Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/413

Rh Such misrepresentation may for a time influence public opinion abroad, but it no longer deceives anybody in Siberia. Siberians are well aware that if they want integrity, capacity, and intelligence, they must look for these qualities not among the official representatives of the Crown, but among the unfortunate lawyers, doctors, naturalists, authors, newspaper men, statisticians, and political economists who have been exiled to Siberia for political untrustworthiness.

After leaving the museum we called with Mr. Martiánof upon several prominent citizens of the town, among them Mr. Látkin, the mayor or head of the town council; Dr. Malínin, an intelligent physician, who lived in rather a luxurious house filled with beautiful conservatory flowers, and a wealthy young merchant named Safiánof, who carried on a trade across the Mongolian frontier with the Soyóts, and who was to accompany us on our visit to the Káchinski Tatárs. I also called, alone, upon Mr. Známenski, the isprávnik, or district chief of police, but, failing to find him at home, left cards. About the middle of the afternoon we returned to Soldátofs, where we had dinner, and then spent most of the remainder of the day in making up sleep lost on the road.

Our excursion to the ulús of the Káchinski Tatárs was made as projected, but did not prove to be as interesting as we had anticipated. Mr. Safiánof came for us in a large comfortable sleigh about nine o'clock in the morning, and we drove up the river, partly on the ice and partly across low extensive islands, to the mouth of the Abakán, and thence over a nearly level steppe, very thinly covered with snow, to the ulús. The country generally was low and bare, and would have been perfectly uninteresting but for the immense number of burial-mounds, tumuli, and monolithic slabs that dotted the landscape as far as the eye could reach, and that were unmistakable evidences of the richness of the archæological field in which the bronze-age collections