24 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. iv. 



powerful enough to soften the surface of the snow, we might 

 have accomplished the journey in much shorter time. As 

 it was, we took three clays and three nights to reach Mezen. 

 We stopped one day and two nights in this, the frontier town 

 of Siberia in Europe ; and the remainder of the journey 

 occupied five days and four nights. A fortnight later the 

 snow became impassable, the winter road was broken up, the 

 horses at the stations in the uninhabited portions of the 

 country, a distance of 250 versts, were sent home, and for 

 two months the valley of the Petchora was as effectually cut 

 off from all communication with civilised Europe as if it 

 had been in the moon. The last 150 miles had become a 

 series of uninhabited, impassable swamps, across which no 

 letter, no messenger, no telegram, ever came. The postal 

 service was suspended until the floods in the river, caused 

 by the sudden melting of the snow, had sufficiently subsided 

 to make it possible to row against stream. The summer 

 route from Mezen to Ust-Zylma is up the Mezen river to its 

 junction with the Peza, up that river to its source, across 

 the watershed, a porterage of sixteen versts, by horses, to 

 the source of the Zylma, and then down that river to the 

 Petchora. 



We left Archangel on a Tuesday evening, in two sledges 

 or " pavoskas ;" Harvie-Brown and I, with part of the 

 luggage in one, drawn by three horses, and Piottuch, with 

 the remainder of the luggage, in the other, drawn by two 

 horses. That night and the whole of the following day were 

 warm, the thermometer standing at 44 in the shade. In 

 the sun it once went up to 70. The wind was south-west, 



