Presently you push the bell labeled, “Konduktor.” A uniformed attendant appears standing at the salute. “_Spate_” (sleep) is sufficient direction. The sheets and pillows are dug out and the transformation of the couch into a bed is effected. “_Spacoine notche_” (good-night) he says, and you fall asleep to the rhythmic throb of the engine. During the following hours the train enters the Tobolsk Government, the oldest province of Siberia, whose 439,859 square miles of area, nearly four times as large as Prussia, extend roughly from the railroad northward to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Urals eastward so as to include the lower basin of the Ob-Irtish river system. This ancient province has seen much of Siberia’s history, whose predominant features have been two, growth and graft. [Illustration: BRIDGE OVER THE IRTISH] [Illustration: ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY] Out of evil, somehow, in a marvelous way has been coming good. In the earliest days, with what smug satisfaction did the Stroganovs find that the native inhabitants would trade ermine for glass beads! Yet the fruit of their sharp dealing and purchased protection and special privilege was the expedition that won Sibir, founded Tobolsk, and opened to Russia the way into northern Asia. The imperial commissioner who came to Tobolsk shortly after Kutchum Khan’s overthrow, to collect the yassak tribute of ten sable-skins for each married man and five for each bachelor, was detected culling the choice skins for himself, and substituting cheap ones for his master. But his agents had sought out the paths and extended the Russian Empire far into the northern forests. By despotic oppression the inhabitants of Uglitch town, condemned for testifying to the murder of Dimitri, the Czarevitch, came here into exile in 1593, carrying with them the tocsin-bell that had tolled alarm when the Czar wished silence. But they, together with the deported laborers settled by the same arbitrary will along the Tobol River, started the permanent settlement of the new realm. A succeeding functionary called on the natives for a special tribute of ermine for the Czarina’s mantle. He collected so many bales of it that the taxed began to wonder at the stature of the “Little Mother,” and sent a special deputy to Petersburg. The legate discovered that the Empress was as other women, and on his disclosures the official was unable to save his own, let alone the ermines’ skins. Yet while the governor was plundering the fur-merchants of Tobolsk, the frontiers were extending, until by 1700 they reached eastward to Kamchatka and Lake Baikal, southeast to the Altai foothills at Kuznetz, and north to the Arctic Ocean.