Sketches of a Siberian Tourist

As I reached the ferry in my post-horse troika,19 it was already growing dark. A brisk and piercing wind rippled the surface of the broad and turbid river, splashing its waves against the steep banks. As the distant sound of the tinkling post-bells reached the ears of the ferrymen, they stopped the ferryboat and waited for us. Brakes were put on the wheels, the telyéga20 was driven downhill, and the cable unfastened. The waves dashed against the boarded sides of the ferryboat, the pilot sharply turned the wheel, and the shore gradually receded from us, as though yielding to the pressure of the waves.

There were two telyégas on the ferryboat, beside ours. In one of them sat an elderly, quiet-looking man, apparently belonging to the merchant class; the other was occupied by three fellows, unmistakably bourgeois. The merchant sat motionless, protecting himself by his collar from the piercing autumnal wind, and heedless of his travelling companions. The bourgeois, on the contrary, were jolly and talkative. One of them, a cross-eyed fellow, with a torn nostril, played the balaláïka21 incessantly, singing wild melodies in a harsh voice. But the wind soon dispersed these sharp tones, carrying them hither and thither along the swift and turbid stream. Another, with a brandy-flask and tumbler in his hand, was treating my driver; while the third, a man possibly thirty years of age, a healthy, handsome, and powerfully built fellow, was stretched out in the telyéga, with his hand under his head, pensively watching the gray clouds as they flitted across the sky. In the course of my two days' journey from the city of N -- -- , I had frequently encountered the same familiar faces. I was travelling on urgent business, speeding with the utmost haste; but both the merchant, who drove a plump mare, harnessed into a two-wheeled kibítka,22 and the bourgeois, with their lean hacks, constantly kept up with me, and after each stopping-place I met them, either on the way or at some ferry.