This journey from the camp to Tomsk, performed under the lashes and
spear-points of the soldiers, proved fatal to many, and terrible to all.
The prisoners traveled across the steppe, over a road made
still more dusty by the passage of the Emir and his vanguard.
Orders had been given to march rapidly. The short halts were rare.
The hundred miles under a burning sky seemed interminable,
though they were performed as rapidly as possible.
The country, which extends from the right of the Obi to
the base of the spur detached from the Sayanok Mountains,
is very sterile. Only a few stunted and burnt-up shrubs
here and there break the monotony of the immense plain.
There was no cultivation, for there was no water; and it was water
that the prisoners, parched by their painful march, most needed.
To find a stream they must have diverged fifty versts eastward,
to the very foot of the mountains.
There flows the Tom, a little affluent of the Obi, which passes near
Tomsk before losing itself in one of the great northern arteries.
There water would have been abundant, the steppe less arid,
the heat less severe. But the strictest orders had been given
to the commanders of the convoy to reach Tomsk by the shortest way,
for the Emir was much afraid of being taken in the flank and cut
off by some Russian column descending from the northern provinces.
It is useless to dwell upon the sufferings of the unhappy prisoners.
Many hundreds fell on the steppe, where their bodies would lie
until winter, when the wolves would devour the remnants of their bones.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233