came to him with letters of introduction; but he did not open his doors to people whom nobody knew anything about, and the best thing we could do, in her opinion, was to go back to Tróitskosávsk. As we had no letters of introduction, and as the young woman refused to open the gate or hold any further parley with us, there was obviously nothing for us to do but to recognize the soundness of her judgment and take her advice. We therefore climbed into our teléga, drove back to Tróitskosávsk, and finally succeeded in finding there a Polish exile named Klembótski, who kept a bakery and who had a few rooms that he was willing to rent, even to travelers who were not provided with letters of introduction. As it was after ten o'clock, and as we despaired of finding a better place, we ordered our baggage taken to one of Mr. Klembótski's rooms. It did not prove to be a very cheerful apartment. The floor was made of rough-hewn planks, the walls were of squared logs chinked with hemp-fibers, there was no furniture except a pine table, three stained pine chairs, and a narrow wooden couch or bedstead, and all guests were expected to furnish their own bedding. After a meager supper of tea and rolls we lay down on the hard plank floor and tried to get to sleep, but were forced, as usual, to devote a large part of the night to researches and investigations in a narrowly restricted and uninteresting department of entomology. Thursday forenoon we hired a peculiar Russian variety of Irish jaunting-car, known in Siberia as a dálgúshka, and set out for Kiákhta, where we intended to call upon a wealthy Russian tea-merchant named Lúshnikof, who had been recommended to us by friends in Irkútsk.
Tróitskosávsk, Kiákhta, and Maimáchin are situated in a shallow and rather desolate valley, beside a small stream that falls into the Selengá River. The nearly parallel and generally bare ridges that form this valley limit the vision in every direction except to the southward, where, over the housetops and gray wooden walls of Maimáchin, one may
