Ibex Shooting in the Thian Shan Mountains 



a baggage wagon for our outfit and men, for we 

 engaged here as servant and cook a man who 

 could speak Russian and Kirghiz, and who proved 

 most excellent. A tarantas has a body built on 

 poles stretched between the front and back axles, 

 without springs of any kind, except such as are 

 furnished by the yielding of the poles, which is not 

 much, and has a hood like a mail phaeton, with a 

 place at the back for a trunk, as well as a seat for 

 the driver. It is drawn by three horses put to in 

 the usual Russian fashion, with the center horse 

 trotting in the shafts, the other two galloping. 

 The tarantas for the servants and luggage was 

 longer and fitted with a canvas cover, like an old- 

 fashioned prairie schooner. 



The road to Kuldja and the Przevalsk is a post 

 road, the charge being three kopecks per horse per 

 verst, with a few kopecks to the driver. A kopeck 

 is one-half cent; a verst, two-thirds of a mile. This 

 includes a tarantas, but we had our own, to save 

 time and trouble in changing luggage at each post 

 house, as we usually did five or six stages a day. 

 The road is both dusty and rough; so rough, in 

 fact, that some quinine pills in a bottle were re- 

 duced to powder although packed in a medicine 

 case in my trunk, the medicine case being rolled 

 in flannel underclothes while the long lines of 



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