From Pekin to Calais by Land by Harry De Windt

Author:Harry De Windt [Windt, Harry De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action Suspense, Classics, General, Historical, Historical Geography, History, Literary Collections, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9786050380781
Google: WZQ6DQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harry De Windt
Published: 2015-05-20T04:00:00+00:00

Hand drawing OUR TARANTASS WITH “TROIKA.”

It was growing dusk as we left Kiakhta; but the cool night-air, rapid motion, and exhilarating jingle of the bells as the three sturdy little horses tore along the hard, level road, soon cleared the cobwebs from our brain, and made one forget the scenes of debauch of the past three days. The entertainments we had attended left the same impression on my mind as a head-feast I once witnessed in Central Borneo——a kind of wonder that human beings, however uncivilized, could become so animal, not to say bestial, in their minds and habits. I have not exaggerated the state of things at Kiakhta, though must, in justice, add that it was the most dissolute and drunken place we came across. Some excuse, too, must be made for people living in a land with such squalid, depressing surroundings, and having absolutely no intellectual pursuits.

There are two roads from Kiakhta to Lake Baikal; one the old post-road, the other a private one, made and used by the tea-merchants, or by those having their permission. The latter is a hundred and eighty versts shorter than the old government post-road. By the intervention of Herr R., we were permitted to use the private road, and luckily, for we had but three days before us to catch the steamboat at Moushafskaya, on the eastern shore of the lake. We reached the first stage, twenty versts from Kiakhta, just before midnight. Here we first began to taste the delights of Siberian posting, for there were no horses, nor would there be till next morning. The post-house was, however, brand new, and as clean as a new pin inside and out; and we were not sorry for the rest afforded by the delay. Had all the post-houses in Siberia been as clean and comfortable as those in the Trans-Baikal, we should have had little to complain of. But the Russian government has a very different way of doing things to its wealthy and luxurious purveyors of tea.

We were away again shortly after seven o’clock, but began the day badly. Of our “Troika,”[8] two were bolters and one a jibber; and a slight difference of opinion at the start ended by the bolting of the two outside horses, who dragged the jibber along with them by main force. They tore along at a mad gallop for a couple of hundred yards, the heavy tarantass swaying to and fro, till a friendly sand-bank brought us up all standing, the off-wheel buried in the earth, the near one whirling round in the air. As for the yemstchik, he had disappeared, and presently emerged like a water-god, dripping with water, and covered with duck-weed, for he had been shot into a pond the other side of the bank. We got righted with the aid of some peasants, and by dint of lashing, yelling, and cursing, got the unruly team off again at a gallop; and though for a mile or so we were as often off the road as on it, we met with no further misadventure, for a time, at least.

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