In order to break the intolerable monotony of these very long journeys, it is usual to invite one or two other travellers to share expenses, and these are not difficult to find, for the Russians are naturally sociable and quite free from stiffness or conventionality. I was rather surprised on one occasion to find the wife of an official in Trans-Baikalia who, to join her husband, had performed the journey from Vladikavkaz, 4,000 miles by rail and 1,000 miles by road, in the company of an officer with whom she was only slightly acquainted. The Russians were not more astonished at this than Americans would have been. The general insecurity of the country is probably responsible for the ease with which people make acquaintances. Those who like to deal in horrors are by no means behindhand in relating appalling stories of travellers who have been waylaid by escaped convicts and murdered in the heart of the forest. ‘Have you your revolvers?’ asked the postmaster, on the evening of my first journey in my tarantass, and just as we were about to start. ‘Three travellers were assassinated on this relay only fifteen days ago,’ continued he, and then he gave us a horribly detailed account of the circumstances. I had no revolver with me, and never had any reason to need one, and I rather doubted the authenticity of these gruesome stories. The real danger which travellers in Siberia have to encounter is that of having the rope which attaches their luggage to the back of the tarantass artfully cut and their portmanteaus carried off. Accidents are rare, as the tarantass is generally very strongly built. It is somewhat alarming, however, when at the head of a steep incline, to watch the coachman exciting his horses into a gallop by the wildest gesticulations, but one soon learns that the danger in this case is merely apparent.