Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/179

Rh life save the faint, distant throbbing of a watchman's rattle, like the rapid, far-away beating of a wooden drum. We stopped at last in front of a two-story building of brick, covered with white stucco, which our driver said was the hotel Sibír. After pounding vigorously for five minutes on the front door, we were admitted by a sleepy waiter, who showed us to a hot, musty room in the second story, where we finished our broken night's sleep on the floor.

The city of Semipalátinsk, which has a population of about 15,000 Russians, Kírghis, and Tatárs, is situated on the right bank of the river Írtish, 480 miles southeast of Omsk and about 900 miles from Tiumén. It is the seat of government of the territory of Semipalátinsk, and is commercially a place of some importance, owing to the fact that it stands on one of the caravan routes to Tashkénd and Central Asia, and commands a large part of the trade of the Kírghis steppe. The country tributary to it is a pastoral rather than an agricultural region, and of its 547,000 inhabitants 497,000 are nomads, who live in 111,000 kíbítkas or felt tents, and own more than 3,000,000 head of live stock, including 70,000 camels. The province produces annually, among other things, 45,000 pounds of honey, 370,000 pounds of tobacco, 100,000 bushels of potatoes, and more than 12,000,000 bushels of grain. There are held every year within the limits of the territory eleven commercial fairs, the transactions of which amount in the aggregate to about $1,000,000. Forty or fifty caravans leave the city of Semipalátinsk every year for various points in Mongolia and Central Asia, carrying Russian goods to the value of from $150,000 to $200,000.

It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to call the attention of persons who think that all of Siberia is an arctic waste to the fact that honey and tobacco are not arctic products, and that the camel is not a beast of burden used by Eskimos on wastes of snow. If Mr. Frost and I had supposed the