Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/84

68 Platon ran up to her wharf. But we did not know what the Trans-Baikál had in store for us. In less than forty-eight hours we should have been glad to get back on board that same steamer, and should have regarded our prison-cell stateroom as the lap of luxury.

We went ashore, of course, without breakfast; the weather was damp and chilly, with a piercing north-easterly wind; the wretched village of Boyárskaya contained no hotel; the post-station was cold, dirty, and full of travelers lying asleep on benches or on the mud-incrusted plank floor; there were no horses to carry us away from the place; and the outlook was discouraging generally. We were in a blue chill from hunger and cold before we could even find shelter. We succeeded at last in hiring "free" horses from a young peasant on the wharf; and after drinking tea and eating a little bread in his log cabin, we piled our baggage up in the shallow box of a small, springless teléga, climbed up on top of it, and set out for Selengínsk.

On a bad, rough road an East-Siberian teléga of the type shown in the illustration on this page will simply jolt a man's soul out in less than twenty-four hours. Before we had traveled sixty miles in the Trans-Baikál I was so exhausted that I could hardly sit upright; my head and spine ached so violently, and had become so sensitive to shock, that every jolt was as painful as a blow from a club; I had tried to save my head by supporting my body on my bent arms until my arms no longer had any strength; and when we reached the post-station of Ílinskaya, at half-past ten o'clock Saturday night, I felt worse than at any time since crossing the Uráls. After drinking tea and eating a little