392 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



number of exiles to dread Siberia, soon became to us, as to the 

 prisoners, a way of sighs. Loose or slushy snow about three feet 

 deep, covered the road; to right and left rushed little streams, 

 wherever, in fact, they could find a course; the horses, now yoked in 

 a line, one behind the other, strove, in a pitiable way, to keep their 

 footing; with leaps and bounds they would try to keep the tracks 

 of those who had gone in front, and at every false step they would 

 sink up to the breast in the snow or in the icy water. Behind them 

 floundered the sledge, creaking in every joint, as it plunged with a 

 jerk from height to hollow; for hours sometimes it remained stuck 

 in a hole, baffling the most strenuous exertions of the horses. On 

 such occasions the wolf-scaring bell, the gift of the mysterious 

 Faldine, seemed to sound most eerily. In vain the driver threatened, 

 entreated, swore, groaned, yelled, cried, roared, cursed, and whipped ; 

 in most cases we did not get under weigh again until other travellers 

 came to our assistance. 



Painfully the journey lengthened to four and five times the 

 proper time for the distance. To look out of the sledge to right or 

 left was scarce worth the trouble, for the flat country was dreary 

 and featureless; only in the villages was there anything visible 

 and interesting, and that only to those who knew how to look. 

 For the winter still kept the people in their small, neatly built, but 

 often sadly dilapidated log-huts; only fur-clad boys ran barefoot 

 through the slushy snow and filthy mud which older boys and 

 girls sought to avoid by help of stilts; only some old, white- 

 bearded beggars loafed round the post-houses and taverns, 

 beggars, however, whom every artist must have found as charm- 

 ing as I did. When they asked for alms, and stood in the 

 majesty of old age, with uncovered bald heads and flowing hoary 

 beards, disclosing the filthiness of their body and the raggedness of 

 their clothes, they seemed to me such marvellous pictures and 

 types of world-renouncing saints, that I could not keep myself from 

 giving to them again and again, if only to get in thanks the sign 

 of the cross, repeated from three to nine times in a manner so 

 expressive and devout that only a real saint could equal it. 



In the villages we also saw more of the animal life than we did 



