous smoke rising from the wide chimneys of Yakut houses; past a red stuccoed church upon whose green, balloon-shaped domes golden stars glittered in the frosty moonlight; past a lonely graveyard on the outskirts of the city; and finally down a gentle decline to the snow-covered river, which had a width of nearly four miles and which stretched away to the westward like a frozen lake surrounded by dark wooded hills. Up this great river—the Lena—we were to travel on the ice for a distance of nearly a thousand miles, following a sinuous, never-ending line of small evergreen trees, which had been cut in the neighbouring forests and set up at short intervals in the snow, to guide the drivers in storms and to mark out a line of safety around air-holes and between areas of thin ice or stretches of open water. I fell asleep, shortly after leaving Yakutsk, but was awakened, two or three hours later, at the first post-station, by the voice of our driver shouting: "Ai! Boys! Out with the horses—lively!" Two of us then had to alight from our sleighs, go into the post-station, show our podorozhnayas to the station-master, and superintend the harnessing of two fresh teams. Getting back into my fur bag, I lay awake for the next three hours, listening to the jangle of a big bell on the wooden arch over the thill-horse's back, and watching, through frosty eyelashes, the dark outlines of the high wooded shores as they seemed to drift swiftly past us to the eastward.

The severest hardship of post travel in eastern Siberia in winter is not the cold, but the breaking up of all one's habits of sleep. In the first stages of our journey, when the nights were clear and the river ice was smooth and safe, we made the distances between stations in from two to three hours; and at the end of every such period we were awakened, and had to get out of our warm fur bags into a temperature that was almost always below zero and sometimes forty or fifty degrees below. When we got back into our vehicles and resumed our journey, we were usually cold, and just as we would get warm enough to go to sleep, we would reach another station and again have to turn out. Sleeping in short snatches, between shivers, to the accompaniment of a jangling dinner-bell and a driver's shouts, and getting out into an arctic temperature every two or three hours, night and day, for a whole week, reduces one to a very fagged and jaded condition. At the end of the first four days, it seemed to me that I should certainly have to stop somewhere for an unbroken night's rest; but man is an animal that gets accustomed to things, and in the course of a week I became so used to the wild cries of the driver and the jangle of the thill-horse's bell that they no longer disturbed me, and I gradually acquired the habit of sleeping, in brief cat-naps, at all hours of the day and night. As we ascended the river, the moon rose later and later and the nights were often so dark that our drivers had great difficulty in following the line of evergreen trees that marked the road. Finally, about five hundred miles from Yakutsk, a particularly reckless or self-confident driver got off the road, went ahead at a venture instead of stopping to look for the evergreen trees, and just after midnight drove us into an air-hole, about a quarter of a mile from shore, where the water was thirty feet deep. Price and I were fast asleep, and were awakened by the crashing of ice, the snorting of the terrified horses, and the rush of water into the sleigh. I cannot remember how we got out of our fur bags and gained the solid ice. I was so bewildered by sleep and so completely taken by surprise that I must have acted upon blind impulse, without any clear consciousness of what I was doing. From subsequent examination of the air-hole and the sleigh, I concluded that we must have jumped from the widely extended outriggers, which were intended to guard against an accidental capsize, which had a span of ten or twelve feet, and which rested on the broken ice around the margin of the hole in such a way as to prevent the sleigh from becoming completely submerged. But be that as it may, we all got out on the solid ice in some way, and the first thing I remember is standing on the edge of the hole, staring at the swimming, snorting horses, the outlines of whose heads and necks I could just make out, and wondering whether this were not a particularly vivid and terrifying nightmare. For an instant, I could not be absolutely sure that I was awake. In a moment, the other sleigh, which was only a short distance behind, loomed up through the darkness and its driver shouted to our man, "What's the matter?"

"Oootonoole!" ("We got drowned") was the reply. "Get out your ropes, quick, while I run to the shore for some driftwood. The horses will freeze and sink in a few minutes. Akh! My God! My God! What a punishment!" and, tearing off his outer fur coat, he started at a run for the shore. I did not know what he expected to do with driftwood, but he seemed to have a clear vital idea of some sort, so Price and I rushed away after him. "We must get a tree, or a small log," he explained breathlessly as we overtook him, "so I can crawl out on it and cut the horses loose. But God knows," he added, "whether they'll hold out till we get back. The water is killing cold." After a few minutes on the snowy beach, we found a long, slender tree-trunk that our driver said would do, and began to drag it across the ice. Our breath, by this time, was coming in short, panting gasps, and when Schwartz, Malchanski, and the other driver, who ran to our assistance, took hold of the heavy log, we were on the verge of physical collapse. When we got back to the air-hole, the horses were still swimming feebly, but they were fast becoming chilled and exhausted, and it seemed doubtful whether we should save them. We pushed the log out over the broken edge of the ice, and five of us held it while our driver, with a knife between his teeth and a rope about his shoulders, crawled out on it, cut loose one of the outside horses and fastened the line around its neck. He then crept back, and we all hauled on the line until we dragged the poor beast out by the head. It was very much exhausted and badly scraped by the sharp edge of the ice, but it had strength enough to scramble to its feet. We then cut loose and hauled out in the same way the outside horse on the other side. This one was nearly dead and made no attempt to get up until it had been cruelly flogged, but it struggled to its feet at last. Cutting loose the thill-horse was more difficult, as its body was completely submerged and it was hard to get at the rawhide fastening that held the collar, the wooden arch, and the thills together, but our plucky driver succeeded at last, and we dragged the half-frozen animal out. Rescue came for him, however, too late. He could not rise to his feet and died, a few moments afterward, from exhaustion and cold. Fastening ropes to the half-submerged sleigh and harnessing to it the horses of the other team, we finally pulled that up on the ice. Leaving it there for the present, we made traverses back and forth across the river until we found the line of evergreen trees, and then started for the nearest post-station—Price and I riding with Malchanski and Schwartz while our driver followed with the two rescued horses. When we reached the post-station, which was about seven miles away, it was between three and four o'clock in the morning; and, after rousing the station-master and sending a driver with a team of fresh horses after the abandoned sleigh, we drank two or three tumblerfuls of hot tea, brought in blankets and pillows from the sleigh of Schwartz and Malchanski, and went to bed on the floor. As a result of this misadventure, our homeward progress was stopped, and we had to stay at the village of Krestofskaya two days, while we repaired damages. Our sleigh, when it came in that morning, was a mass of ice; our fur bag, blankets, pillows, and spare clothing were water-soaked and frozen solid; and the contents of our leather pouches were almost ruined. By distributing our things among half a dozen houses we succeeded in getting them thawed out and dried in time to make another start at the end of the second day; but after that time I did not allow myself to fall asleep at night. We had escaped once, but we might not be so fortunate again, and I decided to watch the line of evergreen bushes myself. When we lost the road in the darkness afterward, as we frequently did, I made the driver stop and searched the river myself on foot until I found it. The danger that I feared was not so much getting drowned as getting wet. In temperatures that were almost continuously below zero, and often twenty or thirty degrees below, a man in water-soaked clothing would freeze to death in a very short time, and there were so many air-holes and areas of thin ice that watchfulness was a matter of vital necessity.

Day after day and night after night we rode swiftly westward, up a river that was always more than a mile in width and often two or three; past straggling villages of unpainted log houses clinging to the steep sides of the mountainous shores; through splendid precipitous gorges, like those above the Iron Gate of the Danube; along stretches of flat pasture land where shaggy, white Yakut ponies were pawing up the snow to get at the withered grass; through good-sized towns like Kirinsk and Vitimsk, where we began to see signs of occidental civilisation; and finally, past a stern-wheel, Ohio-River steamboat, of primitive type, tied up and frozen in near the head of navigation at Verkholensk. "Just look at that steamer!" cried Price, with an unwonted glow of enthusiasm in his boyish face. "Doesn't that look like home?" At Verkholensk we abandoned the Lena, which we had followed up almost to its source, and, leaving the ice for the first time in two weeks, we started across country in a line nearly parallel with the western coast of Lake Baikal. We had been forty-one days on the road from Okhotsk; had covered a distance of about 2300 miles, and were within a day's ride of Irkutsk.

One bright sunshiny morning in early December, from the crest of a high hill on the Verkholensk road, we got our first view of the east-Siberian capital—a long compact mass of wooden houses with painted window-shutters; white-walled buildings with roofs of metallic green; and picturesque Russo-Byzantine churches whose snowy towers were crowned with inverted balloons of gold or covered with domes of ultramarine blue spangled with golden stars. Long lines of loaded sledges from the Mongolian frontier could be seen entering the city from the south; the streets were full of people; flags were flying here and there over the roofs of government buildings; and from the barracks down the river came faintly the music of a regimental band. Our driver stopped his horses, took off his hat, and turning to us, with the air of one who owns what he points out, said, proudly, "Irkutsk!" If he expected us to be impressed—as he evidently did—he was not disappointed; because Irkutsk, at that time and from that point of view, was a very striking and beautiful city. We, moreover, had just come from the desolate moss tundras and wild, lonely forests of arctic Asia and were in a state of mind to be impressed by anything that had architectural beauty, or indicated culture, luxury, and wealth. We had seen nothing that even remotely suggested a city in two years and a half; and we felt almost as if we were Gothic barbarians gazing at Rome. It did not even strike us as particularly funny when our Buriat driver informed us seriously that Irkutsk was so great a place that its houses had to be numbered in order to enable their owners to find them! To us, fresh from Gizhiga, Penzhina, and Okhotsk, a city with numbered houses was really too remarkable and impressive a thing to be treated with levity, and we therefore received the information with proper awe and in silence. We could share the native feeling, even if numbered houses had once been known to us.

Twenty minutes later, we dashed into the city at a gallop, as if we were imperial couriers with war news; rushed at break-neck speed past markets, bazaars, telegraph poles, street lamps, big shops with gilded sign-boards, polished droshkies drawn by high-stepping Orloff horses, officers in uniform, grey-coated policemen with sabres, and pretty women hooded in white Caucasian bashliks; and finally drew up with a flourish in front of a comfortable-looking stuccoed hotel—the first one we had seen in more than twenty-nine months.



CHAPTER XLI

A PLUNGE INTO CIVILISATION—THE NOBLES' BALL—SHOCKING LANGUAGE— SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLISH—THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD—PASSING TEA CARAVANS—RAPID TRAVEL—FIFTY-SEVEN HUNDRED MILES IN ELEVEN WEEKS—ARRIVAL IN ST. PETERSBURG

At Irkutsk, we plunged suddenly from a semi-barbaric environment into an environment of high civilisation and culture; and our attempts to adjust ourselves to the new and unfamiliar conditions were attended, at first, with not a little embarrassment and discomfort. As we were among the first Americans who had been seen in that Far Eastern capital, and were officers, moreover, of a company with which the Russian Government itself had been in partnership, we were not only treated with distinguished consideration, but were welcomed everywhere with warm-hearted kindness and hospitality; and we found it necessary at once to exchange calls with high officials; accept invitations to dinner; share the box of the Governor-General's chief of staff at the theatre, and go to the weekly ball of the "noble-born" in the hall of the "Blagorodnaya Sobrania," (Assembly of Nobles). The first difficulty that we encountered, of course, was the lack of suitable clothing. After two and a half years of campaigning in an arctic wilderness, we had no raiment left that was fit to wear in such a city as Irkutsk, and—worse than that—we had little money with which to purchase a new supply. The two hundred and fifty dollars with which we left Okhotsk had gradually dribbled away in the defrayment of necessary expenses along the road, and we had barely enough left to pay for a week's stay at the hotel. In this emergency we fell back upon our telegraph-company uniforms. They had been soaked in the Lena, frozen into masses of ice, and stretched all out of shape in the process of wringing and drying at Krestofskaya; but we got an Irkutsk tailor to press them and polish up the tarnished gilt buttons, and after spending most of the money we had left in the purchase of new fur overcoats to replace the dirty, travel-worn kukhlankas in which we had arrived, we got ourselves up in presentable form to call on the Governor-General.

The severest ordeal through which we had to pass, however, was the dance at the hall of the Blagorodnaya Sobrania to which we were escorted by General Kukel (koo'-kel), the Governor-General's chief of staff. The spacious and brilliantly lighted apartment, draped with flags and decorated with evergreens; the polished dancing-floor; the crash and blare of the music furnished by a military band; the beautiful women in rich evening toilettes; and the throng of handsome young officers in showy and diversified uniforms, simply overwhelmed us with feelings of mingled excitement and embarrassment. I felt, myself, like a uniformed Eskimo at a Charity Ball, and should have been glad to skulk in a corner behind the band! All I wanted was an opportunity to watch, unobserved, the brilliant picture of colour and motion, and to feel the thrill of the music as the band swept, with wonderful dash, swing, and precision, through the measures of a spirited Polish mazurka. General Kukel, however, had other views for us, and not only took us about the hall, introducing us to more beautiful women than we had seen, we thought, in the whole course of our previous existence, but said to every lady, as he presented us: "Mr. Kennan and Mr. Price, you know, speak Russian perfectly." Price, with discretion beyond his years, promptly disclaimed the imputed accomplishment; but I was rash enough to admit that I did have some knowledge of the language in question, and was forthwith drawn into a stream of rapid Russian talk by a young woman with sympathetic face and sparkling eyes, who encouraged me to describe dog-sledge travel in north-eastern Asia and the vicissitudes of tent life with the Wandering Koraks. On this conversational ground I felt perfectly at home; and I was succeeding, as I thought, admirably, when the girl suddenly blushed, looked a trifle shocked, and then bit her lip in a manifest effort to restrain a smile of amusement not warranted by anything in the life that I was trying to describe. She was soon afterward carried away by a young Cossack officer who asked her to dance, and I was promptly engaged in conversation by another lady, who also wanted "to hear an American talk Russian." My self-confidence had been a little shaken by the blush and the amused smile of my previous auditor, but I rallied my intellectual forces, took a firm grip of my Russian vocabulary, and, as Price would say, "sailed in." But I soon struck another snag. This young woman, too, began to show symptoms of shock, which, in her case, took the form of amazement. I was absolutely sure that there was nothing in the subject-matter of my remarks to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, or give a shock to the virgin mind of feminine youth, and yet it was perfectly evident that there was something wrong. As soon as I could make my escape, I went to General Kukel and said: "Will you please tell me, Your Excellency, what's the matter with my Russian?"

"What makes you think there's anything the matter with it?" he replied evasively, but with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

"It doesn't seem to go very well," I said, "in conversation with women. They appear to understand it all right, but it gives them a shock. Is my pronunciation so horribly bad?"

"You speak Russian," he said, "with quite extraordinary fluency, and with a-a-really interesting and engaging accent; but—excuse me please—shall I be entirely frank? You see you have learned the language, under many disadvantages, among the Koraks, Cossacks, and Chukchis of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk Sea coast, and—quite innocently and naturally of course—you have picked up a few words and expressions that are not—well, not—"

"Not used in polite society," I suggested.

"Hardly so much as that," he replied deprecatingly. "They're a little queer, that 's all—quaint—bizarre—but it's nothing! nothing at all! All you need is a little study of good models—books, you know—and a few months of city life."

"That settles it!" I said. "I talk no more Russian to ladies in Irkutsk."

When, upon my arrival in St. Petersburg, I had an opportunity to study the language in books, and to hear it spoken by educated people, I found that the Russian I had picked up by Kamchatkan camp-fires and in Cossack izbas on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea resembled, in many respects, the English that a Russian would acquire in a Colorado mining camp, or among the cowboys in Montana. It was fluent, but, as General Kukel said, "quaint—bizarre," and, at times, exceedingly profane.

I was not the only person in Irkutsk, however, whose vocabulary was peculiar and whose diction was "quaint" and "bizarre." A day or two after the ball of the Blagorodnaya Sobrania we received a call from a young Russian telegraph operator who had heard of our arrival and who wished to pay his respects to us as brother telegraphers from America. I greeted him cordially in Russian; but he began, at once, to speak English, and said that he would prefer to speak that language, for the sake of practice. His pronunciation, although queer, was fairly intelligible, and I had little difficulty in understanding him; but his talk had a strange, mediaeval flavour, due, apparently, to the use of obsolete idioms and words. In the course of half an hour, I became satisfied that he was talking the English of the fifteenth century—the English of Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher—but how he had learned such English, in the nineteenth century and in the capital of eastern Siberia, I could not imagine. I finally asked him how he had managed to get such command of the language in a city where, so far as I knew, there was no English teacher. He replied that the Russian Government required of its telegraph operators a knowledge of Russian and French, and then added two hundred and fifty rubles a year to their salaries for every additional language that they learned. He wanted the two hundred and fifty rubles, so he began the study of English with a small English-French dictionary and an old copy of Shakespeare. He got some help in acquiring the pronunciation from educated Polish exiles, and from foreigners whom he occasionally met, but, in the main, he had learned the language alone, and by committing to memory dialogues from Shakespeare's plays. I described to him my recent experience with Russian, and told him that his method was, unquestionably, better than mine. He had learned English from the greatest master of the language that ever lived; while I had picked up my Russian from Cossack dog-drivers and illiterate Kamchadals. He could talk to young women in the eloquent and impassioned words of Romeo, while my language was fit for backwoodsmen only.

At the end of our first week in Irkutsk, we were ready to resume our journey; but we had no money with which to pay our hotel bill, still less our travelling expenses. I had telegraphed to Major Abaza repeatedly for funds, but had received no reply, and I was finally compelled to go, in humiliation of spirit, to Governor General Shelashnikoff, and borrow five hundred rubles.

On the 13th of December, we were again posting furiously along the Great Siberian Road, past caravans, of tea from Hankow; detachments of Cossacks convoying gold from the placers of the Lena; parties of hard-labour convicts on their way to the mines of the trans-Baikal; and hundreds of sleighs loaded with the products or manufactures of Russia, Siberia, and the Far East.

For the first thousand miles, our progress was retarded and our rest greatly broken—particularly at night—by tea caravans. With the establishment of the winter road, in November, hundreds of low, one-horse sledges, loaded with hide-bound boxes of tea that had come across the desert of Gobi from Peking, left Irkutsk, every day, for Nizhni Novgorod. They moved in solid caravans, a quarter of a mile to a mile in length, and in every such caravan there were from fifty to two hundred sledges. As the tea-horses went at a slow, plodding walk, their drivers were required, by law, to turn out for private travellers and give the latter the road; but they seldom did anything of the kind. There were only twelve or fifteen of them to a caravan of a hundred sledges; and as they usually curled up on their loads at night and went fast asleep, it was practically impossible to arouse them and get the caravan out of the middle of the road. In order to pass, therefore, we ourselves had to turn out and drive three quarters of a mile, or possibly a mile, through the deep soft snow on one side of the beaten track. This so exasperated our driver that he would give every horse and every sleeping teamster in the whole caravan a slashing cut with his long rawhide whip, shouting, in almost untranslatable Russian, "Wake up!" (Whack.) "Get a move on you!" (Whack.) "What are you doing in the middle of the road there?" (Whack.) "Akh! You ungodly Tartar pagans!" (Whack.) "GO TO SLEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, WILL YOU?" (Whack, whack.) Meanwhile, the strongly braced outrigger of our pavoska, on the caravan side, would strike every one of the tea-sledges, as we passed, and the long series of violent shocks, combined with the rolling and pitching of our vehicle, as it wallowed through the deep snow, would be enough to awaken a man from anything except the last sleep of death. Usually, we were aroused by our driver's preliminary shouts when we first came in sight of a caravan; but sometimes we were in such a stupor of sleep that we did not awake until the outrigger collided with the first load of tea and brought us suddenly to consciousness with a half-dazed impression that we had been struck by lightning, or hit by a falling tree. If we had had to undergo this experience only once or twice in the course of the night, it would not have been so bad; but we sometimes passed half a dozen caravans between sunset and dawn; threw every one of them into disorder and confusion with outrigger and whip; and left behind us a wake of Russian and Tartar profanity almost fiery enough to be luminous in the dark. Shortly after leaving Tomsk, however, we passed the vanguard of these tea caravans and saw them no more.

The road in western Siberia was hard and smooth, and the horses were so good that we made very rapid progress with comparatively little discomfort. We stopped only twice a day for meals, and every night found us 175 or 200 miles nearer our destination than we had been the night before. We succeeded in getting across the Urals before the end of the year, and on the 7th of January, after twenty-five days of almost incessant night-and-day travel, we drew up before a hotel in the city of Nizhni Novgorod, which, at that time, was the eastern terminus of the Russian railway system. We sold our sleigh, fur bag, pillows, tea-equipment, and the provisions we had left, for what they would bring—a beggarly sum; took a train the same day for St. Petersburg; and reached the Russian capital on the 9th of January, eleven weeks from the Okhotsk Sea by way of Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Tiumen, Ekaterineburg, and Nizhni Novgorod. In the eleven weeks we had changed dogs, reindeer, or horses more than two hundred and sixty times and had made a distance of five thousand seven hundred and fourteen miles, nearly all of it in a single sleigh.



INDEX

A

Abaza, Major S., appointed superintendent of Siberian division; forms plan of operations; starts northward from Petropavlovsk; scares up a bear; falls ill at Lesnoi; leaves Gizhiga for Okhotsk; orders from; returns to Gizhiga; makes trip to Anadyrsk; sails for Okhotsk; visits Yakutsk; comes to Yamsk; returns to Yakutsk; starts for St. Petersburg; letter from. Agaricus muscarius, Korak intoxicant. Air-hole, driving into Aklan, river Aldan, river Amur, river Anadyr, river; work on. Anadyr River party; finding of; experience of; orders concerning. Anadyrsk, village; arrival at; priest's house in; history and description of; climate of; ball at; character of inhabitants; famine at. Anadyrsk sickness Animals, of Kamchatka Anossof, Russian commissioner Arnold, member of Anadyr River party Astronomical lectures Atlantic cable, failure of first; final success of. Aurora borealis; remarkable display of. Aurora of the sea Avacha, bay Avacha, river Avacha, village Avacha, volcano

B

"Baideras," Korak skin boats "Balagans," fish storehouses Ball, at Anadyrsk; at Irkutsk. "Ballalaikas," Siberian guitars "Barabans," Korak drums Baths, "black," Kamchatkan steam baths Bear hunts Bears Bering, monument to, in Petropavlovsk Berries Bickmore, A.S., reference to Korak marriage ceremony Birds Bivouacs, Kamchatkan Blueberries Bollman, merchant in Petropavlovsk Bordman, W.H. Bowsher, member of Sandford's party Bragan, Nicolai, guide Bragans, Kamchatkan traders British Columbia British Government, concessions from Bulkley, Colonel Charles S. Bush, Richard J., becomes member of Siberian party; sails for Amur River; meeting with, at Gizhiga; put in command of Northern District; bad news from; night meeting with; experience in summer of 1866 Buttercups

C

Cable, Atlantic, failure of first; final success of Camp, a winter Camps Canoe travel Canticle, a driver's Christmas, in a storm; in Anadyrsk Christmas carols Chuances Chukchis Church, Greek, architecture and color; services Cinquefoil Clara Bell, bark Climate Clover Cold, Asiatic pole of; phenomena of; on Myan River; lowest temperature observed; in Stanavoi mountains Collins, P. McD., suggests overland telegraph to Europe Congress, of U. S., promises assistance Cossack waltz Cossacks Cows Cowslips Crimean war, connection of Petropavlovsk with Crinoline, Korak comment on Crows

D

Dall, W. H. Dances, Siberian Distance, Korak ideas of Divide, Kamchatkan, crossing of Dix, Major General, worshipped as a saint Dodd, James, engaged as member of party in Petropavlovsk; goes to Tigil; left in Gizhiga Dogs, ancestry: endurance; food; sledges; loads; driving of; first experiment in driving; howling of, in chorus; rest; cutting of feet by ice "Dole," arctic desert Dranka, village Dress; of Kamchadals; of Wandering Koraks; of Zamutkis and Tunguses Drunkenness, from poisonous toadstool Ducks

E

Eagles English, Shakespearian, in Irkutsk Equipment, in San Francisco; in Petropavlovsk; in Lesnoi; in Gizhiga; in Anadyrsk; in Yakutsk Escape, narrowest Eskimo-like natives Ethnology, of Siberian natives Evil spirits, propitiation of Exploration, plans for

F

Famines Fashion-plate, Korak comment on Field glass, Chukchi experiments with Fish-hawks Fish savings banks Flowers, in Gizhiga; in Petropavlovsk; in Kamchatka Fluger, German merchant in Petropavlovsk Fly agaric, as intoxicant Food, of Kamchadals Fort St. Michael Frank Leslie's, fashion-plate from; pictures from Frazer River Fritillaria; bulbs eaten Fronefield, American in Petropavlovsk Frost, George A. Fruits, of Kamchatka Fur trade, of Kamchatka

G

Gale, in North Pacific Geese Genal, valley Genal, village Gilyaks Gizhiga, village; arrival at; first days in; departure from; return to, from Anadyrsk; spring in; climate of; dancing parties in Golden Gate, bark, wreck of Goldsmith, Oliver, reference to Korak intoxicant Grouse "teteer" Gulls

H

Hallie Jackson, brig Hamilton, captain of whaling bark Sea Breeze Harchina, village Harder, member of Anadyr River party Harper's Weekly, pictures from Heck, member of Sandford's party Herald, N.Y., correspondent of Horseback travel Horse-express, Siberian Houses, Kamchadal Hunter, American in Petropavlovsk

I

Illustrated London News, as wall paper Imperator and operator Indian type, of Siberian native Intoxicant, Korak Irkutsk, city "Ispravnik," local governor of Petropavlovsk; of Gizhiga; of Okhotsk

J

Jelly-fish; luminous "Jerusalem," village

K

Kamchadals, character; food; language; music; numbers; physique; religion; sable trapping; summer settlements; transportation Kamchatka, animals; berries; birds; climate; first impressions; first view of coast; flowers; fruits; government; mail; population; scenery; topography; transportation; volcanoes Kamchatka River; raft, life on; valley of Kamchatkan Divide, crossing of Kamchatkan lily Kamchatkan mountains Kamenoi Kazarefski, village "Kazarm," a Russian barrack "Kedrovnik," see "Pine" Kennicott, leader of Alaskan exploring party Kirinsk, town on Lena River Kluchei, village Kluchefskoi volcano Knox, Colonel T. W., correspondent of N.Y. Herald Kolyma, mosquitoes in Korak, village Koraks, Settled, appearance; experiments with American food; in Kamenoi; stupidity and ugliness; yurts Koraks, Wandering, arrival at first encampment; appearance; character; comment on dress of American woman; food; geographical range; intoxicant; language; marriage ceremony; monotonous life; old and sick killed; pologs; reindeer; relation to Chukchis; relieve starving Anadyrsk people; religion; social organisation; superstitions; tents Koratskoi, volcano Krestofskaya, village Kristi, village Kuil, village of Settled Koraks Kukel, General "Kukhlanka" fur overshirt

L

Labrador tea Lamutkis Land, longing for Language, "American"; Russian difficulty of learning; grammar of; specimen; experience with, in Irkutsk La Perouse, monument to, in Petropavlovsk Lecky, W.H., reference to religion of terror Lectures, astronomical Leet, American brought by bark Onward; suicide of Lesnoi, village Letovies, summer settlements Lewis, Richard, telegraph operator brought by bark Onward Lily, Kamchatkan "Lodkas," Siberian skiffs

M

Macrae, leader of Anadyr River party Macrae and Arnold, go with Chukchis; no news from; arrive in Anadyrsk; experience with Chukchis; first winter's work Magpies Mahood, Captain James A. Mahood and Bush Maidel, Baron Malchanski Malqua, village Manchus "Manyalla," Korak bread Marriage ceremonies, Russian Korak Matches, Koraks see for first time Matuga, island Maximof, Kamchatkan driver Medusae; luminous Mikina, village Milkova, village Mirages Mongolian type of natives "Moroshkas," berries Mosquitoes Moss steppe Mountains, Kamchatkan "Muk-a-moor," Korak intoxicant Music, American, in Kamchatka; of Kamchadals; of Greek Church; on corvette Varag Myan, river

N

Nalgim, mountain "Nart," Siberian dog-sledge New York Herald, correspondent of Nights, in summer Nikolaievsk, town Nizhni Novgorod Northern District, famine in; work in Norton, forearm of pole-cutting party Norton, sound

O

"Oerstel," a spiked stick Okhotsk Sea; coast of; temperatures of; phosphorescence of Okuta, village Olga, brig, passage engaged on; inspection of; sails from San Francisco; life on; sails for Amur River Onward, bark Operator and imperator

P

Palmetto, bark Paren, river "Pavoskas," travelling sleighs or sledges Penzhina, river Penzhina, village Penzhinsk Gulf Petropavlovsk Phillippeus, trip down the Anadyr; boat of Phosphorescence, of the sea Pierce, American in Petropavlovsk Pine, trailing or "Kedrovnik" Plans, at Gizhiga Plover "Podorozhnaya," order for post-horses "Pologs," skin bedrooms Pope, leader of Alaskan party Porte Crayon, sketches of, in Kamchatka Post-road to Irkutsk Povorotnoi, cape Price, telegraph operator, brought by Onward Primroses "Pripaika," ice-foot Propashchina, River of the Lost "Protoks," arms of stream Ptarmigan Puffin "Purgas," blizzards Pushchin, village

R

Raft, Kamchatkan Raft travel Raselskoi, volcano Ravens Reception, Kamchatkan Reindeer catching; driving; food; guarding; habits; of Koraks; of Tunguses; stampede; superstition about sale of; uses Reindeer Koraks, see "Koraks, Wandering" Reindeer-sledge travel Religion, of Kamchadals; of Wandering Koraks Reveries, seasick River of the Lost Roads Robinson, member of Anadyr River party Roses, wild Route of line Routes from Kluchei Russell and Co. Russian-American Telegraph Co. organisation of failure of Russian Government Russian language

S

Sables, trapping; trade in skins Saghalin, Russian supply steamer St. Petersburg Sale, a bargain Salmon, catching and curing; failure of; frozen; dependence of Siberians upon Samanka Mountains Samanka River Sandford, Lieut., foreman of pole-cutting party "Sastrugi," permanent drifts of snow Scammon, Captain, commander of Company's fleet Scenery of Kamchatka Scenery, Siberian, in winter Schwartz Sea Breeze, whaling bark Sea life "Selanka," Kamchatkan soup Send-off, a Siberian Shamanism "Shchi," cabbage soup Shelashnikoff, Governor-General Sherom, village Shestakova, village Sidanka, village Smith, member of Anadyr River party Sparrow song Spring, in Gizhiga Squirrel skins Stanavoi Mountains Star-flower "Starosta," head man of village Steeplechase, to Sidanka Stock, of Western Union Extension Co. Storm in Northern Pacific; on the Viliga River; on the Malkachan steppe; in Gizhiginsk Gulf Stovepipe, search for; finding of "Struganini," frozen fish Sugar, used instead of money Sulkavoi, captain of port of Petropavlovsk Sutton, captain of bark Clara Bell Suveilich, volcano Swallows Swans Sword-bearer

T

"Taiyon," Korak chief "Tarantas," Siberian travelling carriage Tea, used instead of money "Tea caravans," Telega, four-wheeled Siberian wagon Tents, of Koraks, life in "Teteer," Russian grouse Thrushes Tide, a race with Tigil, village Time, expedients to pass away Tobacco, used instead of money Tobezin, captain of steamer, Saghalin Topolofka, river "Topor," Russian axe "Torbasses," fur boots Trances, in Anadyrsk sickness Trailing-pine. See "Pine" Transportation, means of, in Kamchatka Tundras, mossy plains Tunguses; encampments Turkish type of natives

U

Ural Mountains Usinova, brook

V

Valerian Varag, Russian corvette Verkholensk, town on Lena River Victoria Viliga, stormy gorge of; mountains Villages, Kamchatkan, descriptions Villuchinski, volcano Vitimsk, town on Lena River Volcanoes of Kamchatka Vorrebeoffs, Kamchatkan traders,

W

Wages, paid Yakut laborers Wedding, in Petropavlovsk; in Korak tent Western Union Extension Co. Western Union Telegraph Co. Wheeler, sent to Yamsk Whymper, book of Wild-rose petals, as food Women, American, Korak comment on dress of Work accomplished up to March 1886 Writing, Korak and Chukchi, ignorance of

Y

Yakuts Yakutsk; winter temperatures Yamsk, village; trip to, in March "Yassak," a tax on furs Yolofka, pass Yolofka, river, canoe travel on Yolofka, village "Yukola," dried fish "Yurts," Asiatic habitations; of settled Koraks,

Z

"Zimovie," winter settlement Zinovief, Gregorie, Cossack guide

THE END