So I waited, kicking my heels about the room, studying the posters on the walls, eyeing a bad portrait of the emperor, and a worse one of the empress, and now and then drawing near the scene of action.  The clerks looked at me in furtive glances.  At every pronunciation of my name, coupled with the word “Amerikansky,” there was a general stare all around.  I am confident those attaches of the post office at Krasnoyarsk had a perfect knowledge of my features.

In exactly another half hour our point and the horses were gained.  When we entered the office it was positively declared there were no horses to be had, and it was a little odd that two troikas and six horses, could be produced out of nothing, and each of them at the end of a long talk.  I asked an explanation of the mystery, but was told it was a Russian peculiarity that no American could understand.

The horses came very promptly, one troika to Schmidt’s lodgings and the other to mine.  The servants packed my baggage into the little telyaga that was to carry me to the first station.  Joining Schmidt with the other team, we rattled out of town on an excellent road, and left the red hills of Krasnoyarsk.  The last object I saw denoting the location of the town was a church or chapel on a high cliff overlooking the Yenesei valley.  The road lay over an undulating region, where there were few streams and very little timber.  The snow lay in little patches here and there on the swells least exposed to the sun, but it did not cover a twentieth part of the ground.  In several hollows the mud had frozen and presented a rough surface to our wheels.  Our telyaga had no springs, and when we went at a rapid trot over the worst places the bones of my spinal column seemed engaged in a struggle for independence.  A thousand miles of such riding would have been too much for me.  A dog belonging to Madame Radstvenny’s house-keeper followed me from Krasnoyarsk, but did not show himself till we were six or eight versts away.  Etiquette, to say nothing of morality, does not sanction stealing the dog of your host, and so I arranged for the brute’s return.  In consideration of fifty copecks the yemshick agreed to take the dog on his homeward trip and deliver him in good order and condition at Krasnoyarsk.

Just before reaching the first station we passed through a village nearly four miles long, but only a single street in width.  The station was at the extreme end of the village; our sleighs were waiting for us, and so were the men who brought them from Krasnoyarsk.  There was no snow for the next twenty versts, and consequently the sleighs needed further transportation.  Schmidt’s sleigh was dragged empty over the bare ground, but mine, being heavier, was mounted upon wheels.