sat there in the deepening twilight, shivering with cold and gnawing frozen bread, while we waited for horses.
"O Kennan!" said Mr. Frost with a groan, "if I only had some warm milk-toast!"
But it was of no use to wish for such a luxury as warm milk-toast in the silver-mining district of Nérchinsk. What we had to do was to warm and aërate with imagination the food that we could get, and congratulate ourselves upon having escaped the smallpox. I proposed, however, that we should sit on the bread throughout the next stretch, and thus protect it to some extent from dust and the refrigerating influence of an arctic climate. The proposition was approved and adopted, but the result was merely to exchange one sort of discomfort for another.
Horses were forthcoming at last, and after another long, cold, and dreary ride we reached, about nine o'clock at night, the comfortable station of Shelapúgina, on the post-road between the town of Nérchinsk and the Nérchinski Zavód. I did not feel able to go any further that day, and as the postmaster assured us that there had never been a case of smallpox in the station, we brought in our baggage, drank tea, and, without removing our clothing, lay down as usual on our sheepskin overcoats upon the floor of the travelers' room. Monday morning, refreshed by a good night's sleep and a breakfast of tea, fresh bread, and fat soup, we resumed our journey and rode all day through shallow valleys, between low, treeless, and dreary-looking mountains, towards the Alexandrofski Zavód. The sky was clear and the sunshine inspiriting; but the mercury had fallen to fifteen degrees below zero, our horses were white and shaggy with frost, the jolting of our vehicle made it difficult to keep our furs wrapped closely about us, and we suffered severely all day from cold. About half-past six o'clock in the evening we stopped for an hour to drink tea in a village whose name, Kavwíkuchigazamúrskaya, seemed to me to contain more letters than the place itself had inhabitants. We met there a young technologist
