Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/293

Rh a desire to exchange their furs or reindeer for knives, kettles, or tobacco. The Russian priest at Kará visits them from time to time to conduct religious services; and the picture of an Orozhánni encampment during one of these services, on page 273, is from a photograph made and given to me by a political exile in Nérchinsk.

For two days after leaving Kará we rode on horseback across the rugged, forest-clad mountains that skirt the river Shílka, suffering constantly from cold, hunger, and fatigue. On the third day we reached Botí, the village from which we had taken our horses, and found most of the population engaged in threshing out grain with flails on the ice. The peasants manifested great pleasure at seeing us, and said we had been gone so long that they had almost given us up for lost. The excitement and anxiety of our life at Kará, and the hardships of our ride across the mountains in a temperature below zero had so exhausted my strength that when we reached Botí my pulse was running at 120, and I could hardly sit in the saddle. I should not have been able to ride on horseback another day. Fortunately, we found the river at Botí solidly frozen, and were able to continue our journey in sledges on the ice. Late on the night of November 16th, tired, half-starved, and deadly cold, we reached the town of Strétinsk, and found food, shelter, and rest in the little cabin of the young peasant Záblikof, where we had left most of our baggage when we set out on horseback for the mines of Kará.