Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/177

Rh which wavered and trembled in the fierce glare of the tropical sunshine, we found it almost impossible to believe that we were in Siberia.

Many of the Cossack villages along this part of our route were situated down under the high, steep bank of the Írtish at the very water's edge, where the soil was moist enough to support a luxuriant vegetation. As a result of such favorable situation, these villages were generally shaded by trees and surrounded by well-kept vegetable and flower gardens. After a ride of twenty miles over an arid steppe in the hot, blinding sunshine of a July afternoon, it was indescribably pleasant and refreshing to come down into one of these little oases of greenery, where a narrow arm of the Írtish flowed tranquilly under the checkered shade of leafy trees; where the gardens of the Cossack housewives were full of potato, cucumber, and melon vines, the cool, fresh green of which made an effective setting for glowing beds of scarlet poppies; and where women and girls with tucked-up skirts were washing clothes on a little platform projecting into the river, while half-naked children waded and splashed in the clear, cool water around them.

We made the last stretches of our journey to Semipalátinsk in the night. The steppe over which we approached the city was more naked and sterile than any that we had crossed, and seemed in the faint twilight to be merely a desert of sun-baked earth and short, dead grass, with here and there a ragged bush or a long, ripple-marked dune of loose, drifting sand. I fell asleep soon after midnight, and when I awoke at half-past two o'clock Sunday morning day was just breaking, and we were passing a large white building with lighted lanterns hung against its walls, which I recognized as a city prison. It was the tiurémni zámok, or "prison castle" of Semipalátinsk. In a few moments we entered a long, wide, lonely street, bordered by unpainted log-houses, whose board window-shutters were all