Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/74

 44 feet square, a good part of which was taken up by an enormous high stove, were at least a dozen hairy Siberian peasants. Some were dressed in greasy sheepskins and others scarcely dressed at all; some were lying on the top of the stove, just under the roof; others we fell over as we tried to cross the room; piles of greasy clothes and sheepskins, mixed with old paper and remnants of meals, lay about the floor; the temperature was stifling, and the atmosphere of the hut was past expression. This was my first experience of Siberian wayside huts; it was not my last. In this case we discovered that some "old stagers" from the forest, returning to their village, were resting the night in this hut. It remained for us either to "tumble in" with them, or stay out under the freezing sky.

After eating some bread and drinking a cup of tea with the Siberians we concluded that we should get more rest if we tried the keen atmosphere outside. So we spent the night sleeping on the top of the baggage carts, wrapped in sheepskins and felt mats, and found that the fifteen degrees of frost had no ill effects on our repose.

This sort of experience gives one a good idea of what a Russian can endure in the way of extremes of atmospheric severity. As I have said, there were fifteen degrees outside; yet, after tramping the forests all day long in sheepskins, those peasants could still bear the same clothing without turning a hair, and could sleep on the top of a stove under atmospheric conditions such as I have described. Clearly the nervous system of such a human being must be very similar to that of the lower animals.

Next morning we got a small sledge and hired