616 WAYS AND MEANS IN SIBERIA.

is not expensive, so it is not hard to get sufficient to ourselves:
so that objection is out of doors.”

I have not room to give a full account of the most agreeable
conversation I had with this truly great man; in all which he
showed that his mind was so inspired with a superior knowledge
of things, so supported by religion, as well as by a vast share of
wisdom, that his contempt of the world was really as much as he
had expressed, and that he was always the same to the last, as will
appear in the story I am going to tell.

I had been here eight months, and a dark, dreadful winter I
thought it to be, the cold so intense that I could not so much as
look about without being wrapped in furs, and a mask of fur before «
my face, or rather a hood, with only a hole for breath, and two for
sight. The little daylight we had was, as we reckoned, for three
months not above five hours a day, and six at most; only that the
snow lying on the gtound continually, and the weather clear, it
was never quite dark. Our horses were kept, or rather starved,
underground ; and as for our servants—for we hired three servants
here to look after our horses and selves—we had every now and
then their fingers and toes to thaw and take care of, lest they should
mortify and fall off.

It is true, within doors we were warm, the houses being close,
the walls thick, the lights small, and the glass all double. Our
food was chiefly the flesh of deer, dried and cured in the season;
good bread enough, but baked as biscuits; dried fish of several
sorts, and some flesh of mutton, and of the buffaloes, which is
pretty good beef. All the stores of provision for the winter are
laid up in the summer, and well cured. Our drink was water
mixed with aqua vite instead of brandy; and, for a treat, mead in-
stead of wine, which, however, they have excellent good. The
hunters, who venture abroad all weathers, frequently brought us
in fresh venison, very fat and good, and sometimes bear’s flesh, but
we did not much care for the last. We had a good stock of tea,
with which we treated our friends as above; and, in a word, we
lived very cheerfully and well, all things considered.

It was now March, and the days grown considerably longer, and
the weather, at least, tolerable ; so the other travellers began to pre-