en houses clustering around a
green dome and gilt crosses, but it is all very mournful and
depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one
advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it steals like a
silent ghost across the desolate steppes. As a cure for insomnia it
would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the
day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally
engrossed in an interminable game of _Vint_[1] (during the process of
which a Jew civilian is mercilessly rooked), but our piano is a godsend
and most Russian women are born musicians. So after _dejeuner_ we join
the fair sex, who beguile the hours with Glinka and Tchaikovsky until
they can play and sing no more. By the way, no one ever knows the time
of day and no one particularly wants to. Petersburg time is kept
throughout the journey and the result is obvious. We occasionally find
ourselves lunching at breakfast time and dining when we should have
supped, but who cares? although in any other clime bottled beer at 8
A.M. might have unpleasant results.

[Footnote 1: Russian whist.]

The Ural Mountains (which are merely downs) are crossed. Here the
stations are built with some attempt at coquetry, for the district teems
with mineral wealth, and in summer is much frequented by fashionable
pleasure-seekers and invalids, for there are baths and waters in the
neighbourhood. One station reminds me of Homburg or Wiesbaden with its
gay restaurant, flower-stall, and a little shop for the sale of trinkets
in silver and malachite, and the precious stones found in this
region--Alexandrites, garnets and amethysts. But beyond the Urals we
are once more lost in the desolate plains across which the train crawls
softly and silently at the rate of about ten miles an hour. I know of
only one slower railway in the world, that from Jaffa to Jerusalem,
where I have seen children leap on and off the car-steps of the train
while in motion, and the driver alight, without actually stopping his
engine, to gather wildflowers! We cross the great Obi and Yenisei rivers
over magnificent bridges of iron and Finnish granite, which cost
millions of roubles to construct. Krasnoyarsk is passed by night, but
its glittering array of electric lights suggests a city many times the
size of the tiny town I passed through in a _tarantass_ while travelling
in 1887 from Pekin to Paris. So the days crawl wearily away. Passengers