It was to me, however, a source of great comfort,
that I was now kindly supplied with a Crown podorojna,
so that I might fairly reckon upon doing as well as
could be expected under the circumstances. During
the first 24 hours we covered 127 miles. The road to
Sergiopol lay almost due south from Semipolatinsk,
and for the first two stations presented a bare landscape,
relieved only here and there by a few auls or
collections of tents, and cattle of the Kirghese. Arka-
lyksk stood in the middle of a desert, at an altitude
of 950 feet, whence we passed on over vast plains
without a sign of life, and across a low range of hills,
rising to 1,280 feet.
We descended to 1,000 feet at Ashchikulsk, and rose
to 1,300 at Djertatsk, which we reached in the evening,
and then posted on through the night past Kazyl-
Mulinsk, 1,450 feet high, and then gradually mounted
to 1,700 feet at Arkadskiy (or Arcat). In the very
early dawn we passed the seventh station, and breakfasted
at the eighth, after which the road was so
intolerably dusty that we sometimes could not see the
horses’, heads. In the afternoon we approached Altyn-
Kalat, the frontier station between the provinces of
Semipolatinsk and Semirechia. Count Waldburg-
Zeil computed its height to be 2,133 feet, so that since
leaving Semipolatinsk, 750 feet, we had ascended
1,400 feet, and had reached the watershed of the
Chingiz-Tau, the western spur of the Tarbagatai,
which together send the rivers flowing north into the
Zaisan and Irtish, and those flowing south into Lakes
these the Treasury paid during the year ¿12,584. Further, in consequence
of the increased postal service with Turkistan, 34 stations were
augmented by 8 pairs for the first 3 months, and for the remainder of
the year by 4 pairs ; that is, from 272 to 136 pairs, for which were paid
¿8,639.
Balkhash and Ala-Kul. One of these latter, however,
the Ayaguz, has small pretensions in summer to a
river, for Sevier going to bathe therein found the
water only ankle-deep.
On reaching Sergiopol, on the banks of the Ayaguz
and surrounded by sands, we found that the good
offices of the Governor-General had preceded us in the
form of a telegram that horses should be in readiness.
It was Saturday night, however, and I had determined
to spend the Sunday there, expecting a larger town
than it afterwards proved to be, and intending to visit
the hospital and prison. Having, therefore, called
upon the chief military authority overnight, we slept at
the post-house, and went after breakfast to see the
military hospital, prison, and barracks. In this last
establishment I was pleased to find a modest library of
what seemed to me rather antiquated Russian books,
probably the remains of former days, when Sergiopol
had greater military significance than now.
I was glad to add thereto some copies of the
Scriptures and other publications, some of which I also
distributed in the hospital and prison. News of this
spread, and I was speedily visited first by the Russian
priest, who came to buy a Kirghese New Testament to
present to the mullah, and then by a Cossack schoolmistress,
in pretty Russian costume, and wearing the
national head-dress known as the kokoshnik, with which
I fell in lo v e ; so, when the young lady’s purchases
were completed, I ventured to ask her to sell it to me
for a curiosity. She gracefully declined my request,
but offered it as a gift. Accordingly, I made up its
value in printed matter, which here I found highly
prized, as everywhere else along my route.
At Semipolatinsk I could not learn that the Governor