While resting in Irkutsk, we employed ourselves casting about for means of attaining the maximum of comfort, that is to say, the minimum of hardship, for the remaining part of the journey. We had learned the mode of travelling, and thought we knew exactly where reform could be applied with most effect. The greatest annoyance the traveller experiences in Russia and Siberia, is the necessity of paying horse hire at each station. It is bad enough during the day, but to turn out of a warm nest two or three times in a night, to banter postmasters and yemschiks, settle your fare to the next station, and see that your wheels are oiled, is simply intolerable, especially when the thermometer is anything you like below zero. The postmasters, with the most laudable desires possible, cannot cheat you. In every station is exhibited a placard, framed and glazed, signed and sealed by high functionaries, stating the distance in versts to each of the two nearest stations, and the fare in roubles and in kopeks, which, in Eastern Siberia, and also as far west as Tumen, is one kopek and a-half per verst per horse, that is, a little over three farthings per mile. Besides this, you are expected to pay twelve kopeks, or fourpence, for oiling wheels, which is necessary, on an average, at every third station. Then, if you use a post-carriage, or _kibitka_, another fourpence is due for that at every station. The drink-money, or _navodku_, due to the yemschik, must on no account be forgotten, for the speed with which you will be driven on the next stage will bear some proportion to the amount of drink-money which you are reported to have given for the preceding. Money does not always procure speed, but speed will always draw money. In the anxiety to award the due meed of merit a nice estimate must be made of the value of the service rendered, and the reward fixed at ten, fifteen, or twenty kopeks, or nothing at all, as the case may require. The condition of the roads and horses, over which the yemschik has no control, must be carefully weighed in this important calculation. But while nobody can attempt to cheat you with any decent prospect of success, it is always open to the station-keeper to say he has no change to give you. To meet this dodge you must carry a bag of coppers, which, unless it weighs nearly a hundred weight, will not last you from one town to another where alone the coin is procurable. Then, again, it was not to be denied that our knowledge of Russian was too limited for our purpose, in the event of our getting into any real difficulty, from the thousand and one accidents to which travellers in such a country are liable.