Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/160

138 flights of miniature carmine sky-rockets sent up by the fairies of the steppe. The air was still and warm, and had a strange, sweet fragrance which I can liken only to the taste of wild honey. There were no sounds to break the stillness of the great plain except the drowsy hum of bees, the regular measured "Kate-did-Kate-did" of a few katydids in the grass near me, and the wailing cry of a steppe hawk hovering over the nest of some field-mice. It was a delight simply to lie on the grass amidst the flowers and see, hear, and breathe.

We traveled all day Friday over flowery steppes and through little log villages like those that I have tried to describe, stopping occasionally to make a sketch, collect flowers, or talk with the peasants about the exile system. Now and then we met a solitary traveler in a muddy tárantás on his way to Tiumén, or passed a troop of exiles in gray overcoats plodding along through the mud, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers; but as we were off the great through line of travel, we saw few vehicles except the telégas of peasants going back and forth between the villages and the outlying fields.

The part of the province of Tobólsk through which we traveled from Tiumén to Omsk is much more productive and prosperous than a careless observer would suppose it to be from the appearance of most of its villages. The four ókrugs, or "circles," of Tiumén, Yalútorfsk, Ishím, and Tiukalínsk, through which our road lay, have an aggregate population of 650,000 and contain about 4,000,000 acres of