WHY NOT ESCAPE ? 617

pare sleds to carry them over the snow, and to get things ready to be
going; but my measures being fixed, as I have said, for Archangel,
and not to Muscovy or the Baltic, I made no motion; knowing
very well that the ships from the south do not set out for that part
of the world till May or June; and that if I was there by the
beginning of August, it would be as soon as any ships would be ready
to go away; and therefore, I say, I made no haste to be gone as
others did; in a word, I saw a great many people, nay, all the
travellers, go away before me. It seems every year they go from
hence to Moscow for trade; namely, to carry furs, and buy neces-
saries with them, which they bring back to furnish their shops:
also others went of the same errand to Archangel; but then
they also being to come back again above eight hundred miles,
went all out before me.

In short, ahout the latter end of May I began to make all ready
to pack up; and as I was doing this, it occurred to me, that seeing
all these people were banished by the Czar of Muscovy to Siberia,
and yet, when they came there, were left at liberty to go whither
they would, why did they not then go away to any part of the
world wherever they thought fit? and I began to examine what
should hinder them from making such an attempt.

But my wonder was over when I entered upon that subject with
the person I have mentioned, who answered me thus: “ Consider,
first, sir,” said he, “the place where we are; and, secondly, the
condition we are in; especially,” said he, “ the generality of the
people who are banished hither. We are surrounded,” said he,
“with stronger things than bars and bolts: on the north side an
unnavigable ocean, where ship never sailed and boat never swam;
neither, if we had both, could we know where to go with’ them.
Every other way,” said he, ‘we have above a thousand miles to
pass through the czar’s own dominions, and by ways utterly
unpassable, except by the roads made by the governor, and by the
towns garrisoned by his troops; so that we could:neither pass
undiscovered by the road, or subsist any other way; so that it is
in vain’ to attempt it.”

T was silenced, indeed, at once, and found that they were in a’
prison. every jot as secure as if they had been locked up in the