12 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. n. 



horses were yoked in divers ways : of course one was always 

 in the shafts. The other two were sometimes yoked one at 

 each side of the shaft-horse ; sometimes one on the near side, 

 and the other in front ; sometimes side by side in front of the 

 shaft-horse ; and sometimes all three were in single file. The 

 roads in the Archangel province, where the snow-plough was 

 used regularly, were generally very good. In the province of 

 Vologda, where the snow-plough seemed to be unknown, the 

 roads were at least twice as bad as the imagination of an 

 Englishman could possibly conceive. On the good roads the 

 sensation of travelling was very pleasant, not unlike that in a 

 railway carriage. On the bad roads our sensations were 

 something like what Sancho Panza's must have been when 

 he was tossed in the blanket. Our luggage was tightly 

 packed with hay, and ourselves in fur, else both would have 

 suffered severely. At first we expected to be upset at each 

 lurch, and took for granted our sledge would be battered to 

 pieces long before the six hundred miles to Archangel were 

 completed, but, by degrees we began to feel reassured. The 

 outriggers of our sledge were so contrived that the seat might 

 approach, but not quite reach, the perpendicular ; and after 

 we had broken a shaft once or twice, and seen the cool 

 businesslike way in which our yemschik brought out his axe, 

 cut down a birch-tree and fashioned a new shaft, we began 

 to contemplate the possibility of the entire dissolution of 

 our sledge with equanimity. The weather was very change- 

 able; sometimes the thermometer was barely at freezing 

 point, sometimes we had a sort of November fog, and occa- 

 sionally a snowstorm, but nearly half the time it was clear 



