I took my departure from Tomsk on the 26th of January. The appearance of the road at first did not differ materially from the one I had recently passed over.
In the villages, however, there was a great difference. Certain details showed the absence of civilization and industry of any kind. The poor inhabitants, instead of admitting light into their dwellings through glass, which would be too costly for them, plug the holes with the skins of their sheep. One may easily imagine how little light can penetrate through these small apertures, and how gloomy the existence of these poor creatures must be during a long winter’s darkness.
These dwellings are raised without any prepared foundation, and are composed of posts or beams bound firmly together. When a thaw takes place, the result is a subsidence, and these hovels, instead of falling down altogether, being secured laterally, simply lean in a mass on one side. In this position they generally remain; for their inhabitants give themselves no trouble to set them upright again. The consequence is that the flooring inside is frequently so inclined, that it is quite an effort to climb across it. This accident, so very common in this part of Siberia, gives a miserably dilapidated look to the villages; the roofs seem ready to fall over each other, or fall away in another direction; the upper story in some is brought down on end almost to the ground, and in others the ground floor is thrown up on an inclined plane to the height of first stories. On beholding this disorder, the spectator would suppose the village had been scourged with a hurricane or an earthquake.
The day after our departure from Tomsk, we entered into a vast birch forest—so vast, that it covers all the central region of Siberia. These trees, which in our country never come to any great size, and which we look upon as some of the most attractive ornaments of our woods, acquire here enormous proportions, but at the same time, I must say, to the detriment of their gracefulness and beauty. In growing old, the bark of their trunks loses its bright pale colour, which we are accustomed to admire, and looks dirty beside the snow; and then, when they advance to decrepitude, it becomes quite black. The most noticeable peculiarity of these forests is that they have never been cut and turned to account. Such an enormous mass of trees allowed to perish is a thing unheard of in France. Here and there may be seen huge trunks, lying on the ground, or leaning against others, ready to fall, or broken off half-way, attesting the violence of some passing cyclone or the destructive power of lightning. Enormous birds of a black or deep blue colour, known generally by the name of cock of the wood, roost on the branches of these venerable trees, and then may be seen huge owls, all white, turning lazily their flat faces towards the passing traveller, regarding him without moving, with the utmost indifference. Here, perhaps, more than elsewhere, is the domain of the strange and fantastic, and it requires little effort of the imagination to people it with all the fanciful and grotesque creations of mediæval poesy.
We continued a long time travelling on through this primeval forest, whose mournful silence and savage grandeur disposed me to muse rather than to talk. My companion also seemed to have his thoughts engrossed with something weighty; he was thinking of the future—of his parents and friends he was shortly about to join, and, what I suspected, of Miss Campbell, who had preceded us on this road. Mine, on the contrary, were rather of the present and the past; I thought of the long distance I had already glided over in my sledge; then my soul wandered from the dark, mysterious forest to the unveiled, prosaic steppe, and finally went astray in bewilderment at the immensity of this trackless space.
The surface, over which we were now moving, was becoming gently undulated, then little hillocks succeeded, and at last the monotonous flatness disappeared.
This reminded me very forcibly how indifferent we become in time to the endlessly repeated or continued scenes of everyday life, however congenial they may be, and how readily we wake up to even a bare consciousness of them after a merely moderate interval of their interruption.
Since leaving the Ural, I had been travelling from six to seven hundred leagues over a country absolutely flat, presenting some interesting features, it is true, and not least the marvellous effects of light; but for all that, it was void of variety and life; and this novel contrast revealed how dear to me were the animated and changing scenes to which I had been habituated, and how little, from too much familiarity with them, was I then able to appreciate them.
During the two days preceding my arrival at Krasnoiarsk, I passed several hills, sometimes abrupt and sometimes gently sloping, and then again others rising to a peak high over valleys, that appeared to me very deep. My eye was at last interested in some change, and could be attracted on the right by reflections of sunbeams from the snow mantling striking diverse objects, or repose on the left in the impenetrable shadows. In short, the monotony had ceased, and to the fatigues of the journey had succeeded the excitement of locomotion, the variety and life of picturesque nature. At the view of this change, I vividly felt how lonely and joyless had been the dead, changeless plain I had left behind me. I thought of the poor inhabitants of Omsk, who look over the steppe so often with longing eyes. It is not from a love for this immense plain, it struck me at the time, but from some vague instinctive hope, of which they are barely conscious, though sensible, to see beyond in the horizon the dawn of something brighter than this endless uniformity, and perhaps in such a hope they find their happiness.
On approaching Krasnoiarsk, the hills rise higher and higher, and become at last, around the city, imposing mountains. We made our entry into this capital of the province of Yenisseisk on the 29th of January at three in the afternoon.