Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/340

324 traveler with the shock of a complete surprise. The house had not been occupied for several months, and of course did not appear at its best; but it seemed to me that I had rarely seen more evidences of wealth, refinement, and cultivated taste than were to be found within its walls. The ball-room, which was the largest room in the house, was about sixty-five feet in length by forty-five in width, and over it, in a large semicircular gallery reached by a grand stairway, there was an orchestrion, as big as a church organ, which played sixty or seventy airs and furnished music for the entertainments that the Bútins, in the days of their prosperity, were accustomed to give to the people of the town. The library, which was another spacious apartment, was filled with well-selected books, newspapers, and magazines, in three or four languages, and contained also a large collection of Siberian minerals and ores. Adjoining the house were the offices and shops where the Bútins carried on the various branches of their extensive and diversified business, and where they had accumulated the wealth that the house partly represented or embodied. In addition to gold-mining, they were engaged in trading, distilling, iron-manufacturing, and the construction of steamers, and their business operations extended to all parts of Eastern Siberia, and gave employment to many hundreds of men.

After thanking the receiver, Mr. Pomázkin, for his courtesy in going through the house with us, we returned to the hotel, and later in the afternoon called upon Messrs. Charúshin and Kuznetsóf, two political exiles who had served out terms of hard labor at the mines, and had then been sent as forced colonists to Nérchinsk, where they were living with their families in comparative comfort. We found them both to be intelligent, cultivated, and very companionable men, and during our three-days' stay in the town we passed with them many pleasant hours. They had had a very hard experience at the mines of Kará, but after their arrival at Nérchinsk they had been treated with reasonable