Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/301

Rh information and a great number of valuable hints and suggestions, but we carried away with us notes of recommendation to people who could aid us, letters of introduction to liberal officials in the towns through which we were yet to pass, and a manuscript list, or directory, in which were set forth the names, ages, professions, and places of banishment of nearly seven hundred political exiles in all parts of Siberia. After we had obtained these letters of introduction and this "underground" directory, the Government could have prevented us from investigating the exile system only by removing us forcibly from the country. We no longer had to grope our way by asking hazardous questions at random. We could take every step with a certainty of not making a mistake, and could go, in every village, directly to the persons whom we wished to see.

On Monday, August 10th, we dined for the last time with the politicals in Ust Kámenogórsk, sang to them once more, by special request, "John Brown's Body" and "The Star-spangled Banner," and at six o'clock in the evening set out by post for Barnaül and Tomsk. The road, as far as the post-station of Piánoyarófskaya, was the same that we had followed in going from Semipalátinsk to the Altái Station. The country that it intersected seemed to us more parched and barren than ever, but here and there, in the moister places, we passed large flocks of fat-tailed sheep, guarded and watched by Kírghis horsemen, whose hooded heads and black faces, with the immense goggles of horsehair netting that they wore to protect their eyes from the glare of the sun, gave them an almost demoniacal appearance. Occasionally, in the outskirts of the villages, we saw fields of cultivated sunflowers, or of half-ripe watermelons and cantaloups; but as a rule the steppe was uncultivated and could not be cultivated without artificial irrigation. The weather was still very warm, and in almost every village we noticed naked children playing in the streets.