TOMSK 115 



have been practised during the building of the line 

 I am" unable to give any reliable information; but, 

 in a conversation last winter with an English mer- 

 chant, who had been visiting Russia and Siberia 

 annually for the last twenty years, I was told to be 

 sure to mention in my book, when I came to write 

 it, the bribery and corruption that was resorted to 

 by the engineers, and their atteiHpts to extort money 

 froffi the municipal authorities of the towns near 

 the line; it being asserted that there are records 

 at certain places, which are now far away from the 

 line, of the amounts the authorities of these towns 

 had refused to give for the privilege of having the 

 line carried through them'. Whether these stories be 

 true or not I was unable to verify, and give them' 

 just for what they are worth; moreover, as I visited 

 Siberia for other reasons than to find fault, I did 

 not niake very careful inquiries about things of that 

 kind. We can indeed find a sufficient number of 

 cases of bribery in connection with Government con- 

 tracts in England, as was revealed during the South 

 African War, without tnaking special search for them 

 amongst other nations. 



The Siberian Hotel at Tomsk, where we staiyed, 

 is well built, but, as usual, the supply of water is 

 scanty. There were no bedclothes. The tarakans, 

 which I found awaiting our arrival in the bedroom, 

 were, on the other hand, sufficiently plentiful. The 

 tarakan is not so common as that other member of the 

 creeping fraternity for which it has sometimes been 

 m:istaken. It is a small and fragile variety of cock- 

 roach. It has three legs on each side of the body and 

 two feelers. I was quite impressed with the tickling 

 capacity of the latter. Its legs are long and enable 

 it to run at great speed; two or three hundred will 

 race across the floor together at a terrific rate and 

 vanish under the wallpaper or down a chink in the 



