In its earlier days the town had an important commerce, which has been taken away by Irkutsk and Kiachta.  It has a few wealthy merchants, who have built fine houses on the principal street.  I walked through the gastinni-dvor but found nothing I desired to purchase.  There were many little articles of household use but none of great value.  Coats of deerskin were abundant, and the market seemed freshly supplied with them.  My costume was an object of curiosity to the hucksters and their customers, especially in the item of boots.  The Russian boots are round-toed and narrow.  I wore a pair in the American fashion of the previous year and quite different from the Muscovite style.  There were frequent touches of elbows and deflections of eyes attracting attention to my feet.

A large building overlooking the town was designated as the jail, and said to be rapidly filling for winter.  “There are many vagabonds in this part of the country,” said my informant.  “In summer they live by begging and stealing.  At the approach of winter they come to the prisons to be housed and fed during the cold season.  They are generally compelled to work, and this fact causes them to leave as early as possible in the spring.  Had your journey been in midsummer you would have seen many of these fellows along the road.”

While speaking of this subject my friend told me there was then in prison at Verkne Udinsk a man charged with robbery.  When taken he made desperate resistance, and for a long time afterward was sullen and obstinate.  Recently he confessed some of his crimes.  He was a robber by profession and acknowledged to seventeen murders during the last three years!  Once he killed four persons in a single family, leaving only a child too young to testify against him.  The people he attacked were generally merchants with money in their possession.  Robberies are not frequent in Siberia, though a traveler hears many stories designed to alarm the timorous.  I was told of a party of three persons attacked in a lonely place at night.  They were carrying gold from the mines to the smelting works, and though well armed were so set upon that the three were killed without injury to the robbers.

I was not solicitous about my safety as officers were seldom molested, and as I traveled with a member of the governor’s staff I was pretty well guarded.  Officers rarely carry more than enough money for their traveling expenses, and they are better skilled than merchants in handling fire arms and defending themselves.  Besides, their molestation would be more certainly detected and punished than that of a merchant or chance traveler.

My tarantass had not been materially injured in the journey, but several screws were loose and there was an air of general debility about it.  Like the deacon’s one-horse shay in its eightieth year, the vehicle was not broken but had traces of age about it.  As there was considerable rough road before me I thought it advisable to put everything in order, and therefore committed the carriage to a blacksmith.  He labored all day and most of the night putting in bolts, nuts, screws, and bits of iron in different localities, and astonished me by demanding less than half I expected to pay, and still more by his guilty manner, as if ashamed at charging double.