Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/144

128 ; but they seemed to us to be a great improvement upon the étapes between Tomsk and Irkútsk.

On Thursday, October 22d, about fifty miles from Chíta we crossed a high mountainous ridge near the post-station of Domnokluchéfskaya, and rode down its eastern slope to one of the tributaries of the great river Amúr. We had crossed the watershed that divides the river systems of the arctic ocean from the river systems of the Pacific, and from that time America began to seem nearer to us across the Pacific than across Siberia. American goods of all kinds, brought from California, suddenly made their appearance in the village shops; and as I saw the American tin-ware, lanterns, and "Yankee notions," and read the English labels on the cans of preserved peaches and tomatoes, it seemed to me as if in the immediate future we ought from some high hill to catch sight of San Francisco and the Golden Gate. A few kerosene lamps and a shelf full of canned fruits and vegetables brought us in imagination five thousand miles nearer home.

About noon we arrived cold, tired, and hungry at the Trans-Baikál town of Chíta, and took up our quarters in a hotel kept by a Polish exile and known as the "Hotel Peterburg." Chíta, which is the capital of the Trans-Baikál and the residence of the governor, is a large, straggling, provincial town of about four thousand inhabitants, and, as will be seen from the illustration on page 129, does not differ essentially from other Siberian towns of its class. It has a public library, a large building used occasionally as a theater, and fairly good schools; politically and socially it is perhaps the most important place in the territory of which it is the capital. Its chief interest for us, however, lay in the fact that it is a famous town in the history of the exile system. To Chíta were banished, between 1825 and 1828, most of the gallant young noblemen who vainly endeavored to overthrow the Russian autocracy and to establish a constitutional form of government at the accession to