The interior of the cottage was, though primitive, scrupulously clean. In one corner hung the sacred “Ikon,” or image of the Holy Virgin, a huge brick stove immediately facing it. Half a dozen wooden chairs and a rough pine table comprised the furniture, the flooring of the room was at an angle of about forty-five degrees, which made sitting down a somewhat dangerous experiment. From the centre of the roof hung a Siberian cradle, a kind of linen bag secured by a long rope to a hook in the ceiling, to which our hostess gave a swing every twenty minutes or so, the length of the cord keeping it (and her last born) in motion for quite that length of time.
While we were smoking a cigarette and regaling ourselves with a glass of iced “Quass,”[[13]] the pretty housewife, who soon lost her shyness, produced a Russian guitar, and sang to us (in a sweet, clear voice) two or three national airs. One, a Volga boat-song, seems an especial favourite, for we heard it continually the whole way from Kiakhta to Nijni Novgorod, sung by peasants, prisoners, and yemstchiks alike. The Siberian peasantry appear to have a good ear for music, but their airs are nearly all in minor, and intensely depressing, after a time, to a European ear.
The Siberian peasant cannot be called overtaxed, all that the imperial Government exacts being a poll-tax of seventeen roubles. Those living on the Great Post-Road are exempt from this even, if they breed and provide horses for the postal service, of course receiving a remuneration for the same. The men are cheery, good-tempered fellows enough, with, as a rule, but one vice, drunkenness; when they do take too much, it is done in a good-tempered way, and they become more urbane and benevolent than when sober. I have never once seen a Siberian quarrelsome in his cups, though I met many the worse for vodka in every town we passed through. As regards the women, they are clean, thrifty, and very religious, but at the same time rather lax in their morals, a mixture of qualities not peculiar, I imagine, to Siberia.
A SIBERIAN VILLAGE STREET.
It was nearly seven o’clock before we left Koutoulik, so we had to abandon all hopes of getting further than Zalarinsk (the next station, twenty-eight versts distant) that night. We looked to our pistols before starting, and took care to let the yemstchik see we were armed, for it was a desolate, cutthroat-looking road, and the forest so thick, one could hardly see a foot either side of the tarantass, but we kept a bright look-out, with revolvers at half-cock, and had we been attacked, our assailants would have met with a warm reception. About ten o’clock some twinkling lights ahead heralded the approach of Zalarinsk, and by half-past ten we were safe for the night.
The succeeding two days were, as regards weather, perfect, a blue cloudless sky and bright sun, which at mid-day was sometimes too hot to be pleasant; on more than one occasion the thermometer rose to over 90° Fahr., although the instant the sun set it sometimes dropped to only a few degrees above Zero, so rapid are the changes of temperature. On the 26th of August the country became more cultivated, and the thick forest gave place to large clearings of corn, maize, and mustard. This was on the eastern side of Tiretskaya. The latter village passed, the landscape again changed, and we returned to dull, monotonous pine forests, varied by occasional silver-birch-trees or bushes with bright red and white berries. Siberia is noted for the latter. There are no less than twenty different kinds, and in parts of the country they form, with black bread, the staple food of the inhabitants in summer-time. We found most of them insipid, flavourless things, with the exception of the “Brousniki,” a kind of bilberry, which eaten with cream and sugar was delicious. The “Brousniki” is also very efficacious as a febrifuge.
Two large caravans were passed between Zalarinsk and Tiretskaya; one laden with calico, ironmongery, and Manchester goods——the other with tea——the former eastward, the latter westward bound. Each consisted of over two hundred carts, in charge of about eight or ten men, who, till our driver had roused the foremost with a cut of his whip, were fast asleep when we came up to them, the horses rolling about the road from side to side, and threatening every moment to dash the clumsy heavy carts into our tarantass. The tea-caravans travel day and night, only halting five hours out of the twenty-four, from 1 p.m. till 3 p.m., and midnight till three o’clock in the morning. Yet the horses looked sleek and fat, and not in the least out of condition, the reason, perhaps, being that they never exceed a speed of three miles an hour.
We rarely passed more than two or three conveyances in a day, and this is what makes posting in Siberia so irksome and monotonous. Between the villages there is absolutely nothing to look at but the dreary sand-coloured road——the endless vista of dark green forest. A cottage is never found alone in Siberia or outside a village enceinte. Except in the villages, usually twenty to thirty versts apart, one sees no dwelling of any sort or kind. The monotony, after a week or so, becomes absolutely maddening. What must it be to the wretched exiles who sometimes take two years to reach their destination!
We reached Tiretskaya at sunset. A large river just beyond this station was swollen by the rains to a considerable, not to say dangerous, extent. Only that evening the ferry had been carried away and washed down-stream, the Petersburg mail having to wait out in the open, on the river-bank, till it was repaired. This was not pleasant news, but we derived some consolation from the fact that the weather was fine and the glass rising. We had the waiting-room to ourselves till midnight, when a téléga clattered into the yard, and out clambered an enormously fat man and a small, wizened woman, who informed us, before they had been in the room five minutes, that they were newly married, and had come straight through from Irkoutsk. Divested of their furs, I discovered that the man was clad in a bran-new suit of shining broadcloth, the woman in what had evidently been her bridal array, a white muslin dress, covered with sprays of orange blossom, but terribly soiled and creased by travel and the amorous advances of her bridegroom, to say nothing of the mud and dirty straw of the téléga. When the partner of his joys and sorrows had retired to rest (on two chairs), the unhappy bridegroom became confidential, and confided to me, in a low tone, that he would much rather have remained quietly in Irkoutsk, that he did not like this sort of thing at all, and was only doing it to amuse his bride! I could not help, like Mr. Pickwick, envying the facility with which the lady was amused. “I shall take her as far as Nijni Udinsk, if her strength holds out,” he said resignedly, “if not, we shall return to Irkoutsk.” What a honeymoon! Next morning, when I woke, they were gone.