Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/233

Rh were wrapped up in our blankets and securely lashed behind our saddles; and we sat on our pillows. The horses that had been provided for our use did not look very promising at first sight, but I knew that the good qualities of a Kírghis horse are not to be discovered by simple inspection, and I accepted Mikháiel's assurance that they were hardy, sure-footed, and accustomed to mountain paths. About half-past nine o'clock everything was said to be ready, and climbing into our high, short-stirruped saddles we rode solemnly in single file out of the settlement. There was a faint cheer from the more youthful half of the assembled crowd as we got under way, but Frost and I did not claim for ourselves, or for our horsemanship, any of the popular enthusiasm thus manifested. We knew very well that it was inspired by the golden harps on the crimson tunic of the yellow-haired Mikháiel, and the Patagonian cactuses that blossomed all over the orange legs of the indigo-shirted Nikolái.

After having forded one of the milky channels of the Berél River we climbed slowly for two hours in short zigzags up a steep Kírghis trail that led to the summit of an immense mound-shaped foothill behind the village. As we ascended, the whole magnificent amphitheater of snow-clad mountains at the head of the Búkhtarmá valley opened on our right, and a long line of sharp white peaks that we had not before seen appeared on the southern side of the Búkhtarmá along the boundary line of Mongolia. Everywhere to the northward and eastward snowy mountains were piled on snowy mountains until there seemed to be no possibility of crossing or piercing the tremendous alpine barrier. On the summit of the mound-shaped foothill, two or three thousand feet above Berél, we found half a dozen Kírghis kibítkas, pitched here and there among immense glacial boulders and surrounded by flocks of Kírghis sheep and goats. As the summer advances and the vegetation begins to dry up in the lower Altái valleys, the Kírghis are