Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/173

Rh and were pierced with square portholes through which, I presume, the bodies of the dead were carried into the inclosure for burial. Inside of each of these adobe forts were two or more grave-shaped hillocks, and at the head of every hillock stood a stick or pole with a small quantity of sheep's wool wrapped around it. There were no inscriptions or pictographs in or about these mortuary inclosures, and, apart from the wrappings of wool, I could discover nothing that seemed likely to have significance. The sun was just setting as we finished our inspection and resumed our journey,

and twenty minutes later, when I looked back at the lonely, abandoned cemetery, its orange-tinted walls made the only break in the vast, curving horizon line of the Sea of Grass.

The road everywhere between Omsk and Semipalátinsk was hard and dry, and so smooth that we were scarcely conscious of being jolted. We slept every night in our tárantás while going at the rate of eight miles an hour, and if it had not been necessary to get out at the stations in order to show our padarózhnaya and see to the harnessing of fresh horses, we might have slept all night without waking.

Very soon after we began to travel at night in Western Siberia, our attention was attracted and our curiosity excited by the peculiar throbbing beat of an instrument that