Siberia and the exile system . MAP OF ROnXE FROM SEMIPALAtINSK TO THE ALTAi. Sunday, when all of the Cossacks were in holiday attire, thestreets of these villages were bright with the red, blue, andyellow costumes of the young men and women, who sat in 190 SIBEKIA rows upon benches in the shade of the houses, talking,tlirting, and eating melon seeds, or, after the sun had goneilownrdaneed in the streets to the music of fiddles andtriaiiu-nlar COSSACK PEASANT UIKL SPINNING. The farther we went up the Irtish the hotter became theweather and the more barren the steppe, until it was easy
Siberia and the exile system . MAP OF ROnXE FROM SEMIPALAtINSK TO THE ALTAi. Sunday, when all of the Cossacks were in holiday attire, thestreets of these villages were bright with the red, blue, andyellow costumes of the young men and women, who sat in 190 SIBEKIA rows upon benches in the shade of the houses, talking,tlirting, and eating melon seeds, or, after the sun had goneilownrdaneed in the streets to the music of fiddles andtriaiiu-nlar COSSACK PEASANT UIKL SPINNING. The farther we went up the Irtish the hotter became theweather and the more barren the steppe, until it was easyto imagine that we were in an Arabian or a north Africandesert. The thermometer ranged day after day from 90° to103° in the shade; the atmosphere was suffocating; every BRIDLE PATHS OF THE ALTAI llJl leaf and every blade of grass, as far as the eye could reach,had been absolutely burned dead by the fierce sunshine;great whirling columns of sand, 100 to 150 feet in height,swept slowly and majestically across the sun-scorchedplain; and we could trace the progress of a single mountedKirghis five miles away by the cloud of dust that his horseshoofs raised from the steppe. I suffered intensely fromheat and thirst, and had to protect myself from the fiercesunshine by swathing my body in four thicknesses ofblanket and putting a big down pillow over my legs. I » could not hold my hand in that sunshine five minutes with-out pain, and wrapping my body
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectsiberiarussiadescrip
