FORESTS OF ARCHANGEL. 51 



bag of nails, a pot of grease, a basket of bread and wine, a 

 joint of roast-beef, a teapot, a.id a case of cigars, are after- 

 wards coaxed into the nooks and crannies of the shell. 



' Starting at dusk, so as to reach the ferry at which we 

 are to cross the river by daybreak, we splash the mud and 

 grind the planks of Archangel beneath our hoofs. " Good- 

 bye ! Look out for wolves ! Take care of brigands \ 

 Good-bye ! good-bye ! " shout a dozen voices ; and then 

 that friendly and frozen city is I eft behind. 



' All night under murky stars we tear along a dreary 

 path : pines on our right, pines on our left, and pines in 

 our front. We bump through a village, waking up house- 

 less dogs ; we reach a ferry, and pass the river on a raft ; 

 we orrind over stones and sand ; we tug through slush and 

 bog ; all night, all day ; all night again, and after that all 

 day, winding through the maze of forest leaves, now turned 

 and scared, and swirled on every blast which blows. Each 

 day of our dri\ e is like its fellow. A clearing thirty yards 

 wide runs out before us for a thousand versts, the pines are 

 all alike, the bii ches all alike. The villages are still more 

 like each other than the trees. Our only change is in the 

 track itself, whicn passes from sand drifts to slimy beds, 

 from grassy fields to rolling logs. In a thousand versts we 

 count a hundred versts of ]og-road, two hundred versts of 

 sand, three hundred versts of grass, four hundred versts of 

 waterway and marsh. 



' If the sands are bad the logs are worse. One night we 

 spend in a kind of protest, dreaming that our luggage has 

 been badly packed, and that on daylight coming it shall be 

 laid in some easier way. The trunk calls loudly for a 

 change. My seat by day, my bed by night, this box has a 

 leading part in our little play; but no adjustment of the 

 other traps, no stuffiing in of hay and straw, no coaxing of 

 the furs and skins, suffice to appease the fitful spirit of that 

 trunk. It slips and jerks beneath me, rising in pain at 

 every plunge. Coaxing it with skins is useless ; soothing 



