It is for you to walk down the line calling in the vernacular, “fifty, seventy kopecks!” One of the drivers will eventually shout a fare which you feel able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching the bargaining process with keen interest, gives him the two trunks. The _isvoschik_ retires then behind the stormy hiring-line, and you renew the process for a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough for one person to occupy comfortably. Two can squeeze in if they be thin enough or economically minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for the hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length the arrangement is completed. The porter bows low at the donation of fifty kopecks, “for vodka”; then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with a flourish the procession of sleighs dashes out of the station purlieus. The road to the town mounts first a low hill parallel to the river. As the horses climb toward its crest the panorama of the city and stream, hidden previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like a great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to the left and right. Beyond it stand out boldly the clustered domes of the cathedral, their surmounting crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet are the sections of the pontoon bridge, which in summer spans the river but in autumn is disconnected, the parts being moored to the shore, lest the drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and destroy their woodwork. A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots moving, as small apparently as running ants. The deceptive snow has made the distance seem much less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and the seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and repass on the frozen river-trail. Between scattered wooden houses our cavalcade rides down to the bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet. It is like skating. The big horses on our sleigh are imported from Russia, and trot splendidly, overtaking one after another of the citizens with their little shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on either side. The cold air is bracing, almost welcome, until it begins to eat its way in. It is a fair drive, this, across the river--a full verst to the northern bank. We mount the incline that leads up the slope, and come to the first log houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town. Gaunt dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either side. The street is almost deserted; the houses give no sign of life.