200 SIBERIA 



which I wondered whether I should survive the cold 

 iand get back to dear old England again, I fell asleep. 



I awoke suddenly about midnight with an icy 

 shiver, as though I were lying in a cold bath. The 

 light had gone out, and in my sleep, dreaming of 

 home, and mountains, and ibex, and wolves, and 

 bears, and snowstorms, I had kicked off the coat. It 

 took me half an hour to restore the circulation to my 

 frozen limbs, and, concluding that it would be 

 dangerous to go to sleep, I lay thinking, wondering 

 how I should ever succeed in making the ascent 

 through iall that snow. Nature proved stronger than 

 my determination, and I presently dozed off to sleep 

 once more. I must have slept for three or four hours, 

 for when I awoke day was breaking ; it was about 

 three o'clock in the morning. I reached for my boots 

 and found that they had frozen very hard and that 

 I could not get my feet into them. My feet were 

 also swollen. I thawed the boots by lighting a block 

 of spiritine, and managed to squeeze my feet into 

 them. My body was very stiff after sleeping upon 

 those boulders. I consulted my watch and found 

 I had been in the tent thirteen hours, during about 

 ten of which I was asleep on the boulders. I named 

 that camp "Desolate Camp." 



I opened the tent and crawled out, brushing the 

 snow away from the boulders as I did so. It haid 

 fallen to the depth of about six inches during the 

 night a,nd was falling still. The wind had dropped, 

 however, so I decided to turn in for another hour. 

 Looking out of the tent some time afterwards, and 

 finding that t^e snow had ceased falling and that it 

 was lighter, I again crawled out, brushing ^way 

 the snow. The peaks were being lit up by the first 

 rays of the sun. I waited for some time for the 

 hunters, and, while doing so, took a round of photo- 

 graphs, including myself and the tent, About two 



