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In Siberia they defeated a considerable force of German-Magyar ex-prisoners in Krasnoyarsk and Omsk and established themselves firmly in Udinsk. On June 29, 15,000 Czecho-Slovaks under General Diderichs, after handing an ultimatum to the Bolsheviks at Vladivostok, occupied the city without much resistance. Only at one spot fighting took place and some 160 Bolsheviks were killed.
Both the princes paid great attention to educating their children and fitting them for ultimate social position in Europe. While in Irkutsk I saw one of the Decembrists who had grown quite wealthy as a wine merchant. Another of these exiles was mentioned, but I did not meet him. Another resided at Selenginsk, a third near Verkne Udinsk, and a fourth near Lake Baikal.
The engines for the early steamers on the Amoor were built there by Russian workmen. There are several private mining enterprises in the region around Yerkne Udinsk. Most of them have gold as their object, and I heard of two or three lead mines. During the night of my stay at this town Captain Sideroff insisted so earnestly upon giving up his bed that politeness compelled me to accept it.
One of his companions fell dead in General Mouravieff's parlor while giving his account of the exploration. We determined to be comfortable on the way to Irkutsk. We put our baggage in a telyaga with Maack's servant and took the tarantass to ourselves. The road was the same I traveled from Verkne Udinsk to Kiachta, crossing the Selenga at Selenginsk.
He labored all day and most of the night putting in bolts, nuts, screws, and bits of iron in different localities, and astonished me by demanding less than half I expected to pay, and still more by his guilty manner, as if ashamed at charging double. The iron used in repairing my carriage came from Petrovsky Zavod, about a hundred miles southeast of Verkne Udinsk.
Between Nijne Udinsk and Kansk the snow was scanty, and the road occasionally bad. The country preserved its slightly undulating character, and presented no features of interest. Where we found sufficient snow we proceeded rapidly, sometimes leaving the summer road and taking to the open ground, and forests on either side.
I found the chief inconvenience was, that the moisture in my breath congealed on my beard and the fur clothing near it. Two or three times beard and fur were frozen together, and it was not always easy to separate them. From the Yablonoi mountains to Verkne Udinsk there are very few houses between the villages that form the posting stations.
I found the Kiachta route rougher than any part of the way from Chetah to Verkne Udinsk, and as the yemshick took us at a rattling pace we were pretty thoroughly shaken up. At the second station we had a dinner of stchee, or cabbage soup, with bread and the caviar of the Selenga. This caviar is of a golden color and made from the roe of a small fish that ascends from Lake Baikal.
Verkne Udinsk is at the junction of the Ouda and Selenga rivers, three hundred versts from Irkutsk and four hundred and fifty from Chetah. It presents a pretty appearance when approached from the east, when its largest and best buildings first catch the eye. It has a church nearly two hundred years old, built with immensely thick walls to resist occasional earthquakes.
"As regards myself, it would be difficult to avoid knowing it, since my last telegram reached Udinsk," observed Alcide Jolivet, with some satisfaction. "And mine only as far as Krasnoiarsk," answered Harry Blount, in a no less satisfied tone. "Then you know also that orders have been sent to the troops of Nikolaevsk?"
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