Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/79

Rh that was sent to us from the post-station, seated ourselves insecurely on the uneven surface made by furs, satchels, bread-bags, tea-boxes, felt boots, and the photographic apparatus, bade good-by to Lieutenant Schuetze, Mr. Bukófski, and Zhan, who had assembled in the courtyard to see us off, and finally, with a measured jangling of two or three discordant bells from the wooden arch over the thill-horse's back, rode out of the city and up the right bank of the Angará, on our way to Lake Baikál, the lamasery of Gusínnoí Ózera, Kiákhta, and the convict mines.

The weather was warm and sunshiny; there was a faint, soft autumnal haze in the air; and the foliage of the deciduous trees, although touched with color by the frost, had not yet fallen. Flowers still lingered here and there in sheltered places, and occasionally a yellow butterfly zigzagged lazily across the road ahead of us. The farmer's grain had everywhere been harvested, the last hay had been stacked, and in the courtyards of many of the village houses we noticed quantities of tobacco or hemp plant spread out in the sunshine to dry.

About half way between Irkútsk and the first post-station we met a man driving a team of four horses harnessed to a vehicle that looked like a menagerie-wagon, or a closed wild-beast cage. I asked our driver what it was, and he replied that he presumed it was the Siberian tiger that was to be brought to Irkútsk for exhibition from some place on the Amúr. A living tiger captured in Siberia seemed to us a novelty worthy of attention; and directing our driver to stop and wait for us, we ran back and asked the tiger's keeper if he would not open the cage and let us see the animal. He good-humoredly consented, and as we pressed eagerly up to the side of the wagon he took down the wide, thin boards that masked the iron grating. We heard a hoarse, angry snarl, and then before we had time to step back a huge, tawny beast striped with black threw himself against the frail bars with such tremendous violence and ferocity