Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/71

Rh Ekaterínburg, across a spacious parade-ground in front of the soldiers' barracks, out between two square white pillars surmounted by double-headed eagles, and then into a dark, gloomy forest of pines and firs.

When we had passed through the gate of Ekaterínburg, we were on the "great Siberian road"—an imperial highway which extends from the mountains of the Urál to the head-waters of the Amúr River, a distance of more than three thousand miles. If we had ever supposed Siberia to be an unproductive arctic waste, we soon should have been made aware of our error by the long lines of loaded wagons which we met coming into Ekaterínburg from the Siberian frontier. These transport wagons, or obózes, form a characteristic feature of almost every landscape on the great Siberian road from the Urál mountains to Tiumén. They are small four-wheeled, one-horse vehicles, rude and heavy in construction, piled high with Siberian products, and covered with coarse matting securely held in place by large wooden pins. Every horse is fastened by a long halter to the preceding wagon, so that a train of fifty or a hundred obózes forms one unbroken caravan from a quarter of a mile to half a mile in length. We passed five hundred and thirty-eight of these loaded wagons in less than two hours, and I counted one thousand four hundred and forty-five in the course of our first day's journey. No further evidence was needed of the fact that Siberia is not a land of desolation. Commercial products at the rate of one thousand five hundred tons a day do not come from a barren, arctic waste.

As it gradually grew dark towards midnight, these caravans began to stop for rest and refreshment by the roadside, and every mile or two we came upon a picturesque bivouac on the edge of the forest, where a dozen or more obóz drivers were gathered around a cheerful camp-fire in the midst of their wagons, while their liberated but hoppled horses grazed and jumped awkwardly here and there along the road or among the trees. The gloomy evergreen forest,

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