Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/350

344 "I think we were at Nertchinsk," said he, "when we turned aside to the mines where the exiles were formerly employed."

"Yes," replied Fred; "you had just arrived at the house of the friend of your companion, and accepted an invitation to remain for dinner."

"That was it, exactly," responded the traveller. "We had an excellent dinner, and soon after it was over we continued on our journey. We sent back the tarantasse which we had hired from the station-master, and obtained a larger and better one from our host.

"Two nights and the intervening day brought us, without any incident worth remembering, to Chetah, the capital of the province of the trans-Baikal. It is a town of four or five thousand inhabitants, and stands on the Ingodali River, a tributary of the Shilka. Below this point the river is navigable for boats and rafts, and it was here that General Mouravieff organized the expedition for the conquest of the Amoor. A considerable garrison is kept here, and the town has an important place in the history of Siberian exile. Many of the houses are large and well built. The officers of the garrison have a club, and ordinarily the society includes a good many ladies from European Russia.

"I stopped two or three days at Chetah, and my courier friend continued his journey. Finding a young officer who was going to Kiachta, on the frontier of Mongolia, I arranged to accompany him, and one evening we started. I think I have before told you that a Siberian journey nearly always begins in the evening, and is continued day and night till its close. The day is passed in making calls, and usually winds up with a dinner at somebody's house. After dinner, and generally pretty late in the evening, the last call is made, the last farewells are spoken, and you bundle into your vehicle and are off.

"From Chetah the road steadily climbed the hills, and my companion said we would soon be over the ridge of the Yablonnoi Mountains, and in the basin of the Arctic Ocean. From the eastern slope of the mountains the rivers flow through the Amoor to the Pacific Ocean; from the western slope they run into Lake Baikal, and thence through the outlet of that lake to the great frozen sea that surrounds the pole. The cold rapidly increased, and when we crossed the ridge it seemed that the thermometer went ten decrees lower in almost as many minutes.

"The country through which we passed was flat or slightly undulating, with occasional stretches of hills of no great height. There are few Russian villages, the principal inhabitants being Bouriats, a people of Mongol origin, who are said to have been conquered by the hordes of Genghis Khan five hundred years ago. They made considerable resistance to the