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Updated: June 27, 2025
As we reached a certain station we asked what we could get to eat. "Everything," was the prompt reply of the smotretal. We were hungry, and this information was cheering. "Give us some schee, if you please," said the doctor. An inquiry in the kitchen showed this edible to be 'just out. "Some beef, then?" There was no beef to be had. Cutlets were alike negatived.
During his absence we sat patiently, or rather impatiently, in our furs, and I improved the opportunity to go to sleep. When we wore properly reconstructed we moved forward, with my equipage in the rear. The mammoth sleigh went at a disreputably low speed. I endeavored to persuade our yemshick to take the lead, but he refused, on the ground that the smotretal would not permit it.
He did so after our tea-drinking, but the document was powerless, the smotretal doubtless arguing that if the paper were of consequence we should have shown it on our arrival. We sent it to the starost, or head man of the village, but that worthy declined to honor it, and we were left to shift for ourselves. Evidently the power of the Governor General's passport was on the wane.
The moon was the only light, and its beams were not sufficient to prevent my stepping on several sleepers, and extracting Russian oaths for my carelessness. "Now for it," I whispered to the good-natured doctor, as we waked the smotretal. "Make him think our papers are important." The official rubbed his eyes over the passport, and then hastened to arouse the starost.
We slept most of the first night, and timed our arrival at Selenginsk so as to find the school in session. During a brief halt while the smotretal prepared our breakfast, Maack visited the school-master at his post of duty. Over the hills behind a lake about a day's ride from Selenginsk there is a Bouriat village of a sacred character.
Before daylight we reached a station where a traveling bishop had just secured two sets of horses. Though outside the jurisdiction of General Korsackoff, I exhibited my special passport knowing it could not, at all events, do any harm. Out of courtesy the smotretal offered to supply us as soon as the bishop departed.
A Russian house has little or no ventilation, and the effect of a score of sleepers on the air of a room is 'better imagined than described. On the road west of Irkutsk the rules require each smotretal to keep ten teams or thirty horses, ready for use. Many of them have more than that number, and the villages can supply any ordinary demand after the regular force is exhausted.
There was but one troika to spare and only one telyaga. We required two vehicles for ourselves and baggage, but the smotretal could not accommodate us. We ordered the samovar, and debated over our tea. I urged my friend to try the effect of my special passport, which had always been successful in Paul's hands.
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