FORESTS OF ARCHANGEL. 51 
bag of nails, a pot of grease, a basket of bread and wine, a 
joint of roast-beef, a teapot, aud 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] 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 grind 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 drive is like its fellow. A clearing thirty yards 
wide runs out before us for a thousand versts, the pines are 
all alike, the birches 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 log-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 fora 
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 
