Two or three streets of these
double-rowed houses made up the fort. Few of the houses contained more
than three rooms, but the rooms were large as halls, one hundred by
eighty feet, some of them, with whip-sawed floors, clay-chinked log
walls, parchment {115} windows, and furniture hewed out of the green
fir trees of the mountains. But the luxurious living made up for the
bareness of furnishings. Shining samovars sung in every room. Rugs of
priceless fur concealed the rough flooring. Chinese silks, Japanese
damasks,--Oriental tapestries smuggled in by the fur traders,--covered
the walls; and richest of silk attired the Russian officers and their
ladies, compelled to beguile time here, where the only break in
monotony was the arrival of fresh ships from America, or exiles from
St. Petersburg, or gambling or drinking or dancing or feasting the long
winter nights through, with, perhaps, a duel in the morning to settle
midnight debts. Just across a deep ravine from the fort was another
kind of settlement--ten or a dozen _yurts_, thatch-roofed, circular
houses half underground like cellars, grouped about a square hall or
barracks in the centre.
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