officialdom in Minusinsk. We duly made acquaintance with the Uesdy Nachalnick or local authority, who is an official appointed in each district and responsible to the governor of the province. In the absence of local representative institutions in Siberia he corresponds to our County Council, Standing Joint Committee, and Quarter Sessions combined in one, and is the most powerful administrative authority in the district. But, as usual in official Russia, he refers everything that he cannot or does not want to deal with to the next authority above him—namely, the Governor of the Yenisei Government. Directly under his control come the civil officials who administer both urban and peasant affairs, the collector of taxes, the urban police officials and the "Stanovy Preestof," who is the head of the rural police. When we went to call on this gentleman we had to go through the usual red-tape formalities in connexion with passports and special permission to cross the frontier. This permission had been granted to us in St Petersburg, and held good apparently for a certain route only; our names, nationality, description, destination, contents of baggage, value of guns and ammunition had been telegraphed out to Minusinsk and had been sent on to every frontier post for 2000 miles along the Russo-Chinese frontier. But one route only, by which we had intended to go, had not been described exactly enough to satisfy bureaucratic minds, and as it was an unused route, where, as we ultimately found out, no frontier guards were kept, it was considered most important to refer the matter to the Governor of the Yenisei Government. Bureaucratic red tape could not possibly allow three foreigners to cross the frontier at indefinite points
