Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/155

Rh he was in the act of bowing and touching the weather-beaten remains of what was once a hat, we whirled past and lost sight of him, with a feeling of regret that we could not stop and take a photograph of such a wild, neglected picturesque embodiment of poverty and wretchedness clothed in rags. Just inside the gate stood an unpainted sign-post, upon the board of which had been neatly inscribed in black letters the words

Between the gate and the village there was a grassy common about half a mile wide, upon which were grazing hundreds of cattle and sheep. Here and there stood a huge, picturesque windmill, consisting of a small gable-roofed house with four enormous wind-vanes mounted on a pivot at the apex of a pyramid of cross-piled logs. Beyond the windmills appeared the village, a small collection of gray, weather-beaten log-houses, some with roofs of boards, some with a roofing of ragged birch-bark held in place by tightly lashed poles, some thatched with straw, and some the flat roofs of which had been overlaid with black earth from the steppe and supported a thrifty steppe flora of weeds, buttercups, and wild mustard. Through this cluster of gray log-houses ran one central street, which had neither walks nor gutters, and which, from side to side and from end to end, was a shallow lake of black, liquid mud. Into this wide street we dashed at a tearing gallop; and the splattering of the horses' hoofs in the mud, the rumble of the tárantás, and the wild cries of our driver brought the whole population to the windows to see whether it was the governor-general or a special courier of the Tsar who came at such a furious pace into the quiet settlement. Presently our driver pulled up his reeking, panting horses before the court-yard gate of one of his friends and