storm abated a little towards morning, and soon after daybreak our driver made his appearance with ropes, crowbars, three fresh horses, and a stalwart peasant from a neighboring village. They soon extricated us from our difficulties, and early in the forenoon we drove into the little settlement of Ribálskaya, and alighted from our paróska after fourteen hours' exposure to a winter gale on a desolate steppe without sleep, food, or drink. When we had warmed and refreshed ourselves with hot tea in a peasant's cabin, we ate what breakfast we could get, slept two or three hours on a plank bench, and then with fresh horses and a new driver went on our way.
The overland journey in winter from the boundary line of Eastern Siberia to St. Petersburg has often been made and described by English and American travelers, and it does not seem to me necessary to dwell upon its hardships, privations, and petty adventures. We reached Tomsk in a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero on the fifth day after our departure from Minusínsk, renewed our acquaintance with the Tomsk colony of exiles, gave them the latest news from their friends in the Trans-Baikál and at the mines of Kará, and then continued our journey homeward. On the 22d of February — Washington's birthday — we reached Omsk, stopped there twenty-four hours to rest and celebrate, and then went on by what is known as the "merchants' short cut" to Tobólsk. We were again surprised in the vicinity of Omsk by the appearance of camels. We had of course reconciled our preconceived ideas with the existence of camels in Siberia during the summer, but we had never stopped to think what became of them in the winter, and were very much astonished one frosty moonlight night to see three or four of them drawing Kírghis sledges.
Beyond Omsk we began to meet enormous freight-sledges of a new type drawn by six or eight horses and loaded with goods from the Irbít fair. Some of them were as big as a
