Then having ordered that Michael, carefully bound and guarded,
should be carried on to Tomsk with the other prisoners, he took
command of the troops at Zabediero, and, amid the deafening
noise of drums and trumpets, he marched towards the town
where the Emir awaited him.
CHAPTER IV THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY
TOMSK, founded in 1604, nearly in the heart of the Siberian provinces,
is one of the most important towns in Asiatic Russia. Tobolsk, situated
above the sixtieth parallel; Irkutsk, built beyond the hundredth meridian--
have seen Tomsk increase at their expense.
And yet Tomsk, as has been said, is not the capital of this
important province. It is at Omsk that the Governor-General
of the province and the official world reside. But Tomsk
is the most considerable town of that territory. The country
being rich, the town is so likewise, for it is in the center
of fruitful mines. In the luxury of its houses, its arrangements,
and its equipages, it might rival the greatest European capitals.
It is a city of millionaires, enriched by the spade and pickax,
and though it has not the honor of being the residence of the
Czar's representative, it can boast of including in the first
rank of its notables the chief of the merchants of the town,
the principal grantees of the imperial government's mines.
But the millionaires were fled now, and except for the crouching poor,
the town stood empty to the hordes of Feofar-Khan. At four o'clock the
Emir made his entry into the square, greeted by a flourish of trumpets,
the rolling sound of the big drums, salvoes of artillery and musketry.
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