SPORT AND TRAVEL 309 



paring for the night's bivouac in the shelter of a thick 

 pine grove near the river's edge. The delay in start- 

 ing from the old camp had, I found, been caused by 

 the impossibility of packing the frozen tents on the 

 horses until they had been thawed by means of huge 

 log fires. Now we found that the damp bundles into 

 which they had been rolled had been again frozen 

 solid, so that all hope of repitching the tents for the 

 night had to be abandoned. Fortunately, it was a per- 

 fectly fine night, though colder than any we had yet 

 experienced. 



As soon as I had changed my wet nether gar- 

 ments for dry ones, I got out my large thermometer 

 and hung it on a tree away from the fire. It soon 

 registered thirteen degrees below zero, forty-five de- 

 grees of frost, and Graham confidently predicted that 

 it would go down to minus twenty degrees before 

 morning. However, it did not do so, and although 

 the temperature remained at thirteen degrees below 

 zero until after daylight in the morning, it never 

 went any lower, which much disappointed me, as I 

 had hoped to experience much greater cold than this. 

 After we had had supper, we each of us spread the 

 tarpaulin, in which our blankets were wrapped, on the 

 snow-covered ground, and turned in. I lay on my 

 sleeping bag, with a Hungarian sheepskin coat and 

 two Jaeger blankets over me, and kept very warm 

 and comfortable all night. 



After this I was only able to devote four more 



