All things considered, there is not much to complain of in the culinary department, but the service is enough to blunt the keenest appetite in the world. Everything is cold, dirty, and miserable. A good beefsteak is put on the table hot, but you have to wait twenty minutes for something to eat with it; then knives and forks are wanting, and when you flatter yourself all is in order, and you begin your dinner, salt is found to be missing. All that can be tolerated, but oh take care of the eggs! In Siberia they keep a stock of these in a fossil state for the entertainment of the unwary, for probably no Russian would be so green as to ask for them. At first we doubted whether Russians recognised any difference between a new-laid egg, and one that had been addled for six months. But, whatever their own proclivities may be, they do know a fresh egg when they see it. We succeeded at last in getting some only "suspicious," by taking hold of the boy in a menacing manner, and vowing that we would dash in his face every bad egg he should bring to us. In a building separate from the hotel is a dining-room and tap-room, as also a billiard-room, with two tables. This part of the establishment is almost entirely monopolised by military officers, who play billiards all the morning, dine at the table d'hôte at 2 o'clock, and continue billiard-playing all the afternoon. Their billiard-cues have no leather tips, and the one table we attempted to play on was so uneven, from about twenty patches in the cloth, that we soon tired of seeing the balls steeple-chasing across the table. The dining-room is a large oblong, the walls covered with pictures of gentlemen in cocked hats and epaulettes, in a very low gaudy style of art. In the centre of one wall is a full-length portrait of the present emperor, which, with all its artistic defects, is nevertheless a fair likeness of his Imperial Majesty. The Russians are a loyal race, and naturally fond of pictures, whether of saints, or tsars, or heroes. At the Amoor Hotel, I was greatly pleased to meet a friend and countryman who was travelling from St. Petersburg to China. The effect of this unexpected meeting was exhilarating, and I don't know whether it gave us most pleasure to recount the circumstances of our journey from China, or to hear our friend's experiences of that part of the road homewards which still lay before us. We certainly had no comfortable news to give each other. In exchange for the horrors of the road through Western Siberia, we threw in the picture of what a month's ride across the Mongolian steppes in November would be.