Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/94

72 vicinity. This combination of an auctioneer's bell, a saint's image, a toll-gate, and a church beggar, greatly amused Mr. Frost, who inquired whether the holy saint owned the road and collected toll. The gate-keeper explained that the saint had nothing to do with the road, but the church was poor, and the "noble gentlemen" who passed that way were accustomed to contribute to its support; and (removing his hat) "most of the noble gentlemen remembered also the poor gate-keeper." Of course the two noble gentlemen, with mosquito-bitten faces, rumpled hair, soiled shirt-collars, and mud-bespattered clothing, sitting with noble dignity on a luxurious steamer-trunk in a miry tárantás, could not resist such an appeal as this to their noble sympathies. We gave the gate-keeper a few copper coins with directions to put half of them into the savings bank of the black-robed deacon, and having thus contributed to the support of two great Russian institutions, the church and the grog-shop, we rode on.

Late in the afternoon of Thursday, June 18, we came out of the forest into an extensive marshy plain, tinted a peculiar greenish-yellow by swamp grass and buttercups, and our driver, pointing ahead with his whip, said, "There is Tiumén." All that we could see of the distant city was a long line of pyramidal board roofs on the horizon, broken here and there by the white stuccoed walls of a Government building, or the green-domed belfries and towers of a Russo-Greek church. As we approached it we passed in succession a square marble column marking the spot where the citizens of Tiumén bade good-by to the Grand Duke Vladímir in 1868; a squad of soldiers engaged in target practice, stepping forward and firing volleys by ranks to the accompaniment of a flourish of bugles; a series of long, low sheds surrounded by white-tilted emigrant wagons, and finally, in the suburbs, the famous exile forwarding prison.

There were two or three hotels in the town, but upon the recommendation of our driver we went to the "Rooms for