“Easy enough,” was the calm reply, “I shall hereafter pay my fare to the conductor.”

The morning after reaching Barnaool, I had a fine twinge of rheumatism that adhered during my stay.  Quite to my surprise it left me on the second day after our departure, and like the bad boy in the story never came back again.  The medical faculty can have the benefit of my experience, and prescribe as follows for their rheumatic patients.

    “st. nt. o. lg. sl.  S. r. = ther. — z

“Start at night on a long sleigh ride over a Siberian road with the thermometer below zero.”

A bouran arose in the afternoon of the second day, but was neither violent nor very cold.  At Barnaool I had my sleigh specially prepared to exclude drifting snow.  I ordered a liberal supply of buttons and straps to fasten the boot to the hood, besides an overlapping flap of thick felt to cover the crevice between them.  The precaution was well taken, and with our doors thoroughly closed we were not troubled with much snow.  The drivers were exposed on the outside of the sleigh, and had the full benefit of the wind.  At the end of the first drive after this storm commenced our yemshick might have passed for an animated snow statue.  The road was tolerable, and a great improvement upon that from Krasnoyarsk to Tomsk.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE]

CHAPTER XLVI.

The great steppe of Baraba is quite monotonous, as there is very little change of scenery in traveling over it.  Whoever has been south or west from Chicago, or west from Leavenworth, in winter, can form a very good idea of the steppe.  The winter appearance is much like that of a western prairie covered with snow.  Whether there is equal similarity in summer I am unable to say.  The country is flat or slightly undulating, and has a scanty growth of timber.  Sometimes there were many versts without trees, then there would be a scattered and straggling display of birches, and again the growth was dense enough to be called a forest.  The principal arboreal productions are birches, and I found the houses, sheds, and fences in most of the villages constructed of birch timber.  The open part of the steppe, far more extensive than the wooded portion, was evidently favorable to the growth of grass, as I saw a great deal protruding above the snow.  There are many marshy and boggy places, covered in summer with a dense growth of reeds.  They are a serious inconvenience to the traveler on account of the swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and other tormenting insects that they produce.

While crossing the Baraba swamps in summer, men and women are obliged to wear veils as a protection against these pests.  Horses are sometimes killed by their bites, and frequently became thin in flesh from the constant annoyance.  A gentleman told me that once when crossing the swamps one of his horses, maddened by the insects, broke from the carriage and fled out of sight among the tall reeds.  The yemshicks, who knew the locality, said the animal would certainly be killed by his winged pursuers in less than twenty-four hours.