‘Have you far to go?’
‘Oh, very very far.’
‘Well, if you like, you may turn in and sleep with us for the night.’
‘The good God reward you! But shall I not trouble you?’
‘How trouble us? No one is gone to bed yet.’
I crossed the hospitable threshold, and found in the house two kind worthy beings, a husband and his wife. They gave me a modest Siberian meal, which to me seemed a feast fit for Lucullus; but what I enjoyed most was the being able to take off my clothes, which I had not been able to do for so many nights, while I camped under the stars. They asked me a good many questions, and I was ready to reply to them, saying that I belonged to the district of Tobolsk, and that I was on my way to Solikamsk, on the other side of the Ourals, that I had a relation there, and that the times being hard, he had written to me that I might find work in the salt works there. These good folks then began to talk of their own lot, and to complain of it heartily. It appeared that they were ‘peasants of the works’ (pozavodskoïe krestyany), or serfs, liable from generation to generation to be impressed for statute labour in the different government factories, of which there are a great many in the Oural districts. Formerly there were works at Paouda itself, but since they had been done away with, the serfs were now obliged to go to labour as far as Bohotole; from this liability neither women nor persons above the age of fourteen years are exempt, and it may be supposed that such conditions were severely felt. On the next day my hosts would not let me depart till I had breakfasted with them, and they steadily refused to accept of the money which I pressed upon them. What a warm and hearty farewell did we take of each other! but my ease of mind vanished when the good man of the house, just as he parted from me, and was giving me some final instructions as to my road, added, ‘at any rate, a little beyond Paouda you will come to the military station; they will ask for your papers there, and they will not fail to give you all the information you can require.’
It may be believed that I neglected no efforts not to come in the way of any such sources of knowledge. I struck aside and went by hill and by dale, now and then up to my neck in snow, and did not regain the high road till I had left the tutelary guard station far behind me. Thus I went on for several days, only buying bread at rare intervals at the izbouchka, which at great distances from one another and from time to time I met with on my way.
Izbouchka are little houses built at great intervals for the accommodation of travellers, and are to be found from the Oural Mountains to Véliki-Oustiong; you find there bread, salt fish, turnips, radishes, cabbages and kvass (a liquor made from cider), and sometimes, though rarely, brandy. In some of these inns, that is to say, in the more spacious ones, there is to be found hay and corn for the horses. Their owners buy in the provisions, and it is said make a good profit on these strange hotels, which in general are kept by one old man, or by a couple as miserable as they are decrepid. One evening I met a train of yamstchiks who were on their way back from the fair at Irbite, and were halting to rest their horses; but I did not remain with them. I knew that I was nearing the summit of the Oural range, and a superstitious feeling impelled me towards it as to the culminating point of my fate. At last I reached the top of the pass. It was a fine night; the moon illuminated with its full splendour a glorious but fantastic scene, where the gnarled shadows of the trees, and of gigantic masses of rocks, were filing far upon the immense expanse of snow. A silence so solemn as to be almost religious in its unbroken stillness reigned around, except when at times a dry metallic sound struck upon the ear as the stones cracked and split from the intensity of the frost; and yet nature, rude and wild as she appeared to me at this time, and under this dress, was to me, alas! a friend more pitiful than any of the civilised beings around; she, at least, never asked me for my passport! It was with difficulty that I kept my mind from dwelling on spirits from another world, from recurring to the fairy sprites and other tales to which I had been accustomed during my childhood in the Ukraine, so much were they recalled by the strange and sinister-looking forms which the moon revealed, while in her rays their outlines assumed monstrous proportions. Indeed, in the eyes of any Ukraine child might not I myself have easily passed for no less a person than the ‘great demon of the night,’ as I stood there in my strange dress, beard, eyebrows, and moustaches, all crusted with frosty rime, wandering thus among the shadows of the forest, myself but another shade?
From any more prolonged contemplation of the landscape cold obliged me to abstain, and I soon began to descend the western slopes of that immense barrier which nature has interposed between Siberia and Russia in Europe. During the course of next day the yamstchiks came up with me again, and I had an opportunity of seeing with what marvellous skill they drive their horses along roads which are all but impracticable. They had thirty sledges, to each of which a solitary horse was harnessed, and the whole string was driven by seven yamstchiks. The way was narrow and hedged on each side by walls of snow as high as a man, and in these both men and horses would occasionally disappear. When one train met another coming in the opposite direction, the train which was the smaller, or the least heavily laden, would then plunge into the snowy wall; and I do not exaggerate when I say that sometimes after a plunge the horses’ ears alone remained visible. Having completed this peculiar evolution, the drivers of both trains would then apply themselves to pulling both sledges and horses out of the wreath. But even these occurrences were as nothing compared to the accidents caused by the bogs and quagmires which are so frequent on these routes. The horses, however, are perfectly accustomed to all obstacles, and they throw themselves into the ravines, and then allow themselves to be extricated by their drivers. The difficulties of the passage of the Oural chain are so great that these intrepid men cannot make more than twenty verstes a day, and as far as Véliki-Oustiong I found all along the wayside the corpses of horses that had given in from fatigue. What the yamstchiks themselves seem capable of enduring in the way of privations and fatigues is something truly incredible.
I reached Solikamsk in the beginning of March. It lies at the foot of the western declivity of the mountains. Without making any stay there I pursued my way by the steppe of Petchora, tending towards Véliki-Oustiong, by way of Tcherdine, Kaï, Lalsk and Nochel. The country was no longer hilly, but there was now as before the same immensity of snow, the same thick woods, the same winds and storms of ice; for me also there were the same weary marches and the same furtive purchases of bread at the unfrequent izbouchka, and the same earths toilsomely constructed for each night’s repose. One discovery, however, was an unspeakable boon to me. I had remarked that in these depopulated regions the foot travellers, who were so few and far between, were in the habit, when overtaken by night in the woods, of lighting a large fire, and of keeping it blazing till daybreak. I did this several times, and the flaming logs in the middle of a frozen desert not only warmed but cheered me; but this would not do for a roadside diversion, and I only ventured on it when deep in the forest.