he must exercise care to prevent falling off. "Why don't you have
a better seat for your driver?" I asked of my friend, when negotiating
for a sleigh. "Oh," said he, "this is the best way as he cannot go to
sleep. If he had a better place he would sleep and lose time by slow
traveling."

A sleigh much used by Russian merchants is shaped like an elongated
mill-hopper. It has enormous carrying capacity, and in bad weather
can be covered with matting to exclude cold and snow. It is large,
heavy, and cumbersome, and adapted to slow travel, and when much
luggage is to be carried. All these concerns are on runners about
thirty inches apart, and generally shod with iron. On each side there
is a fender or outrigger which serves the double purpose of
diminishing injury from collisions and preventing the overturn of the
sleigh. It is a stout pole attached to the forward end of the sleigh,
and sloping downward and outward toward the rear where it is two feet
from the runner, and held by strong braces. On a level surface it does
not touch the snow, but should the sleigh tilt from any cause the
outrigger will generally prevent an overturn. In collision with other
sleighs, the fender plays an important part. I have been occasionally
dashed against sleds and sleighs when the chances of a smash-up
appeared brilliant. The fenders met like a pair of fencing foils, and
there was no damage beyond the shock of our meeting.

[Illustration: A KIBITKA.]

The horses are harnessed in the Russian manner, one being under a yoke
in the shafts, and the others, up to five or six, attached outside.
There is no seat in the interior of the sleigh. Travelers arrange
their baggage and furs to as good a level as possible and fill the
crevices with hay or straw. They sit, recline, or lie at their option.
Pillows are a necessity of winter travel.

I exchanged my trunk for a chemadan of enormous capacity, and long
enough to extend across the bottom, of my sleigh. For the first
thousand versts, to Krasnoyarsk, I arranged to travel with a young
officer of engineers whose baggage consisted of two or three hundred
pounds of geological specimens. For provisions we ordered beef,
cabbage soup, little cakes like 'mince turnovers,' and a few other
articles. Tea and sugar were indispensable, and had a prominent place.
Our soups, meat, pies, _et cetera_ were frozen and only needed thawing
at the stations to be ready for use.

The day before my departure was the pe