stage and penny novelette. By
rights our host should have been a cool cynical villain, always in full
uniform, and continually turning up at awkward moments to harass some
innocent victim, instead of which he was rather a commonplace but
benevolent individual devoted to his wife and child and consumed with a
passion for photography, which was shared by many of the exiles under
his charge. I once had occasion to go to his office and found Zuyeff in
his shirt sleeves, busily engaged in developing "Kodak" films with a
political who had dined at his house the night before! But this would
never have done for a transpontine audience.

Yakutsk (which was founded in 1633 by the Cossack Beketoff) presents, at
a distance, a rather imposing appearance, quickly dispelled on closer
acquaintance. For a more lifeless, depressing city does not exist on the
face of this planet. Even Siberians call this the end of the world. The
very name of the place suggests gloom and mystery, for the news that
filters through from here, at long intervals, into civilisation is
generally associated with some tragedy or disaster, such as the awful
fate of poor de Long and his companions of the _Jeannette_ in the Lena
delta, or more recently the Yakutsk Prison Mutiny. The Tsar's remotest
capital is composed mainly of time-bleached wooden buildings of gloomy
appearance even on the brightest day. We saw Yakutsk at its best, for in
summer time the dusty streets and dingy dwellings are revealed in all
the dirt and squalor which were concealed from our gaze by a clean
mantle of snow. There are no public buildings to speak of, but the
golden domes of half a dozen fine churches tower over the dull drab
town, partly relieving the sombre effect produced by an absolute lack of
colour. Even the palace of the Governor is a mean-looking one-storied
edifice, scarcely fit for the ruler of a province seven times the size
of France! A Cossack stockade of great age faces the palace; and its
dilapidated wooden walls are tottering with age, but are yet in keeping
with most of the houses around them. There is a legend concerning this
fort (erected by Cossacks in 1647) which may, or may not, be true. The
natives granted these first settlers as much land, for the erection of a
citadel, as they could encircle with a limited number of reindeer skins.
But the wily Russians cut the skins into thin, very long strips and took
possession of an extensive site for a town. At present Yaku