At Piánoyarófskaya we left the Semipalátinsk road and the valley of the Írtish, and, turning to the northward, crossed the low divide which separates the water-shed of the Írtish from that of the Ob, and entered the province of Tomsk. A large quantity of rain had fallen, and had been followed by a comfortable temperature; but the muddy roads hindered us, and the post-stations, where we got very little to eat, were filthy and swarming with bedbugs. In the stations of Shemanáiefskaya and Saüshkina, after vainly attempting to sleep, I sat up and wrote throughout the whole of two nights, killing fifteen or twenty bedbugs each night on my writing-table. The lack of proper food, the constant jolting, and the impossibility of getting any sleep, soon reduced us to an extremely jaded and exhausted condition, and when we reached the town of Barnaül, Friday afternoon, August 14, after an almost sleepless journey of ninety-six hours, I was hardly able to sit up.
Barnaül is a large town of 17,000 inhabitants, and is the center of the rich and important mining district of the Altái. It contains an unusual number of pretentious dwelling-houses and residences with columns and imposing facades, but most of them have fallen into decay. They were erected many years ago, at a time when a mining officer of the Crown in Barnaül received 2000 or 3000 rubles a year as salary, and stole 100,000 rubles a year by means of "cooked" accounts, and when, according to tradition, he paid twice the amount of his own salary to a French governess for his children, and as much more to a French culinary chef, and sent his soiled linen to Paris by mail to be washed and starched.
The mines of the Altái are, for the most part, the private property of the Tsar. In the nine years from 1870 to 1879 they produced 6984 pounds of gold, 206,964 pounds of silver, 9,639,620 pounds of copper, and 13,221,396 pounds of lead. A large part of the gold and silver ore is smelted in Barnaül.
