Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/56

34 air was filled with the perfume of wild roses and the murmuring plash of falling water from the slender jet of a sparkling fountain. The dining-room of the station had a floor of polished oak inlaid in geometrical patterns, a high dado of dark carved wood, walls covered with oak-grain paper, and a stucco cornice in relief. Down the center of the room ran a long dining-table, beautifully set with tasteful china, snowy napkins, high glass epergnes and crystal candelabra, and ornamented with potted plants, little cedar trees in green tubs, bouquets of cut flowers, artistic pyramids of polished wine-bottles, druggists' jars of colored water, and an aquarium full of fish, plants, and artificial rock-work. The chairs around the table were of dark hard wood, elaborately turned and carved; at one end of the room was a costly clock, as large as an American jeweler's "regulator," and at the other end stood a huge bronzed oven, by which the apartment was warmed in winter. The waiters were all in evening dress, with low-cut waistcoats, spotless shirt-fronts, and white ties; and the cooks, who filled the waiters' orders as in an English grill-room, were dressed from head to foot in white linen and wore square white caps. It is not an exaggeration to say that this was one of the neatest, most tastefully furnished, and most attractive public dining-rooms that I ever entered in any part of the world; and as I sat there eating a well-cooked and well-served dinner of four courses, I found it utterly impossible to realize that I was in the unheard-of mining settlement of Nízhni Tagíl, on the Asiatic side of the mountains of the Urál.

Early in the evening of Friday, June 12, we arrived at Ekaterínburg. The traveler who has not studied attentively the geography of this part of the Russian empire is surprised to learn, upon reaching Ekaterínburg, that although he has passed out of Europe into Asia he has not yet entered Siberia. Most readers have the impression that the boundary of European Russia on the east is everywhere coterminous with that of Siberia; but such is by no means the case. The little stone pillar that marks the Asiatic line