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416 valley of the upper Yeniséi, and it appeared that round this village the peasants had established a sanitary cordon with the hope of protecting their own live stock from contagion. They had heard of the virtues of fumigation, and were subjecting to that process every vehicle that crossed the village limits. The "plague-guard" burned straw, birch-bark, and other inflammable and smoke-producing substances around and under our pavóska until we were half strangled and our horses were frantic with fear, and then he told us gravely that we were "purified" and might proceed.

On Friday, the day after our departure from Minusínsk, the weather became cold and blustering. The road after we left the Yeniséi was very bad, and late in the afternoon we were overtaken by a howling arctic gale on a great desolate plain, thirty or forty versts west of the Yeniséi and about one hundred and fifty versts from Minusínsk. The road was soon hidden by drifts of snow, there were no fences or telegraph-poles to mark its location, we could not proceed faster than a walk, and every three or four hundred yards we had to get out and push, pull, or lift our heavy pavoska from a deep soft drift. An hour or two after dark we lost the road altogether, and became involved in a labyrinth of snowdrifts and shallow ravines where we could make little or no progress, and where our tired and dispirited horses finally balked and refused to move. In vain our driver changed them about, harnessed them tandem, coaxed, cursed, and savagely whipped them. They were perfectly well aware that they were off the road, and that nothing was to be gained by floundering about aimlessly the rest of the night on that desert of drifted snow. The driver ejaculated, "Akh Bozhemoi! Bozhemoi!" [O my God! my God!] besought his patron saint to inform him what he had done to deserve such punishment, and finally whimpered and cried like a school-boy in his wrath and discouragement. I suggested at last that he had better leave us there, mount one of the horses, find the road, if