Considerable patience is certainly needed on these Siberian journeys, for the roads are often appallingly bad, especially when the inundations set in after a thaw, when even the bridges are carried off by the torrents. Then, again, what is particularly exasperating is the passive air of resignation assumed by all concerned, postmaster and coachman, and even by one’s travelling companions. Accustomed as these people are to live in a climate in which the forces of Nature defy the ingenuity of man, they are very apt, especially as they have nothing on earth else to do, to shrug their shoulders at the inevitable, and to avoid with supreme skill troubling themselves about the ways and means of bettering things. I remember on one occasion, after having been assured at Kiakhta and Chita that if I persisted in continuing my journey I was exposing my life, being landed in a ford into which one of the wheels of the tarantass stuck. To extricate it, we had to work for over an hour in the cold water and in the dim dawn, and even then we were only able to do so with the help of two Buriats who were passing that way, and who lent us their horses to assist us in getting out of this unpleasant fix. With the sole exception of this mishap I had very little to complain of. It is in the post-stations, however, that one’s patience is put to the test and that one realizes the force of a truism made by a certain English author, who began a book on Siberia with the following singular aphorism: ‘In Siberia time is not money.’ One crosses the threshold of these rather doleful-looking houses, which become more and more lugubrious as one advances eastward, with a feeling akin to dread. The postmaster is almost invariably to be found seated in front of a very dirty register, and generally grunts out his answers to your inquiries as to whether he has any horses ready, ‘You will have to wait two or three hours, possibly until the next morning,’ after which pleasant piece of information you pass into the common waiting-room, usually furnished with a few chairs, two or three tables and one or two old sofas. On the wall hang an ikon or so, the inevitable portraits of their Majesties, and a few frames with the usual printed instructions and regulations. Then comes a sort of glorified bill-of-fare, from a perusal of which you learn the names of a number of succulent dishes, but, unfortunately, the last line informs you that the postmaster is only obliged to supply you with black bread and hot water, the last article being intended to make tea, with which, together with sugar, every traveller supplies himself before starting. Nearly always, however, one finds excellent eggs and milk. It is wise in travelling in Trans-Baikalia to take a supply of preserves, which you can procure in any large Siberian town.