Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/218

196 settlement, the fresh, cool atmosphere of the high peaks where they were born two hours before; and although your thermometer may say that the day is hot and the air sultry, its statements are so persistently, so confidently, so hilariously controverted by the joyous voice of the stream under your window, with its half-expressed suggestions of snow and glaciers and cooling spray, that your reason is

silenced and your imagination accepts the story of the snow-born brook.

The morning after our arrival at the Altái Station dawned clear, cool, and bright, and after a good breakfast served by the wife of the Cossack in whose house we had found shelter, we went out to survey the village. Mr. Frost, who was equipped with sketching-block and pencils, soon discovered a desirable point of view for a picture and, having hired a burly Cossack to stand beside him in such a position as to throw the shadow of his body across the paper, and thus serve as a sun-umbrella, he went to work. Meanwhile I strolled through the village and out past the quaint log church in the direction of the village shops which, with the Government storehouses, were situated on the