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Updated: May 3, 2025
It employed 3000 or 4000 drivers, with twice as many telegas, tarantases and sleighs, and kept in readiness for instant use more than 10,000 horses, distributed among 350 post-stations, along a route that covered a distance as great as that between New York City and the Sandwich Islands.
Such an idea never entered their heads. On the contrary, their main purpose seemed to be to show every possible kindness to the distinguished stranger; and more than once, at some of the post-stations, I had to remind them of things which they had omitted in the charge.
Even in this sterile desert, covered for the most part with white salt deposits, the little oases of grain and garden looked as fresh and green as though they had been on the banks of a lake or river. But the green patches were very few and far between, and, half-way between the post-stations, ceased altogether.
In journeying inland we are struck with many peculiarities showing how entirely opposite to our own methods are many of theirs. At the post-stations the horses are placed and tied in their stalls with their heads to the passage-way, and their tails where we place their heads. Instead of iron shoes, the Japanese pony is shod with close-braided rice-straw.
The population also changed in character, the faces we now saw being less bright, cheerful, and kindly, and the forms less tall and strongly knit. We had very fair accommodations, at all the post-stations along the road, and found the people everywhere honest and obliging.
The landlord of the only inn in the place promised to have everything ready by six o'clock the next morning, and our captain, who was to go on the same evening, took notices of our wants, to be served at the two intervening post-stations on the road. We then visited the custom-house, a cabin about ten feet square, and asked to have our luggage examined.
The only official news that ever came back out of that dark world of death and misery was that she had started from one of the post-stations a few hours before a great snow-storm had come on, that she had never reached the next station and after that all was mystery. "Five years passed.
Vanyusha began to be uneasy, and they carried a loaded gun in the cart. Olenin became still happier. At one of the post-stations the post-master told of a terrible murder that had been committed recently on the high road. They began to meet armed men. "So this is where it begins!" thought Olenin, and kept expecting to see the snowy mountains of which mention was so often made.
The mountain passes, the great rivers, and the post-stations, will determine his general course; but the wilderness through which he must make his way has never been subdued by the axe and spade of civilisation.
When travelling on duty they had a right to obtain relays of animals at post-stations and villages, and they were also entitled to claim supplies of food, saddles, or anything else they required, to carry them as far as the next encampment. Gunpowder and bullets were supplied by the authorities. The weapons were manufactured mostly in Lhassa and Sigatz.
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