Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/373

For a day or two after we crossed the Angará we saw nothing of particular interest. In several villages through which we passed between Cherómka and Nízhni Údinsk the étapes were evidently occupied by exile parties; but we did not happen to see such a party on the march until Wednesday, and it came upon us then very suddenly and unexpectedly. The day was cold and stormy, with a high wind and flying snow, and we were lying half buried in our sheepskin bag, watching for the next verst-post. The atmosphere was so thick with snowflakes that we could not see the road distinctly for a greater distance than seventy-five or one hundred yards, and the party of exiles was fairly upon us before we discovered that it was not — as we at first supposed — a train of obózes, or freight-sleighs. I was not absolutely sure of its nature until the head of the column was so near us that I could make out the muskets of the advance-guard of Cossacks and hear the familiar clinking of the prisoners' leg-fetter chains. I then ordered our yamshchík to drive out into the deep snow at one side of the road and there stop. The general appearance of the party, as it passed us, was very different from the appearance of the similar party whose departure from Tomsk we had watched in August. Then the convicts were all in their light summer costume of gray, their faces were black with sunburn, and they were enveloped in a cloud of fine yellow dust raised by their shuffling, slipper-clad feet from the powdery road. The exiles before us were all dressed in reddish pólu-shúbas, or short overcoats of sheepskin, and bródnias, or high-topped leather boots; their faces were pallid from long confinement in the Tomsk forwarding prison, and they were wading slowly and laboriously through fresh-fallen snow. The order of march was the same as in the summer, but on account of the storm and the condition of the road there seemed to be some relaxation of discipline, and a good deal of straggling and disorder. The dress of the marching convicts consisted of the usual gray Tam o' Shanter cap, with a