A SIBERIAN ROAD 277 



About 200 versts before reaching Turukansk we were 

 met by a cossack, who brought us a letter from the 

 Zessedatel of that town, informing us that he had sent us 

 an escort to assist us on our way. 



The thaw had cut up the roads a good deal. We 

 had generally three, rarely only two, frequently four, and 

 sometimes five horses in our sledge, but in all cases they 

 were driven tandem. The smaller sledge was driven 

 with two, and occasionally three horses. Although to 

 all appearances the road was a dead level from one to 

 two miles wide, it was in reality very narrow, in fact too 

 narrow for a pair of horses to run abreast with safety. 

 We were really travelling on a wall of hard trodden 

 snow from five to seven feet wide, and about as high, 

 levelled up on each side with soft snow. Whenever we 

 met a peasant's sledge, the peasant's poor horse had to 

 step off the road, and stand on one side up to the traces 

 in snow. After our cavalcade had gone by, it had to 

 struggle on to the road again as best it could. Our 

 horses were generally good and docile, and they kept 

 the road wonderfully, though it sometimes wound about 

 like a snake. A stranger might naturally wonder for 

 what inscrutable reason such a tortuous road should be 

 made along a level river. It was carefully staked out 

 with little bushes of spruce fir, from two to five feet 

 high, stuck in the snow every few yards. The explana- 

 tion is very simple. When Captain Wiggins travelled 

 up the river in December, little or no snow had faller^. 

 At the beginning of the winter the ice breaks up several 

 times before it finally freezes for the season. When the 

 roads were first staked out by the starrosta of the village, 

 the little bushes that now reared their heads above the 

 snow were trees eight to twelve feet high, and the road 

 had to be carefully picked out between shoals and hills 



