Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/157

Rh long-tailed butternut coats, girt about the waist with straps or dirty colored sashes. While they assembled in a group around the tárantás, our driver climbed down from his high seat and began to unharness his horses. The owner of the house in front of which we had stopped soon made his appearance, and inquired whether we wished to drink tea or to go on at once. I replied that we desired to go on at once. "Andre!" he shouted to one of his sons, "ride to the pasture and drive in the horses." Andre sprang on a barebacked horse which another boy brought out of the court-yard and galloped away to the village common. In the mean time the assembled crowd of idlers watched our movements, commented upon our "new-fashioned" tárantás, and tried to ascertain from our driver who we were and where were going. Failing to get from that source any precise information, one of them, a bareheaded, gray-haired old man, said to me, "Barin! Permit us to ask—where is God taking you to?" I replied that we were going to Omsk and Semipalátinsk. "A-a-ah!" murmured the crowd with gratified curiosity.

"Where do you condescend to come from?" inquired the old man, pursuing the investigation.

"From America," I replied.

"A-a-ah!" breathed the crowd again.

"Is that a Russian town?" persisted the old man.

"America is n't a town," shouted a bright-faced boy on the outskirts of the crowd. "It 's a country. All the world," he continued mechanically, as if reciting from a school-book, "is divided into five parts, Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. Russia occupies two-thirds of Europe and one-half of Asia." Beyond this even the school-boy's geographical knowledge did not extend, and it was evident that none of the old inhabitants of the village had even so much as heard of America. A young man, however, who had happened to be in Omsk when the bodies of the dead members of the Jeannette arctic expedition were carried through that