elf and horses one hour and then starts on his return. In ordinary
seasons when the traveling is good, each team of horses will make two
round trips in twenty-four hours. This gives them from fifty to
seventy miles daily travel, half of it without load and at a gentle
pace.

After the third station the road improved, the snow and mud
diminishing and leaving a comparatively dry track. The stations were
generally so uncomfortably hot as to put me in a perspiration, and I
was glad to get out of doors. The temperature was about 70 deg.
Fahrenheit, and the air at night contained odors from the breath and
boots of dormant _moujiks_. The men sleep on the floor and benches,
but the top of the stove is the favorite couch. The stove is of brick
as already described, and its upper surface is frequently as wide as a
common bed. Sometimes the caloric is a trifle abundant, but I have
rarely known it complained of.

[Illustration: FAVORITE BED.]

I could never clearly understand the readiness and ability of the
Russians to endure contrasts of heat and cold with utter complacence
and without apparent ill effect. I have seen a yemshick roused at
midnight from the top of a stove where he was sleeping in a
temperature of eighty-five or ninety degrees. He made his toilet by
tightening his waist-belt and putting on his boots. When the horses
were ready he donned his cap and extra coat, thrust his hands into
mittens, and mounted the front of a sleigh. The cold would be anywhere
from ten to fifty degrees below zero, but the man rarely appeared to
suffer. In severe weather I hesitated to enter the stations on account
of the different temperature of the house and the open air, but the
Russians did not seem to mind the sudden changes.

All natives of Northern Siberia subject themselves without
inconvenience to extremes of heat and cold. Major Abasa told me that
when the cold was 40 deg. below zero he had found the Koriaks in their
yourts with a temperature 75 deg. above. They passed from one to the other
without a change of clothing and without perspiring. At night they
ordinarily slept in their warm dwellings, but when traveling they
rested in the snow under the open sky. In his exploration around
Penjinsk Gulf the major saw a woman sleep night after night on the
snow in the coldest weather with no covering but the clothing she wore
in the day. She would have slept equally well if transferred to a hot
room.

The Yakuts and Tunguze are eq