Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/376

370 then thawed out the slices while waiting for the samovar. We had partridges cooked and frozen. With all the articles I have named for dinner, what more could we wish, especially when we had appetites sharpened by travelling in the keen, pure air of Siberia?"

"Wasn't there danger, while you were in the stations eating your meals, that things would be stolen from the sleigh?" was the next interrogatory by one of the youths.

"I had fears of that before starting," was the reply, "but my friends assured me that thefts from vehicles on the post-roads were very rare. There were always several employés of the station moving about, or engaged in harnessing or unharnessing the teams, so that outsiders had little chance to pilfer without being discovered. The native Siberians have a good reputation for honesty, and the majority of those exiled for minor offences lead correct lives. According to my experience, the Siberians are more honest than the inhabitants of European Russia. After passing the Ural Mountains we always employed somebody to watch the sleigh while we were at meals in the station, which we did not do while in Siberia.

"The gentleman who rode with me was an officer in the Russian service; he, like myself, carried a second-class paderojnia, but the ladies had only a third-class one. On the second day of our journey, just as we had finished dinner and our teams were ready to start, it was announced that the post with five vehicles was approaching. We donned our furs very quickly, while our servants gathered up our part of the dinner equipment. Leaving enough money on the table to pay for what we had received from the station, we bundled into our vehicles and hastened away.