About noon on the first day from Irkutsk we took a yemshick who proved sullen in the highest degree.  The country was gently undulating, and the road superb but our promises of navodku were of no avail.  We offered and entreated in vain.  As a last resort we shouted in French to the ladies and suggested that they take the lead.  Our yemshick ordered his comrade to keep his place, and refused to turn aside to allow him to pass.  He even slackened his speed and drew his horses to a walk.  Our stout-armed garcon took a position on our sleigh, and by a fistic argument succeeded in turning us aside.  We made only fair progress, and were glad when the drive was ended.

When we began our rapid traveling, I had fears that the sleigh would go to pieces in consequence, but was soon convinced that everything was lovely.  The sport was exciting, and greatly relieved the monotony of travel.  We were so protected by furs, pillows, blankets, and hay, that our jolting and bounding had no serious result.  The ladies enjoyed it as much as ourselves, and were not at all inconvenienced by any ordinary shaking.  Once at the end of a furious ride of twenty versts, I found the madame asleep and learned that she had been so since leaving the last station.

I have ridden much in American stage coaches, and witnessed some fine driving in the west and in California.  But for rapidity and dash, commend me always to the Siberian yemshicks.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

On the second morning we stopped at Tulemsk to deliver several boxes that encumbered the sleighs.  The servants have a way of putting small articles, and sometimes large ones, in the forward end of the vehicle.  They are no special annoyance to a person of short stature, but in my own case I was not reconciled to the practice.  A Russian sleigh is shaped somewhat like a laundry smoothing-iron, much narrower forward than aft, so that a traveler does not usually find the space beneath the driver a world too wide for his shrunk shanks.

We thawed out over a steaming samovar with plenty of hot tea.  The lady of the house brought a bottle of nalifka of such curious though agreeable flavor that I asked of what fruit it was made.  “Nothing but orange peel,” was the reply.  Every Siberian housewife considers it her duty to prepare a goodly supply of nalifka during the autumn.  A glass jar holding two or three gallons is filled to the neck with any kind of fruit or berries, currants and gooseberries being oftenest used.  The jar is then filled with native whisky, and placed in a southern window where it is exposed to the sunlight and the heat of the room for ten days.  The whisky is then poured off, mixed with an equal quantity of water, placed in a kettle with a pound of sugar to each gallon, and boiled for a few minutes.  When cooled and strained it is bottled and goes to the cellar.  Many Siberians prefer nalifka to foreign wines, and a former governor-general attempted to make it fashionable.  He eschewed imported wine and substituted nalifka, but his example was not imitated to the extent he desired.