The doctor trusted that the affair would not be associated with our visit, and I quite agreed with him.  It is to be hoped that the future historian of Barnaool will not mention, the murder and robbery in the same paragraph with the distinguished arrival of Dr. Schmidt and an American traveler.

The rich miners send their gold once a year to Barnaool, the poorer ones twice a year.  Those in pressing need of money receive certificates of deposit as soon as their gold is cast into bars, and on these certificates they can obtain cash at the government banks.  The opulent miners remain content till their gold reaches the capital, and is coined.  Four or six months may thus elapse after gold has left Barnaool before its owner obtains returns.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE.]

CHAPTER XLIV.

The society of Barnaool consists of the mining and other officers, with a larger proportion of families than at Irkutsk.  It had a more quiet and reserved character than the capital of Eastern Siberia, but was not the less social and hospitable.  Many young officers of the mining and topographical departments pass their summers in the mountains and their winters in Barnaool.  The cold season is therefore the gayest, and abounds in balls, parties, concerts, and amateur theatricals.  The former theatre has been converted into a club-room.

There is a good proportion, for a Siberian town, of elegant and luxuriant houses.  The furniture and adornments were quite as extensive as at Irkutsk or Tomsk, and several houses that I visited would have been creditable in Moscow or St. Petersburg.  It is no little wonder to find all the comforts and luxuries of Russian life in the southern part of Siberia, on the borders of the Kirghese steppes.

The large and well arranged museum contained more than I could even glance over in a single day.  There were models of machines used in gold-washing, quartz mills fifty years old, and almost identical with those of the present day; models of furnaces and zavods in various parts of Siberia, and full delineations of the principal silver mines of the Altai.  There was a curious steam engine, said to have been made at Barnaool in 1764, and used for blowing the furnaces.  I saw a fine collection of minerals, birds, beasts, and other curiosities of the Altai.  Particular attention was called to the stuffed skins of two enormous tigers that were killed several years ago in the southern part of the district.  One of them fell after a long fight, in which he killed one of his assailants and wounded two others.