470 FROM TOMSK TO PERM 



disgraced an English dockyard. As we were going on 

 board we met an old acquaintance, the secretary of old 

 Von Gazenkampf of Turukansk, and we arranged to take 

 a private second-class cabin for us three. The price was 

 fifty roubles (about £2 each at the then rate of exchange), 

 which, for a journey of 3200 versts, or upwards of 2000 

 miles, was very cheap. For our luggage we paid at the 

 rate of one rouble per pood, or about eight shillings per cwt. 

 Our meals were served in our own room, and we had an 

 excellent dinner, consisting of five courses, for a rouble each. 



We had an excellent cook on board, and had an 

 opportunity of tasting the celebrated Siberian fishes to 

 perfection. Fried sterlet is undoubtedly one of the finest 

 dishes that can be put upon the table; it reminds one 

 both of trout and eel, but possesses a delicacy superior 

 to either. Nyelma, or white salmon, is, I think, an 

 over-rated fish; to my taste, it is immeasurably inferior to 

 pink salmon. What it might turn out in the hands of an 

 English cook I do not know. Our cook on board was 

 the best I had met in Russia. He could fry to perfection, 

 but his roasts and his boils were not up to the mark ; 

 they evoked a suspicion that he had tried to kill two 

 birds with one stone. His boiled meat had been stewed 

 with an idea of making as much soup out of it as he 

 dared, and his roast joints never underwent destructive 

 combustion in any part; they were only a shade better 

 than boiled meat browned with some piquante sauce. 



On the 3rd of September we had left the Tom and 

 the Ob and were steaming up the Irtish, before long to 

 enter the Tobol and afterwards the Tura. At noon on 

 Wednesday we spent a couple of hours at Tobolsk, a fine 

 old city with many interesting churches. Part of the 

 town is built upon a hill, and part on the plain. It was 

 formerly the capital of western Siberia, but since the 



