Our boat occasionally came to anchor, either to get wood for fuel, or at the two or three halting-stations provided. The Ostiaks would then come on board, paddling up in their wretched boats (_yaliks_) made of bark, and would offer fish for barter. They hardly seemed to understand the use of money, for when asked the price of a fish, they would only answer with the one word “roup,” meaning “rouble,” and would then gratefully accept a copper coin though a piece of bread or a little tobacco would elicit much more joy. These people had a most pitiable appearance, and were treated with the utmost contempt by our boatmen and the soldiers, who usually addressed them all as “Vanka” (Johnny), which they accepted quite calmly. Sometimes we saw their huts in the distance, cone-shaped structures, the framework made of branches, the walls of birch-bark or reindeer skins. Except the capital town of Tobolsk, situated at the junction of the Tobol with the great Irtisch, throughout the length of some thousand versts we only passed two inhabited places dignified with the name of towns—Surgut and Narim. Here, and at Berèsov, on the northern coast of the continent, some of our “administratives” were to take up their abode. We parted from them at Tobolsk. The conditions of life in some of these places of exile may be guessed at from our glimpses of them. A “town” of this sort consists of some dozen wooden huts, the inhabitants of which are usually a mixed race, Russian and native. These people make out a livelihood with difficulty, subsisting almost exclusively on fish. An educated man must find existence in such a place unspeakably miserable; yet the Russian Government sends even minors here. I know a young girl who at the age of seventeen was exiled to Berèsov, and had to languish there for twelve years. Fortunately, none of the women in our company were destined for these waste places of the earth. When we began to go up the Obi there was scarcely any change of scene, but ever the same hopeless wastes. Our little company had much diminished; our choir was disbanded; and life on the barge was quiet and monotonous as we slowly glided on to Tomsk. This town, which counts as one of the liveliest in Siberia, only harboured at this time a very small number of political exiles. When we arrived, two of them came at once on to our barge, burning with curiosity to see who we were, and to have news from home; and they unexpectedly found acquaintances among our party. One young lady I had known six years before; she stared at me now, and would scarcely believe that the shorn convict was the same man she had known under such different circumstances. “You are so changed, so changed!” she kept saying thoughtfully.