e difficulty in understanding him; but
his talk had a strange, mediaeval flavour, due, apparently, to the use
of obsolete idioms and words. In the course of half an hour, I
became satisfied that he was talking the English of the fifteenth
century--the English of Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher--but how
he had learned such English, in the nineteenth century and in the
capital of eastern Siberia, I could not imagine. I finally asked him
how he had managed to get such command of the language in a city
where, so far as I knew, there was no English teacher. He replied that
the Russian Government required of its telegraph operators a knowledge
of Russian and French, and then added two hundred and fifty rubles
a year to their salaries for every additional language that they
learned. He wanted the two hundred and fifty rubles, so he began the
study of English with a small English-French dictionary and an old
copy of Shakespeare. He got some help in acquiring the pronunciation
from educated Polish exiles, and from foreigners whom he occasionally
met, but, in the main, he had learned the language alone, and by
committing to memory dialogues from Shakespeare's plays. I described
to him my recent experience with Russian, and told him that his method
was, unquestionably, better than mine. He had learned English from the
greatest master of the language that ever lived; while I had picked
up my Russian from Cossack dog-drivers and illiterate Kamchadals. He
could talk to young women in the eloquent and impassioned words of
Romeo, while my language was fit for backwoodsmen only.

At the end of our first week in Irkutsk, we were ready to resume our
journey; but we had no money with which to pay our hotel bill, still
less our travelling expenses. I had telegraphed to Major Abaza
repeatedly for funds, but had received no reply, and I was finally
compelled to go, in humiliation of spirit, to Governor General
Shelashnikoff, and borrow five hundred rubles.

On the 13th of December, we were again posting furiously along the
Great Siberian Road, past caravans, of tea from Hankow; detachments
of Cossacks convoying gold from the placers of the Lena; parties of
hard-labour convicts on their way to the mines of the trans-Baikal;
and hundreds of sleighs loaded with the products or manufactures of
Russia, Siberia, and the Far East.

For the first thousand miles, our progress was retarded and our rest
greatly broken--particularly at night--by t