IV.—Across Europe and Asia.—Travelling Notes

Extract

The day on which I arrived at Tomsk, which was the 6th of October, I bought a small tarantass, and next morning I started, with some who had been fellow-passengers on the steamer, en route for Irkutsk. There were four conveyances between three parties, one of them being used exclusively for baggage. As each of these always needed three horses, and sometimes four, we often had difficulties at the post-station, where the post-master seemed disinclined to allow such a sudden draft being made upon his stables. Luckily my friends were high officials, and travelling on Government service, and their wants had from necessity to be supplied. My carriage being included with the rest, I went along comfortably and without delay, which would most certainly have occurred had I been alone. Before we were fairly outside Tomsk we ascended what I had, when at a distance, mistaken for hills, but which now appeared to be only a scarp-like face of a plateau, and we were soon upon a dusty road bounded by a low plantation of birch. Now and then we plunged down and over a small water-course, our momentum always carrying us some distance up the other side. Everywhere the country appeared as if it were an alluvial expanse; but in the vicinity I think there must have been some beds of rock, because everywhere along the road stone was being used as a material to repair it. This was yellow, argillaceous, and somewhat slaty in its character, perhaps having come from some of the Coal-measures which I believe exist in the vicinity of Tomsk.