Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/142



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF POST TRAVEL

HE traveler who desires to go from Tiumén to Eastern Siberia has a choice of three widely different routes; namely, first, the northern or river route down the Írtish and up the Ob by steamer to Tomsk; second, the middle or winter route, which follows the great Siberian post road through Omsk, Káinsk, and Koliván; and third, the southern or steppe route, via Omsk, Pavlodár, Semipalátinsk, and Barnaül. Each of these routes has some advantage not possessed by either of the others. The middle route, for example, is the shortest, but it is also the most traveled and the best known. The northern route is less familiar, and in summer is more comfortable and convenient; but it takes one through an uninteresting, thinly inhabited, sub-arctic region.

I decided, after careful consideration, to proceed from Tiumén to Tomsk through the steppes of the Írtish by way of Omsk, Pavlodár, Semipalátinsk, Ust-Kamenogórsk, and Barnaül. This route would take us through the best agricultural part of the provinces of Tobólsk and Tomsk, as well as the districts most thickly settled by exiles; it would enable us to see something of the Mohammedan city of Semipalátinsk and of the great nomadic and pastoral tribe of natives known as the Kírghis; and finally it would afford us an opportunity to explore a part of the Russian Altái—a high, picturesque, mountainous region on the Mongolian frontier, which had been described to me by Russian 120