Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/373



THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD

N Friday, August 28th, after bidding good-by to the political exiles in Tomsk and making final calls upon Colonel Yágodkin and two or three other officers who had been particularly kind and hospitable to us, Mr. Frost and I procured a fresh padorózhnaya, climbed once more into our old tárantás, and set out, with a tróika of good post-horses, for Irkútsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, which was distant from Tomsk 1040 miles. Governor Petukhóf had promised that he would send us an open letter directing all convoy officers within his jurisdiction to allow us to inspect étapes; but he had forgotten it, or had reconsidered his promise after finding the political exiles in our room at the European Hotel, and we were left to gain admission to étapes as best we could. Our journey of 260 miles to Áchinsk, the first town in Eastern Siberia, was not marked by any noteworthy incident. The part of the province of Tomsk through which we passed was generally rolling, or broken by ranges of low hills, and in appearance it suggested at times the thinly settled forest region of eastern Maine, and at others the fertile farming country of western New York. In some places we rode for hours through a dense second growth of birches, poplars, and evergreens, which hid from sight everything except the sky and the black muddy road, and then, a dozen miles farther on, we would come out into an extensive open prairie embroidered with daisies, or cross a wide shallow valley whose bottom and sloping sides were