r are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the
population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt
the night-houses in quest of prey. During our short stay a woman was
murdered one night within a few yards of our hotel, and a man was
stabbed to death in broad daylight on the busy "Bolshaya." The Chief of
Police told me that there is an average of a murder a day every year
within the precincts of the city, and warned us not to walk out unarmed
after dark. There was no incentive to drive, for the Irkutsk cab, or
_droshky_, is a terrible machine, something like a hoodless bath-chair,
springless, and constructed to hold two persons (at a pinch) besides the
driver. There is no guard-rail, and it was sometimes no easy matter to
cling on as the vehicle bumped and bounded, generally at full gallop,
along the rough, uneven streets.

Three days elapsed before the business of the city was resumed and I was
able to turn my attention to the purchase of sleighs. Fur coats and felt
boots we were already provided with, but I had determined to obtain the
Arctic kit destined to protect us from the intense cold north of Yakutsk
from the fur merchants of that place. Finally, when the fumes of _vodka_
had evaporated, at least a dozen sleigh-builders invaded my bedroom
early one morning, for the Irkutsk papers had published our needs. The
whole day was passed in driving about to the various workshops and
examining sleighs, some of which appeared to have been constructed about
the same period as the Ark. It was not easy to make a selection from the
score of ramshackle _kibitkas_ which were hauled out for my inspection,
especially as I had a very faint notion of the kind of sleigh required
for the work in hand. Fortunately, my friend the Chief of Police, white
with rage and blazing with orders, burst into a yard as I was
concluding the purchase of a venerable vehicle, which bore a striking
resemblance to Napoleon's travelling carriage at Madame Tussaud's, and
which would probably have come to pieces during the first stage.

"Son of a dog," furiously cried the official to the trembling
coach-builder, "don't you know that this gentleman wishes to go to
Yakutsk, and you are trying to swindle him into buying a 'Bolshaya'
_coupe_!" And in less than a minute I was being whirled away towards the
Police Station, where a number of the peculiar sleighs required for this
journey are kept on hand for the convenience of traveller