To the Chekhovs, 20 June 1890. Shilka, parokhod "Ermak".

20 June 1890. Shilka, steamer "Yermak."

20 June.

Hello, my dear household! At last I can take off my heavy, filthy boots, my worn trousers, and my blue shirt shiny with dust and sweat, and can wash and dress like a human being. I am no longer sitting in a tarantass but in a first-class cabin on the Amur steamer "Yermak." The change came ten days sooner than expected, and here is how. I wrote to you from Listvenichnaya that I had missed the Baikal steamer, that I would have to cross Baikal not on Tuesday but on Friday, and that I would therefore only reach the Amur steamer on 30 June. But fate is capricious and often plays tricks you don’t expect. On Thursday morning I went for a walk along the shore of Baikal; I see one of the two little steamers has smoke rising from its funnel. I ask where the steamer is going. They say "across the sea," to Klyuyevo; some merchant hired it to ferry his wagon train to the other shore. We too needed to go "across the sea," to Boyarskaya station. I ask how many versts it is from Klyuyevo to Boyarskaya. They answer: 27. I run to my companions and beg them to risk going to Klyuyevo. I say "risk" because in going to Klyuyevo, where there is nothing but a landing and the watchman’s hut, we risked not finding horses, getting stuck in Klyuyevo, and missing the Friday steamer, which for us would have been worse than the death of Igor, since we would have had to wait until Tuesday. My companions agreed. We gathered our belongings, strode to the steamer on cheerful legs, and made straight for the buffet: soup, for the love of the Creator! Half a kingdom for a plate of soup! The little buffet was quite wretched, built on the system of cramped water closets, but the cook, Grigory Ivanych, a former Voronezh house serf, proved equal to his calling. He fed us splendidly. The weather was calm and sunny. The water on Baikal is turquoise, clearer than the Black Sea. They say that in the deep places you can see the bottom for a verst; and I myself saw such depths, with cliffs and mountains drowned in turquoise, that it made the frost crawl over my skin. The sail across Baikal turned out marvelous, and I shall never forget it as long as I live. Only this was not good: we rode in third class, and the whole deck was taken up by the wagon-train horses, which raged like mad things. These horses gave my journey a particular color: it seemed I was sailing on a brigand’s steamer. At Klyuyevo the watchman undertook to haul our baggage to the station; he rode, while we walked behind the cart on foot along the most picturesque shore. That beast Levitan, for not coming with me. The road runs through forest: on the right, forest climbing the mountain, on the left, forest descending to Baikal. What ravines, what cliffs! The tone of Baikal is soft, warm. It was, incidentally, very warm. Having gone 8 versts, we reached Myskovaya station, where an official from Kyakhta, passing through, treated us to excellent tea, and where we were given horses to Boyarskaya. So instead of Friday we left on Thursday; more than that, we got a full day’s start ahead of the mail, which usually takes all the horses at the stations. We set off flat out, nursing the faint hope of reaching Sretensk by the 20th. How I rode along the shore of the Selenga and then across the Transbaikal I will tell you when we meet; for now I will only say that the Selenga is unbroken beauty, and in the Transbaikal I found everything I wanted: the Caucasus, and the valley of the Psyol, and Zvenigorod district, and the Don. By day you gallop through the Caucasus, by night through the Don steppe, and in the morning you wake from your doze and, lo, it’s Poltava province – and so for the whole thousand versts. Verkhneudinsk is a pretty little town, Chita a poor one, something like Sumy. As for sleep or dinners, there was of course no time to think of them. You gallop, you change horses at the stations, and think only that at the next station they may not give you horses and you’ll be held up five or six hours. We made two hundred versts a day – more is not possible in summer. We were stupefied. On top of it the heat was frightful, and at night the cold, so that over my woolen coat I had to put on a leather one; one night I even rode in a sheepskin. Well, we rode and rode, and this morning arrived in Sretensk exactly an hour before the steamer’s departure, having paid the drivers a ruble apiece for tea at the last two stations.

So my journey by horse-and-cart has ended. It lasted 2 months (I set out on 21 April). If you subtract the time spent on railways and steamers, the 3 days spent in Yekaterinburg, a week in Tomsk, a day in Krasnoyarsk, a week in Irkutsk, two days at Baikal, and the days spent waiting for boats during the flood, you can judge the speed of my travel. I have come through safely, as God grant everyone. I was not once ill, and of the whole mass of things I carried with me, I lost only a penknife, a strap off a trunk, and a small jar of carbolic ointment. My money is intact. To cover a thousand versts like that is given to few.

I have grown so used to travel by highway that I now feel somehow out of sorts, and can’t quite believe I am not in a tarantass and that there is no jingling harness bell to be heard. It is strange that, lying down to sleep, I can stretch my legs out full length and that my face is not covered in dust. But strangest of all is that the bottle of brandy Kuvshinnikov gave me has still not broken, and that the brandy is intact to the last drop. I promised to uncork it only on the shore of the Great Ocean.

I am sailing down the Shilka, which at Pokrovskaya stanitsa, joining the Argun, becomes the Amur. The river is no wider than the Psyol, even narrower. The banks are rocky: cliffs and forests. Utter wilderness. We tack about so as not to run aground or bang our stern against the bank. Steamers and barges often bang against the shoals at the rapids. It’s stifling. We just stopped at Ust-Kara, where they put ashore five or six convicts. There are mines there, and a convict prison.

Yesterday I was in Nerchinsk. Not much of a town, but one could live there.

And you, my good sirs and ladies, how are you getting on? I know absolutely nothing about you. You might club together ten kopecks apiece and send me a detailed telegram.

The steamer will spend the night at Gorbitsa. The nights here are foggy, dangerous for sailing. I’ll post this letter at Gorbitsa.

I am traveling in first class, because my companions are traveling in second. I’ve gotten away from them. We traveled together (three of us in one tarantass), slept together, and grew sick of each other – especially they of me.

Bows and greetings to everyone I know. I kiss Mamasha’s hand. Since Masha is in the Crimea, I am sending this letter addressed to Mamasha. Where is Ivan? Was Papasha at Luka on the 29th of June?

My handwriting is thoroughly vile, shaky. That’s because the steamer is shaking. It’s hard to write.

A break. I went to my lieutenants to drink tea. Both of them had slept well and were in good humor... One of them, Lieutenant Schmidt (a surname disagreeable to my ear), infantry, tall, well-fed, loud-voiced, a Courlander, a great braggart and a Khlestakov, singing snatches from every opera, but with less ear than a smoked herring, an unfortunate man who has run through his travel allowance, who knows Mickiewicz by heart, ill-bred, candid past all measure, and talkative to the point of nausea. Like Ivanenko, he loves to tell stories about his uncles and aunts. The other lieutenant, Meller, a topographer, is quiet, modest, and thoroughly intelligent. If it weren’t for Schmidt one could travel a million versts with him without boredom, but with Schmidt butting into every conversation, he too becomes tiresome. But why should you care about lieutenants? Not interesting.

Keep in the best of health. We are approaching Gorbitsa, it seems.

My heartfelt greetings to the Lintvaryovs. I will write to Papasha separately. I sent Alyosha an open letter from Irkutsk. Until we meet again! I wonder when this letter will reach you? Probably in 40 days, not sooner.

I embrace and bless you all. I have grown homesick.

Your A. Chekhov.

Tomorrow I will draw up the form of the telegram you are to send me at Sakhalin. I will try to fit into 30 words everything I need, and you try to keep strictly to the form.

The horseflies are biting.