Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/407

Rh "There at last are the domes of Nijni Novgorod, and there I say farewell to my sleigh.

"I have passed two hundred and nine stations, with as many changes

of horses and drivers. More than seven hundred horses have been attached to my sleigh, and drawn me over a road of all degrees of goodness and badness. In forty days from Irkutsk I have spent sixteen in the towns and villages on the way. I have slept twenty-six nights in my sleigh, with the thermometer varying all the way from 35° above zero to 44° below, and have passed through four severe storms and perhaps a dozen small ones.

"Including the detour to Barnaool, my sleigh-ride was thirty-six hundred miles long. From Stratensk around by Kiachta to Irkutsk I travelled about fourteen hundred miles in wheeled vehicles, so that altogether my land journey from the steamboat at Stratensk to the railway at Nijni covers a distance of five thousand miles.

"And now," said Mr. Hegeman, in conclusion, "if you want to cross Siberia you can do it more easily than when I made the journey. From 26