For meals, one dashes out during the station-stops, and before the third bell gives warning of the start, devours meat-filled _piroushkies_ and swallows lemon-tinctured tea at the long buffet-tables decked with hollow squares of wine-bottles, and beer from the seven breweries of Irkutsk. If one has a teapot he can get boiling water from the government-furnished samovar, and milk from the peasant-women who stand in booths hard-by. He can add salt fish and hot fowl, together with rye-bread and butter, and then consume his rations at leisure in the compartment. At night the seats are let down, and one sleeps in fitful naps among the hills of baggage. When morning comes, an hour-long procession forms to take turns at the wash-bowl with its trickle valve, in a towelless, soapless, and cindered lavatory. We leave Irkutsk at ten in the morning, and reach Verhneudinsk at seven next day, covering in twenty-one hours the 446 versts. Here is the last of the railroad. With troika, sledge, and tarantass, by highway and byway, over frozen rivers and camel-tracked trails, we must now follow the old road into the heart of Asia. The post-station that serves as point of departure for the sledge journey lies some distance away, at the edge of the town. An _isvoschik_, after due bargaining, proceeds to transfer thither us and our dunnage-bags. As we ride through the town, just waking for the day, the streets, the lamps, the telegraph-wires, the comfortable houses,--each and every symbol of civilization takes on a new significance now that it is to be left behind. On the parade-grounds the recruits are at the morning drill, shouting lustily in unison, “_Ras, dva, tre!_” to keep the step. We pass the barracks, the shops with their brightly illustrated signs, and ride under the wooden yellow-painted Alexander Arch. [Illustration: BAIKAL STATION] [Illustration: THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA] Soon we reach a street of low log houses, and a lofty boarded enclosure is ahead. At its gateway is swinging a black signboard, painted with post-horn and the Czar’s double-headed eagle. “_Postava Stancie_,” is inscribed over the lintel. Between the black and white-striped gate-posts we swing into the courtyard. To the left stretches a low log house. To the right, along the wall, are ranked sledges. In front are the stalls. Grooms, whip in hand, stand around in the courtyard, muffled against the cold. “Is the _gaspadine_ going on?” one of them asks. On the reply, “Yes, at once,” he scurries off to start harnessing, and you shoulder open the low felted door of the post-house and enter the big waiting-room. “Three horses?” asks the young black-mustached agent within. “Yes, a troika sledge.” He turns to the book of registry attached to the rough table by a long cord fastened with a big red seal, and begins to write. “The name?” he asks. It goes down. “The destination?” “The Chinese frontier at Kiahta.”