Daylight had just appeared, when we made our entry into the village. All the inhabitants having heard of the great peril we had encountered, ran out to see us pass, and bowed and made the sign of the cross to the great St. Sergius and the Virgin of Kazan in expression of their gratitude for our deliverance.
Our journey continued this day without any particular incident; the reflection on that of the preceding night, and the congratulation on our narrow escape from such peril, were sufficient to engross our thoughts. The aspect of this great desert, covering the vestiges of many an untold catastrophe with its snowy shroud, made me tremble at the remembrance of it; and I have often thought since that if our yemschik had not come to our succour in time, the only abode he would have had to conduct us to would have been a cemetery. In the steppe, the resting places of the dead are the only spots planted with trees, and, on that account, are seen at a great distance. They bring to these melancholy spots birch trees from Krasnoiarsk, at a great expense, and these little groups of white trunks, glittering in the sunbeams, become so many landmarks for the lonely wanderer. They give also to this desolate spot, from one point of view, notwithstanding the mournful association from another, an aspect of calm joyfulness, when the solemnity of the scene draws the thoughts nearer to hope and resurrection, rather than to despair and definitive annihilation. When the sky is clear and the cold intense, these cemeteries on the steppes are radiant with reflected beams, even where everything is luminous in the immensity around.
The following morning when I awoke at daybreak, I found we were stopping on the way. I opened the canvas curtain that closed in the front of the sledge, to ascertain if we were still on the road, and finding that we were, I could not help laughing at the situation we were in. The scenery had not changed; it was still the steppe, and nothing but the steppe around in view; but our driver was in a profound slumber, with his head resting on our provisions; the horses also, feeling themselves allowed to have their own way, were standing stock-still, and probably were slumbering also; but as to Constantine there was no doubt, for his snoring, loud enough “to frighten the wolves,” proclaimed his happy condition, and considering the exhausting effect of the emotions he must have experienced, I was at first loth to rouse him. Still this indulgence could not go on very long with the prospect of a journey of eighteen hundred leagues before us, and having contemplated a few moments the drollery of this quiescent attitude—a drollery all the more irresistible from contrast with the seriousness of the situation—I resolved to wake him and accordingly did so as gently as possible. Now fully roused from his drowsiness, he regarded the driver a moment with irritation, and then, instead of employing the bland proceeding I had adopted towards him, commenced pommelling the yemschik’s head with his fist, the only efficacious method, he suggested, for a skull so thick. The horses now, in their turn, were quickly set going with means still more energetic and as we whisked briskly along in the fresh morning air, I admired with rapture those sublime changes of light that invariably accompany the rising of the sun in a cloudless sky in these latitudes, and their reflection in paler tints successively passing over the surface of the snow.
At last, after this eventful course, we arrived at Omsk, in a cutting atmosphere of forty-five degrees,[8] an intensity of cold that scarcely diminished during the remainder of my sojourn in Siberia.
[8] Nearly 50° of Fahrenheit’s scale below the lowest temperature indicated thereon, = 82° below freezing point.
Many geographers erroneously represent Tobolsk to be the capital of Siberia, but the honour belongs to Irkutsk. Tobolsk is not even the seat of a Government, for Omsk is the capital of Western Siberia.
I needed but a very short stay at Omsk to congratulate myself on having chosen my route by this city. This fortified place, for such it is, is situated on the top of a little hill, on the borders of the Irtish. The view, therefore, is commanding over this river; then beyond, over its opposite bank, which is marked by a mound, the steppe stretches away in front and on the right and left till lost to sight in the horizon. The steppe, viewed from this point, has not the same uniformity to the eye which I before mentioned. The snow takes here and there tints so distinct and dissimilar, and these are ever varying with such inimitable beauty and artistic combination, that the steppe seen from Omsk is lovelier, more diversified, and more imposing even than the sea. A Frenchman, whom I have already mentioned, and in whose company I have spent hours in contemplating this magnificent spectacle without ever tiring of it, told me that, during summer, the steppe was still more interesting. The grass, he said, takes changing hues so deep as to be almost black; then it seems that instead of a boundless green sward, there is a vast gulf of immeasurable depth yawning before the spectator; and then, perhaps, an hour afterwards, according to the position of the sun and the state of the firmament, an illimitable field of brilliant verdure rises under the eye, and replaces, as if by enchantment, the mysterious gloom of the bottomless abyss by the inspiring gaiety of a vernal landscape.
The steppe, to the inhabitants of Omsk, is as the desert to the wandering Bedouin, the sea to the navigator, the Alps to the Swiss. They search in its changing aspects for prognostics of the weather, and these determine their daily movements. At Omsk, the people have a strong attachment to the steppe; it furnishes abundant pasture to the flocks and herds, and an exciting hunting ground to these ardent lovers of the chase, who find here no lack of wild animals. The public fêtes take place here, and the promenade is in view of the steppe. To go on the steppe, or merely to see it, constitutes, in fact, the chief occupation of life for the inhabitants of Omsk, and, indeed, when one has once seen the steppe, it is not difficult to conceive this passionate attachment; as for myself, who had very narrowly escaped leaving my bones to bleach there on its snowy bed, and on that account, perhaps, should have been repelled from it rather than attracted to it, I was probably more enthusiastic over its charms than anybody, and it was with regret and tender melancholy that I was obliged to withdraw from the contemplation of a spectacle so truly magnificent and sublime.
Society in Siberian cities is composed of functionaries, who are deemed the aristocracy, and traders and miners. At Omsk only is there found a third element, a real middle class of retired citizens, that is to say, men who, having made their fortunes, devote their time to study or amusement.