Provided, as I have mentioned, with a recommendation from this fortunate contractor, and also with a Crown podarojnaia, for which I was indebted to the governor of Nijni, I thought I should be able to start the following morning.
But, alas! I had reckoned, this time again, without Siberian frosts.
To complete my preparations for a prolonged journey in a sledge, I was obliged the whole morning to run about from shop to shop. The number of objects to be bought was incalculable. Constantine had made out a list as long as an apothecary’s bill. I did not get back to my hotel till one in the afternoon, worn out with fatigue, in a very bad humour, thirsty and dying with hunger, and, moreover, so knocked up, that I wished for nothing more than to go to bed at once and rest my weary limbs.
I was in this state, when Constantine said to me with all the coolness in the world: “Now, monsieur, we are quite ready; do you wish to start?” I was about to propose not to get into the sledge till the following day, or to wait at least a few hours, when I happened to cast my eyes over my acquisitions, standing in a great heap in the middle of the room.
The heap that had bewildered me, when I paid my visit to M. Pfaffius, was a mere hillock beside this mountain. There were here heaped up soft leather trunks filled with clothing, to be put at the bottom of the sledge to deaden the jerks, round valises, to serve as bolsters at night, touloupes, a dacha in sheepskin, cushions, mattresses, veal and mutton sausages, felt boots, felt rugs, bottles of brandy, ropes, a hammer, a liberal supply of tools for iron and wood work, eight pairs of large worsted stockings, belts, bags, a store of white bread, pillows, and I don’t know what else. And then, my trunks being no longer of any use, all the clothing I had brought from France lay distributed everywhere in this little room, and for the first time found themselves in such strange company. Neither the most crammed railway cloak rooms, nor chinoiserie shops, nor back rooms of pawnshops, nothing, in fact, except perhaps the brain cases of certain inveterate political reformers or the witches’ caldron in Macbeth, could give any idea of such a perplexing jumble.
This exhilarating spectacle at once restored my courage; I then had but one object in view—to get out of it as speedily as possible and start. I ordered horses on the instant.
“THE SLEDGE BEING AN OPEN ONE, WE COULD ENJOY A VIEW OF THE COUNTRY.”
While a servant had gone in search of the team, we, Constantine and myself, set to work to pack all the articles I have just enumerated into a sledge, which I had ordered from the manufactory of Romanof—the most celebrated of Russian coachbuilders. This sledge, especially, was wonderfully built. Lightness and strength, the two most important qualities of a good vehicle, were united in it to the highest point of excellence. The sledge being an open one, at least in front, we could enjoy, during the daytime, a view of the country; whilst a fixed hood, which we closed in completely at night with tarred canvas, protected us pretty well against the wind and the snow. Two pieces of wood, fixed at a little height above the ground and disposed in a sloping position from the front to the back, prevented the sledge from overturning, at least in ordinary circumstances, and protected the body of the vehicle against obstacles and shocks—encounters that were met with, I believe, verily twenty or thirty times a day.
Just as you make your bed, you lie on it, says the proverb. And in Russia, just as one arranges his sledge, he bears up in proportion against the fatigue of the journey. Constantine had, in this art, real talent. He laid the mattresses in a slanting position, just nicely calculated; he adroitly smoothed over, in some way, every jutting angle or boss as often as one or the other arose from the settling of the contents during a long journey. As soon as a cavity had formed from the jolting, no matter where, he immediately filled up the vacant space with hay, and everything kept its place to the advantage of our ease. He transformed, in short, our sledge into a comfortable soft bed, which would have enabled us to support, without fatigue, the fifteen hundred leagues we had to traverse as far as Irkutsk, if circumstances, which I shall subsequently relate, had not occurred. When all these preparations had been made and the horses put to, I began to wrap myself in my travelling costume.
Those who have not visited Siberia have no idea of the excessive wrapping-up and muffling necessary to a traveller on a long journey in that climate.
To put on such a great number of garments is no light matter, and cannot be accomplished, the first time especially, without laughing outright a great deal and perspiring much more.
We first put on four pairs of worsted stockings and over them, like jack boots, a pair of felt stockings that covered our legs. We then wrapped ourselves in three garments of fur, one over the other. Then we covered our heads with an astrakan and a bachelique. When we had got into the sledge we wrapped our legs in a fur rug and then buried ourselves side by side in two more fur rugs.
These accoutrements, which would be excessive to protect one’s self merely for a few hours against the cold, even the most intense, become light enough and barely sufficient when the traveller remains exposed to the air a long time, and especially to the fatigue of a sledge journey prolonged night and day, without stopping to sleep.
The only defect in the construction of Siberian sledges is the want of a seat for the yemschik or driver: this unhappy individual is obliged to sit on a wooden platform, that covers the travellers’ legs, with his legs hanging either on the right or left side, and, consequently, has to drive from either side. When he has troublesome horses to manage he gets on his knees, or even stands up on the platform. This arrangement is all the more inconvenient, inasmuch as it requires unusual dexterity to drive and hold in the mettlesome little horses of Northern Asia. The moment they feel the harness on their backs, whether from natural ardour alone or from a want to get warm, there is no holding them; their impatience is unparalleled in horseflesh. They tremble with excitement, they paw and scrape the ground, nibble at the snow, or make a huge ball with it, and then scatter it in a cloud of fine particles. The drivers have a very difficult task to calm their impetuosity; they accomplish this in the most soothing manner, by means of a steady trill on their lips; they sustain this more intensely the moment they leap on the platform of the sledge, which is for them a very delicate gymnastic feat, demanding great agility. At this critical moment, the horses, feeling no further restraint, uncurbed, rampant, start off in a mad gallop, le diable en queue. If, on the other hand, the driver should lucklessly make an abortive attempt, he is hurled over the crosspieces like a tile by the passing gale, and the travellers go on without a whip, flying on the wings of the wind.
This was just the hairbreadth escape that happened to the first yemschik chance had thrown in our way. His horses, just as he seized the platform to leap on to it, started off at a furious pace. Like a brave fellow, he kept his grip on it like a bulldog, and, luckily, on the reins too, and was thus hauled over the snow at our side for some minutes. At the end of this critical interval he found some lucky projection beside the sledge, where he could support his knee, and at last, thanks to the herculean strength of his arms and the help we gave him, he succeeded in gaining his seat and then tenaciously clung to it to the end of the stage. Thus equipped, we left Nijni-Novgorod on the 17th of December at three o’clock in the afternoon.
This first day’s journey in a sledge was delightful and exhilarating. We felt all the pleasure of the novelty of the locomotion without yet beginning to experience the least fatigue, and at every moment we met other travellers coming, twenty and even thirty leagues, to the city we had just quitted, on their business or pleasure.
However great the distance may be, it is never an obstacle to the Russians: they seem to make nothing of it, and never to calculate it. A lady at St. Petersburg said to me one day: “You should go and see the cascade of Tchernaiarietchka: I went there the other day, and I was charmed with it; I never dreamt there was anything so beautiful at our city gates.” On making inquiries about it a few days later, and as to how I could get there, I found that it would take forty-eight hours by rail, and twelve by diligence. I daresay they will think of sending the poor seamen who are ordered to join their ships