Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/381

Rh the official the post-station master. "I have had a bad dream," I replied. "How long have I been asleep?"

"We have been here only ten minutes," replied Peterson, looking at his watch, "and I don't think you have been asleep more than five. The horses are ready."

With stiff and aching limbs I hobbled out to the pavóska, crept into the sheepskin bag beside Mr. Frost, and began another long, cold, and dreary night-ride.

Between Kuskúnskaya and Krasnoyársk we experienced the lowest temperature of the winter, — forty-five degrees below zero, — and had an opportunity to observe again the phenomena of extreme cold. Clouds of vapor rose all the time from the bodies of our horses; the freight-wagon caravans were constantly enshrouded in mist, and frequently, after passing one of them, we would find the road foggy with frozen moisture for a distance of a quarter of a mile. When we opened the door of a station-house a great volume of steam seemed to rush into it ahead of us; little jets of vapor played around the holes and crevices of the windows and doors; and in a warm room white frost accumulated to a thickness of nearly half an inch upon the inner ends of iron bolts that went through the window-casings to the outside air. Throughout Friday and Saturday, January 15th and 16th, we stopped to drink tea at almost every post-station we passed, and even then we were constantly cold. This was due partly to the extreme severity of the weather, and partly to the fact that we were compelled, every five or ten miles, to get out of our pavóska and help the horses to drag it through the deep soft snow at the side of the road, where we had been forced to go in order to get past a long train of freight-sledges. Sunday, January 17th, nine days after our departure from Irkútsk, we drove into the provincial town of Krasnoyársk, having made, with forty-three relays of post-horses, a journey of about seven hundred miles. Mr. Frost and I took up our quarters in the same hotel at which we had stopped on our