468 FROM YENESEISK TO TOMSK 



This journey cost me forty roubles. We might easily 

 have made it in twelve hours less, but the steamer from 

 Tomsk leaving only at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 30th, 

 we preferred to take it easy. We were never absolutely 

 stopped for horses, but we travelled under difficulties, for 

 six horses had been reserved by telegraph at each station 

 for General Sievers, who was on his way from Irkutsk, 

 bent on catching the steamer for which we were bound. 

 Early one morning we were told at one of the stations 

 that there were no horses, not even for our crown 

 padarozhnaya. We had, however, long ago reached that 

 chronic state of stoical imperturbability into which all old 

 travellers finally drift, and had ordered the samovar, and 

 •were discussing our second cup of tea, when a Cossack 

 rode up full gallop, bearing orders from the Ispravnik of 

 the town lying thirty miles behind, to the effect that the 

 General might go to Hong Kong, but the Englishman 

 must have the horses. 



At Tomsk we found a capital hotel, the " European," 

 kept by a one-armed Pole, and we spent a pleasant 

 evening with one of the telegraph officers with whom my 

 travelling companion was acquainted. Here we learned 

 that Captain Wiggins had sold the wreck of the Thames 

 for six thousand roubles. I afterwards learned that the 

 Yeneseisk merchants who bought her were successful in 

 saving her in the spring, but that they made the mistake 

 of attempting to tow her up to Yeneseisk. After a series 

 of disasters she was finally stranded on a sandbank, where 

 it was impossible to save her when the ice broke up. 

 She was accordingly dismantled, and what was left of her 

 abandoned. 



