The horses are changed at distances varying from ten to twenty-five miles; they are paid for at each change, and the traveler must be provided with a bag of copper coin, so that he will never be at a loss to make out the exact amount that may be due. The driver expects a small gratuity, and he generally earns it by driving at a lively gait; a placard is hung in every station, showing the distance to the stations on each side, and the price per horse, so that the best intentions of the station master to cheat the wayfarer are frustrated. Everything included, cost of padarojnia, hire of horses, and gratuities to drivers, the expense of posting in Siberia is about four cents a mile; two persons may occupy a kibitka, and some of these vehicles will hold three, and the number of persons makes no difference in the cost except when it is so large as to call for more horses.
The station master is required by law to furnish travelers with hot water and bread, at a fixed price, and he may sell anything else that he chooses. Eggs can generally be had at the stations, but no other article of food can be relied on. The traveler will carry his own tea, coffee, brandy, and edibles generally; in winter the frost preserves them perfectly, and he is under no apprehension that his perishable provisions will perish. Soup is carried in cakes like small bricks; roast beef resembles red granite, and must be carved with an axe. There is always a fire in the travelers' room at the stations, and no difficulty in preparing one's dinner, which is seasoned with that best of all sauces, a keen appetite.
The sleigh glides merrily over the smooth roads and bounds the reverse of joyously where the way is rough. As long as the harness holds together and the team is in motion the driver pays no attention to the passengers, but lets them rattle about as they will. Occasionally there is a spill, but it rarely amounts to anything more than a disagreeable shaking up and a scattering of one's property along the road. To guard against a mishap of this sort it is customary to lash the baggage into its place by passing a strong cord over it a half-dozen times or more.
On and on you go, changing horses at the stations, and alighting two or three times a day for meals. In the cities and large towns you may halt a day or two for relief from the monotony, and for any repairs that your sleigh may need. The road is long; there are 209 changes of horses between Irkutsk and Nijne Novgorod, and some 90 odd between the head of the Amoor and Irkutsk. It gets tiresome after a while, and you gladly hear the whistle of the locomotive which tells you that your long ride is at an end.
The winter is by far the best season of the year for traversing Siberia. In summer the roads are dusty, the delays at the river crossings are frequently long and vexatious, mosquitoes and flies fill the air, provisions will only keep fresh for a day or so, and the tarantass is a heavy vehicle to draw. The frost seals the rivers, shuts up the flies and mosquitoes, lays the dust, extinguishes the malaria of the marshes, and preserves your animal food for an indefinite period. If you intend taking the longest and most exhilarating post ride in the world, by all means make up your mind to try it in winter.
The whole of Asiatic Russia enjoys the benefits of the posting system, and one may go by the government roads to the shores of the Arctic ocean in the north, or to the country of the Kirghes and Turcomans on the south. Whenever a new region in Central Asia is conquered and brought under the Russian rule, a post route is opened and stations are established, so as to afford certain and quick communication. The post route is to Russia what the railway is to the United States in developing new territory, and carrying to it the blessings, as well as the curses, of civilization.
CHAPTER XVII.
TRAVELING WITH CAMELS AND ELEPHANTS.
Next to the horse the camel is the beast of burden available for travelers, and in some parts of the world he is a most important animal. He has long been known as "The Ship of the Desert," and without his aid the sandy wastes of Asia and Africa would be well-nigh impassable.
The regions where the camel is in use are practically comprised in Persia, Tartary, Arabia, Northern Africa, and portions of China and India. There are several varieties of camels that differ from each other, like the various kinds of horses; the finest and best of the race is the one called the dromedary, which bears the same relation to the ordinary camel as the carefully-bred trotter does to the common horse. The pace of the common camel is about three miles an hour, and his day's journey is from twenty to thirty miles. At this rate he can carry from five hundred to nine hundred pounds of burden, and for a short journey a strong camel can be loaded with one thousand pounds. The swift camel or saddle dromedary has been known to make ten miles an hour, though his ordinary pace will not exceed seven or eight. He will travel fifty miles a day for days together, and, on emergencies, he will accomplish one hundred miles or more without resting. Mohammed Ali Pasha, who ruled over Egypt in the early part of this century, once rode on a dromedary from Suez to Cairo, eighty-two miles, in less than ten hours. He made only a single halt of about half an hour; the driver of the beast ran at his side for the entire distance, and died the next day from the exertion.
The stomach of the camel is so arranged that it can hold water enough for a week's supply; the animal is thus enabled to traverse the desert where the wells are often several days' journey from each other. His foot is a spongy mass that flattens to a great breadth when placed on the ground, and enables him to walk on the yielding sand, and his hump is a store of fat that sustains him in the privations of the desert. Attempts have been made to employ the camel on the arid wastes of the south-western parts of the United States, but none of them have been more than experimentally successful.