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Updated: June 12, 2025
"I had to go twenty-five versts by carriage and eight hours by train. By carriage it was a very pleasant journey. The coolness of autumn was accompanied by a brilliant sun. You know the weather when the wheels imprint themselves upon the dirty road. The road was level, and the light strong, and the air strengthening. The tarantass was comfortable.
"From Tumen you will have only sixteen hundred versts to the end of the railway," said a gentleman to me one day. A lady at Krasnoyarsk said I ought to wait until spring and visit her gold mines. I asked their locality, and received the reply, "Close by here; only four hundred versts away. You can go almost there in a carriage, and will have only a hundred and twenty versts on horseback."
We took tickets for Kazan, and ordered horses at nine o'clock. As we left the city, we passed between two monument-like posts, marking the gateway. Two or three versts away, we passed the zavod of Verkne Issetskoi, an immense concern with a population sufficient to found a score of western cities. In this establishment is made a great deal of the sheet-iron that comes to America.
The combination was too much for him, and, seeing that we were progressing well in our bargain for a conveyance, he withdrew, and probably solved the riddle with the aid of the postboy. The estate for which we were bound lay thirty-five versts distant; but fearing that we might reach it too early if we were to start at once, I ordered an equipage for six o'clock.
Now we knew very well that we should not arrive in a minute, nor probably in forty minutes; but it afforded temporary relief to be told that we would. My frequent inquiries finally spurred my driver into an attempt to express the distance arithmetically, and with evident pride in his ability to speak Russian, he assured me that it was only "dva verst," or two versts more.
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.
The country is flat or slightly undulating, and has a scanty growth of timber. Sometimes there were many versts without trees, then there would be a scattered and straggling display of birches, and again the growth was dense enough to be called a forest. The principal arboreal productions are birches, and I found the houses, sheds, and fences in most of the villages constructed of birch timber.
About thirty versts west of Manchuli our train was stopped by a red flag, and a railway workman informed us of a raid upon a homestead by the side of the railway, the robbers having decamped two hours before our arrival. The father had two bullets through his chest and one through the right side of his neck, and had crawled a distance of over a verst to give information.
We put up in village. People are friendly. Officers are quartered with a good-natured peasant. Call up Pinega on long distance phone. We are needed badly. Officer will try to get sleighs to come to meet us forty versts out of Pinega. Maj. Williams, Red Cross, came in to see us after we had gone to bed, on his way to Pinega. To VERKHNE PALENGA SEVENTH DAY, DECEMBER 24TH
For about one hundred versts the Russian forces, in small detachments, were allowing themselves to be pinned to the railway. It was very interesting to hear a clear statement as to the cause of the revolt and to find that the chief point of the grievances set forth in the revolters' own proclamations.
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