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Next morning we stay for two hours at a station in Manchuria, on the boundary between Manchuria and Siberia, between China and Russia, and here our luggage is examined by the Russian customs officers. We put our watches back one and a half hours that is the difference of time between Kharbin and Irkutsk. We are now travelling from east to west, in the same direction as the sun.
Perhaps, although he did not answer, he heard Nadia speak. Yes! he heard her, for when the young girl added, "Where shall I lead you, Michael?" "To Irkutsk!" he replied. "By the highroad?" "Yes, Nadia." Michael was still the same man who had sworn, whatever happened, to accomplish his object. To follow the highroad, was certainly to go the shortest way.
Siberia is cut in two now, and very certainly Feofar's army is only waiting for him to advance on Irkutsk." "And once free, what shall we do?" "Once free, we will continue our campaign, and follow the Tartars, until the time comes when we can make our way into the Russian camp. We must not give up the game. No, indeed; we have only just begun.
He was disappointed too in the chief object of all his efforts the surprise of Irkutsk. Things had not turned out as he hoped. First, the march of the Tartar army was delayed by the battle of Tomsk; and secondly, the preparations for the defense were made far more rapidly than he had supposed possible; these two things had balked his plans.
Properly they belonged to the government, and inherited their father's exile in not being permitted to go to Europe. The ukase removed all these disabilities and gave the children full authority to succeed to their father's hereditary titles and social and political rights. These exiles lived in different parts of Siberia, but chiefly in the governments of Irkutsk and Yeneseisk.
Kasan is justly called the "Gate of Asia" and considered as the center of Siberian and Bokharian commerce; for two roads begin here and lead across the Ural Mountains. Michael Strogoff had very judiciously chosen the one by Perm and Ekaterenburg. It is the great stage road, well supplied with relays kept at the expense of the government, and is prolonged from Ishim to Irkutsk.
About a fortnight later I received a despairing message from the local militia chief at Zema for help; he said he was nearly surrounded by the Baikal Bolshevik contingent, which had suddenly appeared. I took the message to Russian Headquarters at Omsk, and called attention to my wire to Irkutsk and the refusal to protect this part of the line.
It seemed that Kanine was a Bolshevik, the agent of the Irkutsk Soviet, and stationed here for purposes of observation. However, now he was rendered harmless, because the road between him and Irkutsk was interrupted. Still from Biisk in the Altai country had just come a very important commissar. "Gorokoff?" I asked.
On the upper waters of the Chulim there is a cascade of considerable beauty, according to the statement of some who never saw it. A few years ago a Siberian gold miner discovered a cataract on the river Hook, in the Irkutsk government, that he thought equal to Niagara, and engaged an artist to make a drawing of the curiosity.
The working of mines on government account has greatly diminished in the past few years, and the number of hard labor convicts in Siberia more than equals the capacity of the mines. When the political exiles, after the revolution of 1863, arrived at Irkutsk, the mines were already filled with convicts.
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