The _samovar_, or Russian tea-urn, is boiling in the great room. While I am drinking my first glass of tea the stamping and rattle is heard of two other teams which roll into the yard. It is the post; and the courier enters covered with snow and with icicles on his beard. He is a good fellow, and we become acquainted at once and travel together to Orsk. He has travelled for twenty years with the mails between the two towns and must have covered altogether a distance as far as from the earth to the moon and six thousand miles besides. My new driver now appears and calls out "The _troika_[8] is ready." Then I pack myself in again among the cushions and rugs and off we speed once more through the darkness and snow. After forty-eight hours we are in Orsk, which also stands on the Ural River; and when we leave this town with fresh horses and steer southwards we are on Asiatic ground, in the vast Kirghiz Steppe, which extends from Irkutsk to the Caspian Sea, from the Ural River to the Syr-darya.[9] It is extremely flat and looks like a frozen sea. Day after day we drive southwards, the horses ready to run away; there is nothing to drive over, no ditches to fall into, no stones to carry away a wheel. The hoofs hammer on the hard ground, the wheels creak, I and my things are shaken and thrown about in the carriage, the coachman plants his feet firmly against the foot-board lest he should tumble off, and on we go over the flat dreary steppe. As we drive on day and night the _tarantass_ seems always to be in the centre of the same unbroken landscape, always at the same distance from the horizon. Here live the Kirghizes, a fine race of graziers and horsemen. They support themselves by their large flocks of sheep, and also own numerous horses and camels, as well as cattle. Therefore they are dependent on the grass of the steppe, and wander like other nomads from pasture to pasture. When their flocks have eaten up the grass at one place, they roll up their black tents, pack all their belongings on camels and migrate to another spot. They are a freeborn, manly people and love the boundless steppe. Life in the open air and on the level country, which affords grazing to their flocks, has sharpened their intellect to a wonderful degree. They never forget a place they have once seen. If the steppe plants grow closer or thinner, if the ground shows the slightest inequality, if there is grey or black gravel of different coarseness--all these details serve as marks of recognition. When we rest a minute halfway between two post-houses to let the horses breathe, the Kirghiz driver turns round and says, "Yonder rides a Kirghiz on a dappled mare." Yet on directing my field-glass towards the indicated spot, I can only see a small dot, and cannot distinguish what it is.