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Updated: July 2, 2025
I was continually having to exchange my chaise for a boat, and one could not get a boat for nothing for a good boat one had to pay with one's heart's blood, for one had to sit waiting on the bank for twenty-four hours at a stretch in the cold wind and the rain.... From Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk was a desperate struggle through impassable mud. My goodness, it frightens me to think of it!
And so the mountains and the Yenissey are the first things original and new that I have met in Siberia. The mountains and the Yenissey have given me sensations which have made up to me a hundredfold for all the trials and troubles of the journey, and which have made me call Levitan a fool for being so stupid as not to come with me. The Taiga stretches unbroken from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk.
How often I had to mend my chaise, to walk, to swear, to get out of my chaise and get into it again, and so on! It sometimes happened that I was from six to ten hours getting from one station to another, and every time the chaise had to be mended it took from ten to fifteen hours. From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk was fearfully hot and dusty.
I found the general features of Krasnoyarsk much like those of Irkutsk. Official and civilian inhabitants dressed, lived, walked, breathed, drank, and gambled like their kindred nearer the east. It happened to be market day, and the public square was densely crowded. I was interested in observing the character and abundance of the fish offered for sale.
If we exclude the time spent on the railway and the steamer, the three days spent in Ekaterinburg, the week in Tomsk, the day in Krasnoyarsk, the week in Irkutsk, the two days on the shores of Lake Baikal, and the days wasted in waiting for boats to cross the floods, you can judge of the rate at which I have driven. My journey has been most successful, I wish nothing better for anyone.
A thousand miles of such riding would have been too much for me. A dog belonging to Madame Radstvenny's house-keeper followed me from Krasnoyarsk, but did not show himself till we were six or eight versts away. Etiquette, to say nothing of morality, does not sanction stealing the dog of your host, and so I arranged for the brute's return.
Distinguished offenders, such as the higher class of revolutionists, officers convicted of plotting against the state or robbing the Treasury, are generally rushed forward night and day. To keep him secure from escape, an exile of this class is sometimes chained to a soldier who rides at his side. One night, between Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, I was awakened by an unusual motion of the sleigh.
The revolters did not wait after the attack, but set fire to the station and departed. He suggested that it might be as well to be ready for sniping, and for worse things, should accident force the train to come to a standstill between here and Krasnoyarsk. We arrived at the latter place, however, without incident on February 25. Krasnoyarsk is a fairly large town on the River Yenesei.
In two and a half days I shall be in Krasnoyarsk, and in seven or eight in Irkutsk. It's fifteen hundred versts to Irkutsk. I have made myself coffee and am just going to drink it. ... After Tomsk the Taiga begins. We shall see it. My greeting to all the Lintvaryovs and to our old Maryushka. I beg mother not to worry and not to put faith in bad dreams. Have the radishes succeeded?
I am going to write about its horrors to the Novoye Vremya, and so won't talk about it now. The last three stations have been splendid; as one comes down to Krasnoyarsk one seems to be getting into a different world. You come out of the forest into a plain which is like our Donets steppe, but here the mountain ridges are grander.
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