Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/117

Rh eat at the post-stations, and long before it grew dark we were faint, hungry, and chilled to the bone. Nothing could have been more pleasant under such circumstances than to see at last the cheerful glow of the fire-lighted windows in the little log houses of Tróitskosávsk, two miles and a half north of the Mongolian frontier.

The three towns of Tróitskosávsk, Kiákhta, and Maimáchin are so situated as to form one almost continuous settlement extending across the Russo-Mongolian frontier about a hundred miles south and east of Lake Baikál, Tróitskosávsk and Kiákhta are on the northern side of the boundary line, while Maimáchin is on the southern or Mongolian side and is separated from Kiákhta by a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of unoccupied neutral ground. Of the three towns Tróitskosávsk is the largest, and from an administrative point of view the most important; but Kiákhta is nearest to the border and is best known by name to the world.

Acting upon the advice of a merchant's clerk whose acquaintance we had made on the Lake Baikál steamer, we drove through Tróitskosávsk to Kiákhta and sought shelter in a house called "Sókolof's," which the merchant's clerk had given us to understand was a good and comfortable hotel. When after much search we finally found it, we were surprised to discover that there was not a sign of a hotel about it. The house stood in the middle of a large, wall-inclosed yard, its windows were dark, and although the hour was not a very late one the courtyard gate was shut and closely barred. After shouting, knocking, and kicking at the gate for five or ten minutes we succeeded in arousing a sharp-tongued maid-servant, who seemed disposed at first to regard us as burglars or brigands. Upon becoming assured, however, that we were only peaceable travelers in search of lodgings, she informed us with some asperity that this was not a hotel, but a private house. Mr. Sókolof, she said, sometimes received travelers who