Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/399

Rh whatever their significance may have been, were very disquieting. Long before I reached the frontier of European Russia I became so nervous, and so suspicious of everything unusual, that I could hardly sleep at night.

Wednesday, January 20th, having spent as much time in Krasnoyársk as we thought we could spend there profitably, and having recovered from the fatigue of the journey from Irkútsk, we set out for the town of Minusínsk, which is situated on the northern watershed of the Altái and Sayán mountains, near the Mongolian frontier, in what is half seriously and half jocosely called "The Siberian Italy." The distance from Krasnoyársk to Minusínsk is about two hundred miles, and the road between the two places in winter runs on the ice up the great river Yeniséi. It is not a regular post-route, but the well-to-do and enterprising peasants who live along the river are accustomed to carry travelers from village to village at the established Government post-rate, and there is no more delay than on the great Siberian road itself. The weather, when we left Krasnoyársk, was cold and stormy, and the snow was drifting so badly on the ice that beyond the second station it became necessary to harness the three horses tandem and to send a fourth horse ahead with a light sledge to break a track. As the road was perfectly level, and the motion of the pavóska steady, Frost and I buried ourselves in the depths of our sheepskin bag as night came on and went to sleep, leaving our drivers to their own devices. All that I remember of the night's travel is waking up and getting out of the pavóska at intervals of three or four hours and going into some peasant's house to wait for the harnessing of fresh horses. Thursday we traveled slowly all day up the river through deep soft snow in which the pavóska sank to its outriggers and the horses to their knees. The banks of the river became higher as we went southward, and finally assumed a wild mountainous character, with splendid ramparts here and there of cliffs and stratified