Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/294



THE SILVER MINES OF NÉRCHINSK

R. FROST and I reached Strètinsk on our return from the mines of Kará in a state of physical exhaustion that made rest an absolute necessity. Excitement, privation, and exposure, without sufficient food, to intense cold had so reduced my strength that I could not walk a hundred yards without fatigue, and the mere exertion of putting on a fur overcoat would quicken my pulse twenty or thirty beats. It did not seem to me prudent, in this weak condition, to undertake a ride of six hundred miles, in springless telégas, through the wild and lonely region in which are situated the Nérchinsk silver mines. For three days, therefore, we rested quietly in the log-house of the young peasant Záblikof, on the bank of the Shílka River, eating all the nourishing food we could get, sleeping as much as possible, and bracing ourselves up with quinine and Liebig's extract of beef.

Sunday morning, finding my strength measurably restored, I walked across the ice of the river to the town of Strétinsk and called upon the zasedátel, or district inspector of police, for the purpose of obtaining horses. Through the greater part of the Nérchinsk silver-mining district regular post-roads are lacking; but we had received authority by telegraph from the governor of the province to ask the coöperation of the police in hiring horses from the peasants along our route, and I had letters of introduction to most of the police officials from Major Pótulof. The zasedátel received me courteously, and at once made the