and bounds that strain every nerve and
muscle in the body. In anything like deep, soft snow it generally comes
to a standstill, and the combined efforts of men and horses are required
to set it going again. However, for the first three or four days, good
progress was made at the rate of about 200 versts[6] in the twenty-four
hours, for we travelled night and day. There was no incentive to pass
the night in the post-houses, which were generally of a filthy
description, although luxurious compared to the Yakute Yurtas and
Tchuktchi huts awaiting us up North. On the Lena post-road, stages were
only from fifteen to thirty miles apart, and with a fresh _troika_
(three horses harnessed abreast) at such short intervals, our rate of
speed for the first week was very satisfactory. Between Irkutsk and the
river Lena part of the road lies through dense forests, which are
generally infested with runaway convicts, so we kept a sharp look-out
and revolvers handy. Only a week before we passed through this region a
mail-cart had been held up and its driver murdered, but I fancy news had
filtered through that my expedition was well armed, and we therefore
reached the Lena unmolested.

[Footnote 6: A verst is two-thirds of an English mile.]

The weather at Irkutsk had been comparatively warm, and we were,
therefore, unprepared for the intense cold experienced only forty-eight
hours after our departure. Although on the evening of the 19th the
thermometer had registered only 10 deg. below zero Fahrenheit, it
suddenly sank during the night to 65 deg. below zero, where it remained
until the following evening. Oddly enough, a dense mist accompanied the
fall of the mercury, rendering the cold infinitely harder to bear. Our
drivers declared that this climatic occurrence was most unusual, and the
fact remains that this was the lowest temperature recorded during the
entire journey south of the Yakute Yurta of Yuk-Takh, several hundred
miles north of Yakutsk. There we had to face 75 deg. below zero, but
then Yuk-Takh adjoins Verkhoyansk, the coldest place in the world. But
the dry frosty air of even this remote settlement inconvenienced me far
less than the chilly breeze of a raw November day on the Paris
Boulevards with the mercury half a dozen degrees above the
freezing-point. On the Lena this Arctic cold only lasted for about
eighteen hours, and then slowly rose again, after remaining at about 50
deg. below zero for a couple of days. The sever