Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
It was three or four hours before daylight when we reached Selenginsk, and the yemshick removed his horses preparatory to returning to his station. I believe Selenginsk is older than Verkne Udinsk, and very much the senior of Irkutsk. The ancient town is on the site of the original settlement, but frequent inundations caused its abandonment for the other bank of the river, five versts away.
After a while we attached one horse to a long rope, and enabled him to pull from the level snow above the bank. I expected the yemshick would ask us to lighten the sleigh by stepping out of it. An American driver would have put us ashore without ceremony, but custom is otherwise in Siberia.
The designated locality appeared less difficult of passage than the hills opposite Cincinnati. "Don't fail to tell the yemshick to stop at the boundary." This was my injunction several times repeated as we changed horses at the first station. Eight or ten versts on our second course, the sleigh halted and the yemshick announced the highest point on the road.
When we started from the station we ran against the gate post, and were nearly overturned in consequence. My head came against the side of the sleigh with a heavy thump that affected me more than it did the vehicle. We descended a long hill at a full run, and as our yemshick was far from sober I had a lively expectation of a general smash at the bottom.
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.
On the second evening we had a drunken yemshick who lost the road several times and once drove us into a clump of bushes. As a partial excuse the night was so dark that one could not see ten feet ahead. About two o'clock in the morning we reached the station nearest to Verkne Udinsk. Here was a dilemma.
About three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day from Kazan, the yemshick pointed out the spires of Nijne Novgorod, on the southern bank of the Volga. A fleet of steamers, barges, and soudnas lay sealed in the ice along the shore, waiting for the moving of the waters. The road to the north bank was marked with pine boughs, that fringed the moving line of sleighs and sledges.
In the morning after our departure from Krasnoyarsk we reached a third station, and experienced no delay in changing horses. The road greatly improved, but we made slow progress. When we were about two versts from the station one of our horses left the sleigh and bolted homeward. The yemshick went in pursuit, but did not overtake the runaway till he reached the station.
Villages were more numerous, larger and of greater antiquity. Stations were better kept and had more the air of hotels. Churches appeared more venerable and less venerated. Beggars increased in number, and importunity. In Asia the yemshick was the only man at a station who asked "navodku," but in Europe the chelavek or starost expected to be remembered.
After vain efforts to set him right, the yemshick turned him loose, and he bolted homeward contentedly. We climbed and descended a long hill near the village, and then found a level country quite free from snow, and furnishing a fine road. I was told that very little snow falls within twenty miles of Krasnoyarsk, and that it is generally necessary to use wheels there in the winter months.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking