The incident which I have just related carried with it one sad conviction, which was, that I could not reckon on a shelter for any future nights without clearly exposing myself to very serious dangers, and that, until things should take a new turn, the Ostiak couch must be my only bed; and so with the Ostiak couch I contented myself, during the whole of my journey across the Oural Mountains, and until my arrival at Véliki-Oustiong--that is to say, from the middle of February to the first days of the month of April 1846. Three or four times only did I venture to crave hospitality for the night in some lonely hut; and that was only because I was exhausted by some fifteen or twenty days passed in the forest, and my strength was so far gone that I was hardly conscious of what I was, what I said, or what I did. All the other nights I contented myself with digging an earth for sleeping in--only I had become more cunning, and I had also acquired a greater dexterity in preparing my nocturnal refuge. I had noticed that, in the depths of the forests, the snow hardly reaches to the foot of the great trees; and that, as it accumulates, it still leaves an empty space round the trunk, which soon becomes a pretty deep cavity. I let myself slip down the stem of the tree into the hollow thus formed, which was not unlike a well. Having arrived at the bottom, I tried with my stick to throw some of the snow out of the aperture at the top, and thus made a vault, which covered and sheltered me perfectly. But very often I could not manage these nightly buildings; the snow would be too light and dry, or, at another time, the roof thus laboriously contrived would fall in with a crash. I had then to seat myself close to the tree; and leaning my back against its trunk, thus slept, or rather dozed, for the night. When the cold became so great that I felt my limbs growing numbed, I had to get up, and run hither, and thither. It was too dark either to follow or to find the road; but exercise, at all risks, I must have, to revive my animal heat. On more than one occasion, I have lain down tired, and simply let myself be covered by the falling snow; this was, perhaps, the warmest cover of any; but I always found it difficult, in the morning, to shake myself loose of this white winding-sheet. By degrees, I got accustomed to this way of sleeping; and sometimes, when night fell, I would find myself turning into the thickest part of the woods, as to some familiar resting-place; though at other times, I must confess, this savage life seemed to me all but unbearable. The absence of any human dwellings, the want of warm victuals--sometimes even of frozen bread (my only food, for days together)--would make me feel that, not very far from my side, there lay in wait for me those two hideous spectres--Cold and Famine--whose names we are so apt to take in vain at every little trifle which makes us uncomfortable! In such moments, what I most dreaded were the sudden