red horses had been attached to my sleigh, and had drawn me over a
road of greatly varied character. Out of forty days from Irkutsk, I
spent sixteen at the cities and towns on the way. I slept twenty-six
nights in my sleigh with the thermometer varying from thirty-five
degrees above zero to forty-five below, and encountered four severe
storms and a variety of smaller ones. Including the detour to
Barnaool, my sleigh ride was about thirty-six hundred miles long. From
Stratensk by way of Kiachta to Irkutsk, I traveled not far from
fourteen hundred miles with wheeled vehicles, and made ninety-three
changes. My whole ride from steam navigation on the Amoor to the
railway at Nijne Novgorod was very nearly five thousand miles.

There was a manifest desire to swindle me at the bogus Hotel de la
Poste. Half a dozen attendants carried my baggage to my room, and each
demanded a reward. When I gave the yemshick his "na vodka," an
officious attendant suggested that the gentleman should be very
liberal at the end of his ride. I asked for a bath, and they ordered a
sleigh to take me to a bathing establishment several squares away. My
proposition to be content for the present with a wash basin was
pronounced impossible, until I finished the argument with my left
boot. The waiter finally became affectionate, and when I ordered
supper he suggested comforts not on the bill of fare. The landlord
proposed to purchase my sleigh and superfluous furs, and we concluded
a bargain at less than a twelfth of their cost.

After a night's rest I recrossed the Oka and drove to the town. Here I
found the veritable Hotel de la Poste, to which I immediately changed
my quarters. The house overlooked a little park enclosing a pond,
where a hundred or more persons were skating. The park was well
shaded, and must be quite pleasant in summer. The town hardly deserves
the name of Nijne (Lower) Novgorod, as it stands on a bluff nearly two
hundred feet above the river. Its lower town contains little else than
small shops, storehouses, poor hotels, and steamboat offices. The
Kremlin, or fortress, looks down from a very picturesque position, and
its strong walls have a defiant air. From the edge of the bluff the
view is wide; the low field and forest land on the opposite side of
the river, the sinuous Volga and its tributary, the Oka, are all
visible for a long distance. Opposite, on a tongue of land between the
Volga and the Oka, is the scene of the fair of Nij