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On working days she would go to see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the banks of the Irtish. About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an indispensable person in many houses.
At length one of the council announced to him that he was to be sent to the distillery of Ekaterinski, three hundred miles to the north of Omsk. The clerks around congratulated him on his destination, and his departure was immediate. On a wintry morning he reached a vast plain near the river Irtish, on which a village of about two hundred wooden huts was built around a factory.
Far away in unknown realms, beyond the eastern boundary of Russia, where the gloomy waves of the Irtish, the Tobol, the Oural and the Volga flow through vast deserts, washing the base of fir-clad mountains, and murmuring through wildernesses, the native domain of wolves and bears, there were wandering innumerable tribes, fierce, cruel and barbarous, who held the frontiers of Russia in continual terror.
Where the great affluent, the Irtish, runs in from the west, the Obi has a breadth of nearly two miles, and at its mouth, in the Gulf of Obi on the Arctic Ocean, the breadth has increased to twelve miles. The Irtish also receives from the west a large tributary, the Tobol, and at the confluence stands the town of Tobolsk.
He succeeded not only in modernizing and rehabilitating the material part of the great establishment, but at the same time in rescuing and revivifying a suffering laboring population of helpless Russians. The Irtish properties were near the Manchurian border, a thousand miles up the Irtish River from Omsk, a mere remote bleak spot on the wild, bare Siberian steppes.
Before the close of the Sixteenth Century the land had been finally subdued. Sibir itself, which stood on a high bluff on the right bank of the Irtish, exists no more, having probably been swept away by the erosions of the stream. But ten miles farther down another capital, Tobolsk, arose, also on the right bank, and the whole of the north was gradually added to the Tsar's dominions.
Thus Tomsk, one of the chief cities of Siberia, is missed, for it lies further north on the Obi. In the same way does the line ignore Tobolsk, the Siberian capital, as it touches the Irtish far south of the city. These important places will be served by branch lines. Indeed, the branch to Tomsk is already finished.
"If the Kirghiz descend the Irtish, the route to Irkutsk will not be safe," observed his neighbor. "Besides, yesterday I wanted to send a telegram to Krasnoiarsk, and it could not be forwarded. It's to be feared that before long the Tartar columns will have isolated Eastern Siberia."
Yermak now, having added by his valor a great domain to the Russian empire, purchased the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to the conqueror.
We crossed the Irtish two hundred and seventy versts south of Tobolsk, a city familiar to American readers from its connection with the "Story of Elizabeth." The great road formerly passed through Tobolsk, and was changed when a survey of the country showed that two hundred versts might be saved.
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