1 68 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



dearing " thou," instead of the more formal "you," in 

 talking to him. 



At Novo-Moskovski we once again came under the 

 meddlesome suspicions of the police. The " lion " of 

 Novo-Moskovski was a wooden church with nine small 

 domes, which had been put together without using a 

 single nail. Everything was done by dovetailing and 

 with wooden pins. We were looking at this church, 

 after having put up our horses at the postayali dvor, 

 when up stepped a police officer and demanded to see 

 our passports. They were, of course, declared to be 

 "irregular." Mine was not in language that they 

 could understand, and Sascha's house-that-Jack-built 

 document was no passport at all. 



Though an ispravnik, and several " niks " higher in 

 the scale of the Tchin than our useful friends the uriad- 

 niks, this official was afraid to peep into the little 

 view-finder of my Kamaret, and he was thoroughly 

 mystified by the pictures in a copy of an American 

 magazine, which he discovered in my saddle-bags. 

 His suspicions of this magazine were, indeed, so remark- 

 ably comical that it was with great difficulty I could 

 keep my countenance. He demanded 'a minute ex- 

 planation of several plans of Japanese theaters that it 

 contained, evidently suspecting that they might be 

 plans of Russian forts. 



Another of his suspicions was directed at a Russian 

 cap which the writer had found preferable in the hot 

 sun, to the one I might otherwise have worn. The 

 fact that a foreigner was wearing a Russian cap smote 

 him as an additional reason why we should be 

 regarded with suspicion, and subjected to annoyance. 



