We named a certain hotel but the yemshick coolly took us to another which he assured us was “acleechny” (excellent).  As the exterior and the appearance of the servants promised fairly, we made no objection, and allowed our baggage unloaded.  The last I saw of our yemshick he was receiving a subsidy from the landlord in consideration of having taken us thither.  The doctor said the establishment was better than the one he first proposed to patronize, so that we had no serious complaint against the management of the affair.  Hotel keepers in Siberia are obliged to pay a commission to whoever brings them patrons, a practice not unknown, I believe, in American cities.

We engaged two rooms, one large, and the other of medium size.  The larger apartment contained two sofas, ten or twelve chairs, three tables, a boy, a bedstead, and a chamber-maid.  The boy and the maid disappeared with a quart or so of dirt they had swept from the floor.  We ordered dinner, and took our ease in our inn.  Our baggage piled in one corner of the room would have made a creditable stock for an operator in the “Elbow Market” at Moscow.  We thawed our beards, washed, changed our clothing, and pretended we felt none the worse for our jolting over the rough road from Krasnoyarsk.

The hotel, though Asiatic, was kept on the European plan.  The landlord demanded our passports before we removed our outer garments, and apologized by saying the regulations were very strict.  The documents went at once to the police, and returned in the morning with the visa of the chief.  Throughout Russia a hotel proprietor generally keeps the passports of his patrons until their bills are paid, but this landlord trusted in our honor, and returned the papers at once.  The visa certified there were no charges against us, pecuniary or otherwise, and allowed us to remain or depart at our pleasure.  It is a Russian custom for the police to be informed of claims against persons suspected of intent to run away.  The individual cannot obtain authority to depart until his accounts are settled.  Formerly the law required every person, native and foreign, about to leave Russia, to advertise his intention through a newspaper.  This formula is now dispensed with, but the intending traveler must produce a receipt in full from his hotel keeper.

At the hotel we found a gentleman from Eastern Siberia on his way to St. Petersburg.  He left Irkutsk two days behind me, passed us in Krasnoyarsk, and came to grief in a partial overturn five miles from Tomsk.  He was waiting to have his broken vehicle thoroughly repaired before venturing on the steppe.  He had a single vashok in which he stowed himself, wife, three children, and a governess.  How the whole party could be packed into the carriage I was at a loss to imagine.  Its limits must have been suggestive of the close quarters of a can of sardines.

We used our furs for bed clothing and slept on the sofas, less comfortably I must confess than in the sleigh.  The close atmosphere of a Russian house is not as agreeable to my lungs as the open air, and after a long journey one’s first night in a warm room is not refreshing.  There was no public table at the hotel; meals were served in our room, and each item was charged separately at prices about like those of Irkutsk.