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THROUGH SIBERIA
rich finds of gold they had just made farther up in the
mountains. But no one has since found that gold.
That night I was the guest of the engineer, Barkovski,
and his amiable wife. Barkovski, who is superintend
ing the building of the bridge over the Buréya, showed
me some remarkable curves of the water-level in this
river. After heavy rainfall in the mountains above,
it may rise 6 feet or so in a few hours, and the rise occurs
so suddenly that it is liable to be dangerous. In April
last the river rose nearly 23 feet in a few days, and then
fell again even more rapidly. It is obvious that in
such conditions bridge construction is not easy, and
the work has therefore to proceed in the winter for
choice, when the water-level is constant and the frost
can also be turned to account. A river with such a
powerful stream and subject to such great floods will
naturally have great excavating power, and thus it
often runs through such deep ravines higher up.
Sunday, October 12. We had now come so far that
the railway line westward was to a great extent finished,
or at any rate could be used, and from the Buréya we went
by train for a while ; but then we came to a place where
the rails were not yet laid, as they were short of them,
and we had to go on by motor-car again over the plains
to a new station, from which there was a train. Here,
then, we were to say good-bye to our kind hosts of the
Buréya, but the farewell in the railway carriage looked
like being quite a solemn affair ; all the engineers were
present, and the engineer of the Buréya section, Mr.
Alfred Augustovich Klare, made me a speech in German,
in which he said that after travelling through the Amiir
District and seeing the construction of the new line and
viewing this great country, I had now arrived at the
track which without interruption, except at one or two
bridges, would carry me all the way to Petersburg ;
402
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