THROUGH ASIA 
38 
the last to Tashkencl. We joined company as far as Orsk, 
and shortly afterwards our three heavily-laden troikas set 
off from the station-house. The road to Kamenaya 
Osernaya was hilly and heavy, but later on the country 
became leveller, the snowstorm abated, and the road was 
often bare. On the way to Gherial we met the first way- 
farers we had fallen in with ; namely a caravan of a 
hundred camels or so, conveying bales of cotton from 
Orsk to Orenburg. The train with its Kirghiz attendants 
made a very picturesque appearance in the desolate land- 
scape. About this time the axle of one of the post-telegas 
came to grief, and the vehicle had to be left behind. My 
luggage, too, owing to the incessant chafing and shaking, 
got loose and had to be re-fastened. The sky was cloudy; 
it was blowing, but not snowing. The temperature was 
27° 5 Fahr. (-2°5 C.). The river Ural was not yet 
visible, but we crossed several of its tributaries by means 
of small wooden bridges. There were numerous small 
stanitsas (forts) in the neighbourhood, garrisoned by 
Orenburg Cossacks. 
At Krasnogornaya, which we reached at daybreak, we 
stopped for breakfast. The postilion, a stalwart, shaggy 
old Russian, bemoaned that it was a fast day, when all flesh, 
with the exception of fish, is forbidden. Great therefore 
was his surprise and delight when I offered him a tin 
of preserved sturgeon. He made alarmingly short work 
of it, and consumed eleven glasses of tea in a quarter of 
an hour. He told me, that during the past twenty years 
he had made the journey to and fro between Orenburg and 
Orsk (175 miles) thirty-five times a year — that is to say, 
a distance which exceeds the space between the earth 
and the moon by more than six thousand miles. 
In Verkhne Osernaya, a large village, with a church 
in the middle, prettily situated near a ravine, the women 
were offering for sale shawls woven of goats’-wool. They 
resembled Kashmir shawls, and could be pulled through 
a ring. 
Steppes! Nothing but steppes, though there were 
mountains in the distance. The road followed the frozen, 
