CHAPTER IX OMSK As Omsk, unlike so many other towns of Siberia, did not care to pay the usual toll demanded by the railway prospectors, it is situated several versts from the main trunk line.

I, for my part, have walked many a thousand versts from village to village, and have been glad to live the peasant-pilgrim's life.

All the proper names, no matter how unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;I don't know what a verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia.

If we had been three-quarters of an hour in losing two versts, how long would be we in losing versts enough to get back to the place from which we started.

From Steinbach, which lay a few versts out of the direct road, they proceeded to Stuttgardt, and the next day, the 6th, to Neuhoffnung, where they were accommodated at a farmer's, and had the comfort of a good clean apartment and kind attention to their wants.

Samit led Ammalát among the bushes, over the river, and having passed about half a verst among stones, began to descend.

Mounted on his fiery Tchinovick (a Circassian mustang) he had ridden into the heart of the hostile position, and with one stroke of his Pen (a sort of Russian scimetar with a jewelled hilt) he had captured a convoy containing three thousand Versts (a sort of condensed food), intended for the consumption of the opposing Army.

Determined to accomplish something, however little, Bush sent these six men to a point on the Myan River, about seventy-five versts from Anadyrsk, and set them at work on snow-shoes cutting poles along the route of the line.

We had hoped to reach the Aklán by night, but the day was so short and the road so bad that we travelled five hours after dark, and then had to stop ten versts south of the river.

Since leaving Gizhiga we had travelled nearly three hundred versts, had found only four places where we could obtain poles, and had passed only three settlements.

That was in the time of the couriers, of the post horses, and thanks to its powers that official exeat cleared away all difficulties, assured the most rapid relays, the most amiable civilities from the postilions, the greatest rapidity of transport, and that to such a pitch that a well-recommended traveler could traverse in eight days five hours the two thousand seven hundred versts which separate Tiflis from Petersburg.

This army had been compelled to retire some 60 versts the very day we were discussing an advance on Perm, and its present position was none too secure.

I count the versts which lie between us.

While squatting out on the ground during the storm of the previous night, snow in great quantities had blown in at his neck, had partially melted with the warmth of his body, and had then frozen again in a mass of ice along his whole spine, and in that condition he had lived to be driven twenty versts.

These banditti, known in England as Bolsheviks, are entrenched not more than 60 versts distant, protected from Koltchak's vengeance by the deep snows of the Siberian winter, which make it impossible to operate away from the railway.