In the years after the ukase of Paul I, ordering that all officers who had made themselves notorious for lack of education or training should be sent to the Siberian garrisons, it may be imagined what a Gomorrah grew up under the Russian banners. Modern celebrations are by comparison mild and temperate, as the cold beyond these double windows is mild and temperate to that outside the Tunguses’ huts, in the Yakutsk Province. But it is fairly impressive, nevertheless. Even in a Siberian hotel, the world goes to bed sometime. By four o’clock the music has stopped, and the traveler is tired enough to sleep on even the populous plank-bottomed bed. Thus do all things work together to weave the “web of life.” It is nearing noon when one wakes to eat a combination of breakfast and lunch, and plan for the day. The Post-Office and the Bank are the first material objectives. One must register so that mail may be delivered. We go down and join two companions of the road. With careful directions from the porter, the party prepares for the half-mile walk to the Post-Office. The preliminaries are formidable in themselves. First the felt goloshes must be pulled over the shoes; then the big fur overcoat must be swung on and carefully buttoned down its length. Finally a fur cap, like a grenadier’s, with ear-flaps is tied, and great fleece-lined gloves are donned. The droshky-drivers assembled before the hotel seem to take it as an insult to their profession that we elect to walk, and two or three follow along outside the curb until the group reaches the corner and turns into the main street, Bolshoiskaia. [Illustration: A CHAPEL BOLSHOISKAIA IN IRKUTSK] There is an air of placid quiescence at this noon hour. The policeman at the nearest corner is ruminatingly handling his sabre-hilt, and watching the sleighs go by. Here and there a woman, with the ubiquitous gray shawl over her head, passes, with a preoccupied air. Sheepskin-clad mujiks are driving along, with sledge-loads of firewood or stiffly-frozen carcasses, on their way to the bazaar markets. The shop-windows attract our gaze. Here is one with the word “_Apteka_” over the door, which is to say, Apothecary. Benches are set in front of it, on which one may sit and watch the people pass, as in the chairs before a New England country tavern. Further along is a solidly built white department store, the Warsawski Magazine, wherein one can get all manner of apparel,--shawls of the latest Irkutsk pattern, towels and soap, and--most important--blankets for the trip into the interior. We stroll in for a moment. An individual looking like a stalwart Chinaman, with long braided queue, shoulders his way past us to buy some cloth. “He is a Buriat of the tribe north of Irkutsk,” explains one of the shop-girls, very close herself in type to those seen at Wanamaker’s in Manhattan.