The Major, Dodd, and I were travelling in covered sledges, known to the Siberians as "pavoskas" (pah-voss'-kahs), and the reckless driving of the Kamenoi Koraks made us wish, in less than an hour, that we had taken some other means of conveyance, from which we could escape more readily in case of accident or overturn. As it was, we were so boxed up that we could hardly move without assistance. Our _pavoskas_ resembled very much long narrow coffins, covered with sealskin, mounted on runners, and roofed over at the head by a stiff hood just large enough to sit up in. A heavy curtain was fastened to the edge of this top or hood, and in bad weather it could be pulled down and buttoned so as to exclude the air and flying snow. When we were seated in these sledges our legs were thrust down into the long coffin-shaped boxes upon which the drivers sat, and our heads and shoulders sheltered by the sealskin hoods. Imagine an eight-foot coffin mounted on runners, and a man sitting up in it with a bushel basket over his head, and you will have a very correct idea of a Siberian _pavoska_. Our legs were immovably fixed in boxes, and our bodies so wedged in with pillows and heavy furs that we could neither get out nor turn over. In this helpless condition we were completely at our drivers' mercy; if they chose to let us slide over the edge of a precipice in the mountains, all we could do was to shut our eyes and trust in Providence. Seven times in less than three hours my Kamenoi driver, with the assistance of fourteen crazy dogs and a spiked stick, turned my _pavoska_ exactly bottom side up, dragged it in that position until the hood was full of snow, and then left me standing on my head, with my legs in a box and my face in a snow-drift, while he took a smoke and calmly meditated upon the difficulties of mountain travel and the versatility of dog-sledges! It was enough to make Job curse his grandmother! I threatened him with a revolver, and swore indignantly by all the evil spirits in the Korak theogony, that if he upset me in that way again I would kill him without benefit of clergy, and carry mourning and lamentation to the houses of all his relatives. But it was of no use. He did not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and could not understand my murderous threats. He merely squatted down upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause. Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the _pavoska_, propped it up with his spiked stick, and I stood on my head while he rubbed the runners down with water and a piece of deerskin. This finally drove me to desperation, and I succeeded, after a prolonged struggle, in