Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/72

50 lighted up from beneath by the flickering blaze and faintly tinged above by the glow of the northern twilight, the red and black Rembrandt outlines of the wagons, and the group of men in long kaftáns and scarlet or blue shirts gathered about the camp-fire drinking tea, formed a strange, striking, and peculiarly Russian picture.

We traveled without stop throughout the night, changing horses at every post station, and making about eight miles an hour over a fairly good road. The sun did not set until half-past nine and rose again at half-past two, so that it was not at any time very dark. The villages through which we passed were sometimes of great extent, but consisted almost invariably of only two lines of log-houses standing with their gables to the road, and separated one from another by inclosed yards without a sign anywhere of vegetation or trees. One of these villages formed a double row five miles in length of separate houses, all fronting on the Tsar's highway. Around every village there was an inclosed area of pasture-land, varying in extent from two hundred to five hundred acres, within which were kept the inhabitants' cattle; and at the point where the inclosing fence crossed the road, on each side of the village, there were a gate and a gate-keeper's hut. These village gate-keepers are almost always old and broken-down men, and in Siberia they are generally criminal exiles. It is their duty to see that none of the village cattle stray out of the inclosure, and to open the gates for passing vehicles at all hours of the day and night. From the village commune they receive for their services a mere pittance of three or four roubles a month, and live in a wretched hovel made of boughs and earth, which throughout the year is warmed, lighted, and filled with smoke by an open fire on the ground.

On the second day after our departure from Ekaterínburg, as we were passing through a rather open forest between the villages of Márkova and Tugulímskaya, our driver suddenly pulled up his horses, and turning to us