Having made all necessary arrangements for resuming our journey, and armed ourselves with a pass from the Director-General of Posts for Western Siberia, we started on the 5th November in a post kibitka, with the intention of buying a sledge when we found an opportunity, and snow enough to use it. It was late in the afternoon before we got away from Tomsk, and dark before we emerged from the thick wood into which we plunged on leaving the town. The post-station had been at a village eighteen versts from Tomsk, but on arriving there we learned that it had been removed that very day to a place more convenient for crossing the river Tom, or on the other side of the Tom, for it was hard to deduce any positive conclusion from the various and partially contradictory statements we heard. At all events, be the new station where it might, our yemschiks refused to drive us any further than the old station in the village. To be cast adrift with our baggage in a village where no accredited officer of the government was located, would have consigned us to unknown troubles. We refused, therefore, to let the yemschiks go, but insisted on their proceeding to the next station, wherever it might be. The assistance of the starust, or village elder, was invoked, and he, with a few peasants, piloted us at our request to the river Tom, that we might examine for ourselves the state of the crossing. The ice was good, and apparently strong enough to bear the carriages, but the yemschiks lapsed into a state of mulish obstinacy, and refused to stir. The starust and his satellites, all speaking at once, held forth vigorously on general topics for the edification of the company, and went to bed. As for us, we had simply to keep possession of the carriages, and leave the rest to time. The yemschiks would get hungry, the horses would certainly have to be fed, and we might hope that when they got tired of waiting they would go on. With this idea we committed ourselves to rest in the kibitka. It was sadly deficient in comfort, as compared with our old tarantass. The kibitka is open in front, and rather over-ventilated everywhere. Cold kept sleep from our eyes for a time, while our ears were regaled with spasmodic bursts of indignation from the yemschiks, who now threatened to take us back to Tomsk, bag and baggage. To these attacks we offered nothing but passive resistance, and even the yemschiks wearied of a discussion so entirely one-sided. We were lulled to sleep in time by the chanting of some wild native airs by a Russian family in a neighbouring house. Their songs, many of them very sweet, are mostly, if not all, of the plaintive order. A drunken "brute of a husband," whom his poor wife was trying to decoy homewards, was the only incident that broke in upon the dead stillness of the night scene in the village of Kaltarskaya. There stood our wearied horses in the street that livelong night, bearing their sufferings from cold and hunger with resignation. How the yemschiks