OMSK 267 



St. Petersburg, had given me a letter of introduction to 

 Professor Slofftzoff, who found for us a friend of his, 

 Mr. Hanson, a Dane, to act as an interpreter. Professor 

 Slofftzoff is an enthusiastic naturalist. He showed us a 

 small collection of birds in the museum. Amono- these 

 were several which have not hitherto been recorded east 

 of the Ural Mountains, for example the blackcap, the 

 garden-warbler, and the icterine warbler ; but as there 

 are no special labels with these specimens to authenticate 

 the localities, the fact of their really having been shot in the 

 neighbourhood of Omsk must be accepted with hesitation. 

 In museums which profess to be local only, birds from 

 distant localities continually creep in by accident, and many 

 errors in geographical distribution are thus propagated. 



I gave the Professor some Sheffield cutlery in ex- 

 change for a curiously inlaid pipe of mammoth-ivory and 

 a flint and steel, the latter inlaid with silver and precious 

 stones. He told me that both were made by the Buriats 

 in the Transbaikal country, but the pipe is not to be 

 distinguished from those made on the tundras of the 

 north, and I suspect it to be of Samoyede origin. 



Twenty years ago Omsk was only a village ; now it 

 has thirty to forty thousand inhabitants. This increase 

 is very largely accounted for by the fact that the seat of 

 government has in the meantime been removed thither 

 from Tobolsk. From Omsk to Tomsk is 877 versts, or 

 585 miles, which we accomplished in eighty-five hours, 

 including stoppages — an average of 10^ versts an hour. 

 We changed horses thirty-seven times. We had now 

 got into the full swing of sledge travelling : snow, wind, 

 rain, sunshine, day, night, good roads, bad roads — nothing 

 stopped us ; on we went like the wandering Jew, only 

 with this difference, that we had a fixed goal. However 

 rough the road might be, I could now sleep as soundly 



