sburg. 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.

In the morning we put on our best clothes, and visited the
gubernatorial mansion. The governor was at St. Petersburg, and we were
received by the Vice-Governor, an amiable gentleman of about fifty
years, who reminded me of General S.R. Curtis. Before our interview we
waited ten or fifteen minutes at one end of a large hall. The
Vice-Governor was at the other end listening to a woman whose
streaming eyes and choked utterance showed that her story was one of
grief. The kind hearted man appeared endeavoring to soothe her. I
could not help hearing the conversation though ignorant of its
purport, and, as the scene closed, I thought I had not known before
the extent of pathos in the Russian language.

We had a pleasant interview with the vice-governor who gave us
passports to Barnaool, on learning that we wished to visit that place.
Among those who called during our stay was the golovah of Tomsk, a man
whose physical proportions resembled those of the renowned Wouter Van
Twiller, as described by Washington Irving. Every golovah I met in
Siberia was of aldermanic proportions, and I wondered whether physical
developments had any influence in selections for this office. Just
before leaving the governor's residence, we were introduced to Mr.
Naschinsky, of Barnaool, to whom I had a letter of introduction from
his cousin, Paul Anossoff. As he was to start for home that evening,
we arranged to accompany him. Our visit ended, we drove through the
principal streets, and saw the chief features of the town.

Tomsk takes its name from the river