tality had made their house seem to us like a home, and after drinking to the health of all our Altái friends, and bidding everybody good-by three or four times, we rode reluctantly out of the beautiful alpine village and began our descent to the plains of the Írtish.
It is not necessary to describe our journey down the valley of the Búkhtarmá and across the gray, sterile steppes of the upper Írtish. It was simply a reversal of the experience through which we had passed in approaching the Altái Station three weeks before. Then we were climbing from the desert into the alps, while now we were descending from the alps to the desert.
At six o'clock Friday afternoon we reached the settlement of Búkhtarmá, where the Írtish pierces a great outlyiug spur of the Altái chain, and where the road to Ust Kámenogórsk leaves the river and makes a long détour into the mountains. No horses were obtainable at the post station; the weather looked threatening; the road to Alexandrófskaya was said to be in bad condition owing to recent rains; and we had great difficulty in finding a peasant with "free" horses who was willing to take our heavy tárantás up the steep, miry mountain road on what promised to be a dark and stormy night. With the coöperation of the station master, however, we found at last a man who was ready, for a suitable consideration, to make the attempt, and about an hour before dark we left Búkhtarmá for Alexandrófskaya with four "free" horses. We soon had occasion to regret that we had not taken the advice of our driver to stop at Búkhtarmá for the night and cross the mountains by daylight. The road was worse than any neglected wood-road in the mountains of West Virginia; and before we had made half the distance to Alexandrófskaya, night came on, with a violent storm accompanied by lightning, thunder, and heavy rain. Again and again we lost the road in the darkness; two or three times we became almost hopelessly mired in bogs and sloughs; and finally our tárantás capsized,
