s, and I had a difficulty to make the
man of the house accept of a couple of roubles. The demand was
fifty to seventy kopeks; and sometimes payment was refused
altogether. I met a carrier who was conveying goods from Tumen
to Tomsk, a distance of about one thousand five hundred versts,
for two and a half roubles per pood! On questioning him, how he
could possibly afford to take merchandise at so cheap a rate,
he said, 'the people of my country are kind and hospitable. I
live about Tomsk, so that I must return thither; and I get a
man and a horse found a whole day for fifteen kopeks.' The
grenadier also assured me that the only expense his journey on
foot to see his family had cost him, was about twenty-five
roubles; and those were spent between St. Petersburg and
Ecatherineburg. 'After getting fairly into Siberia,' said he,
'no one would ever receive a kopek from me for either food or
lodging.'

"After we got into Russia, and began to suffer certain
impositions which are put upon travellers on the great roads in
every country, he would often exclaim, 'God be with me and my
beloved Siberia! There people have their consciences and their
hearts in the right place!'"

Tomsk is fifteen hundred versts from Irkutsk, and four thousand five
hundred from St. Petersburg, being in latitude 56 deg. 29' 6", and longitude
54 deg. 50' 6" from the latter place. Its population is about ten thousand.
It has many manufactories, and a number of handsome houses, with a
pleasant though small society. After leaving it, the traveller passes
the vast and fertile plain of Baraba, where he is whirled along at the
rate of two hundred and seventy versts a day.

The first place of importance which he reaches after crossing it, is
Tobolsk, the chief town of the province of that name, and formerly of
Siberia. Its latitude is 55 deg. 11' 14", and its longitude 37 deg. 46' 14" east
from St. Petersburg, from which, and from Irkutsk, it is distant three
thousand versts. Fourteen years ago its population amounted to thirty
thousand inhabitants, since when it has in all probability very much
increased. Its manufactories are numerous; its society is agreeable, and
gives evidence of the same hospitality which is witnessed so generally
and so gratefully by the traveller, in those remote regions; but has it
not in its very name a charm to the reader who peruses