But I had no occasion to push at a winter journey of this kind; I was bound to England, not to Moscow, and my route lay two ways:  either I must go on as the caravan went, till I came to Jarislaw, and then go off west for Narva, and the gulf of Finland, and so either by sea or land to Dantzic, where I might possibly sell my China cargo to good advantage; or I must leave the caravan at a little town on the Dwina, from whence I had but six days by water to Archangel, and from thence might be sure of shipping, either to England, Holland, or Hamburgh.

Now to go any of these journies in the winter would have been preposterous; for as to Dantzic, the Baltic would be frozen up, and I could not get passage; and to go by land in those countries, was far less safe than among the Mogul Tartars; likewise to Archangel, in October all the ships would be gone from thence, and even the merchants, who dwell there in summer, retire south to Moscow in the winter, when the ships are gone; so that I should have nothing but extremity of cold to encounter, with a scarcity of provisions, and must lie there in an empty town all the winter:  so that, upon the whole, I thought it much my better way to let the caravan go, and to make provision to winter where I was, viz. at Tobolski, in Siberia, in the latitude of sixty degrees, where I was sure of three things to wear out a cold winter with, viz. plenty of provisions, such as the country afforded, a warm house, with fuel enough, and excellent company; of all which I shall give a full account in its place.

I was now in a quite different climate from my beloved island, where I never felt cold, except when I had my ague; on the contrary, I had much to do to bear my clothes on my back, and never made any fire but without doors, for my necessity, in dressing my food, &c.  Now I made me three good vests, with large robes or gowns over them, to hang down to the feet, and button close to the wrists, and all these lined with furs, to make them sufficiently warm.

As to a warm house, I must confess, I greatly dislike our way in England, of making fires in every room in the house, in open chimnies, which, when the fire was out, always kept the air in the room cold as the climate.  But taking an apartment in a good house in the town, I ordered a chimney to be built like a furnace, in the centre of six several rooms, like a stove; the funnel to carry the smoke went up one way, the door to come at the fire went in another, and all the rooms were kept equally warm, but no fire seen; like as they heat the bagnios in England.

By this means we had always the same climate in all the rooms, and an equal heat was preserved; and how cold soever it was without, it was always warm within; and yet we saw no fire, nor were ever incommoded with any smoke.

The most wonderful thing of all was, that it should be possible to meet with good company here, in a country so barbarous as that of the most northerly part of Europe, near the Frozen ocean, and within but a very few degrees of Nova Zembla.