The stretch between Verhneudinsk and Troitzkosavsk, officially rated at two hundred and eighteen versts, is really somewhat longer. A run of average record took from 4:20 P.M. Tuesday to 11:30 A.M. Thursday--forty-three hours and ten minutes. This included all relaying, seven hours a night for sleeping, dinner and breakfast halts, two accidents (an overturning and a broken runner), and one calamity--a Siberian who snored. The actual driving-time, over a road for the most part hilly, was twenty-two hours, five minutes, or just about ten versts per hour. Horses stand always ready, with special men at hand to harness. Drivers swing on their shaggy greatcoats, and with almost no loss of time one is out of the shadowed courtyard and on the road again in the dazzling whiteness of the winter day. In traveling “post,” however, with relayed sleighs and big empty guest-rooms, one does not become acquainted with the life along the way. One has only hurried glimpses of slant-eyed Buriat tribesmen, of galloping Cossacks, trudging peasants, post-agents, girls who carry in samovars and silently steal out, rosy-cheeked boys on the streets, and women at the house-windows. To know the people and see their daily life one must get away from the beaten highroad, strike out from the government-regulated inns, and blaze one’s own path into the interior. First, you get a low passenger-sledge, long enough to admit of stretching out, and without too many projecting nails on the inside; then, three good ponies of the hardy Cossack breed, that are never curried or taken into a stable through the bitterest winter. The best animals procurable are none too good for climbing the passes away from the river-courses. The whole outfit can be bought for three hundred roubles in any of the interior towns. For drivers, there is a class of _yamshik_ teamsters, who spend their lives guiding the sledge-caravans which carry the local traffic. One of these men, Ivan Kurbski, can guide you through a whole province, and lodge you every evening with some hospitable friend or recommended host. Whether he has himself been over all the changing by-paths in the wilderness of the Zabaikalskaia Oblast, or whether he mentally photographs the directions of his friends regarding each village, is an unsolved mystery. [Illustration: SLEDGING SOUTHWARDS] When the day’s journey is done, Ivan will drive slowly down the crooked street of the village he has settled upon for the night’s repose, looking keenly for landmarks visible only to him in this country, where every village and every house is mate to all the rest. Sometimes he will ask a question of one of the innumerable urchins. But generally he seems of himself to hit upon the desired domicile. Day after day he will take you the sixty versts, lead you to the village stores to replenish the supply of candles or sugar, bring you surely to food and shelter at night, and take off all the burden of care for the outcome of each day’s journey.