of fire-lighted smoke
gave us until he has ridden on dog- or reindeer-sledges, or walked on
snowshoes, for twenty interminable days, through an arctic wilderness.
It seemed to me a year since our departure from Okhotsk; for weeks we
had not taken off our heavy armour of furs; mirrors, beds and clean
linen were traditions of the remote past; and American civilisation,
as we looked back at it across twenty-seven months of barbarism, faded
into the unreal imagery of a dream. But the pillars of fire-lighted
smoke and the lowing of domestic cattle were a promise of better
things.

In less than two hours, we were sitting before the glowing fireplace
of a comfortable Yakut house, with a soft carpet under our feet;
real crockery cups of fragrant Kiakhta tea on a table beside us, and
pictures on the wall over our heads. The house, it is true, had slabs
of ice for windows; the carpet was made of deerskins; and the pictures
were only woodcuts from _Harper's Weekly_ and _Frank Leslie's_; but to
us, fresh from the smoky tents of the Tunguses, windows, carpets, and
pictures, of any kind, were things to be wondered at and admired.

Between the Yakut settlements on the Aldan and the town of Yakutsk,
there was a good post-road--really a road; so, harnessing shaggy white
Yakut ponies to our Okhotsk dog-sledges, we drove swiftly westward, to
the unfamiliar music of Russian sleigh-bells, changing horses at every
post-station and riding from fifteen to eighteen hours out of the
twenty-four.

On the 16th of November, after twenty-three days of continuous travel,
we reached Yakutsk; and there, in the house of a wealthy Russian
merchant who threw his doors open to us with warm-hearted hospitality,
we washed from our bodies the smoke and grime of Tunguse tents and
_yurts_; put on clean, fresh clothes; ate a well cooked and daintily
served supper; drank five tumblers of fragrant overland tea; smoked
two Manila cheroots; and finally went to bed, excited but happy, in
beds that were provided with hair mattresses, fleecy Russian blankets,
and linen sheets. The sensation of lying without furs and between
sheets in a civilised bed was so novel and extraordinary that I lay
awake for an hour, trying experiments with that wonderful mattress and
luxuriously exploring, with bare feet, the smooth cool expanses of
linen sheeting.

[Illustration: Travelling Bag made of Reindeer skin]

CHAPTER XL

THE GREATEST HORSE-EXPRESS SERVICE IN THE WORL