[Illustration:  A COLD BATH.]

We had four horses harnessed abreast and guided by the yemshick.  Two others were temporarily attached ahead under control of a Bouriat.  As we drove into the river the horses shrank from the cold water and ice that came against their sides.  One slipped and fell, but was soon up again.  The current drifted us with it and I thought for a moment we were badly caught.  The drivers whipped and shouted so effectively that we reached the other side without accident.

On the second evening we had a drunken yemshick who lost the road several times and once drove us into a clump of bushes.  As a partial excuse the night was so dark that one could not see ten feet ahead.  About two o’clock in the morning we reached the station nearest to Verkne Udinsk.  Here was a dilemma.  Captain Molostoff had business at Verkne Udinsk which he could not transact before nine or ten in the morning.  There was no decent hotel, and if we pushed forward we should arrive long before the Russian hour for rising.  We debated the question over a steaming samovar and decided to remain at the station till morning.  By starting after daylight we might hope to find the town awake.

The travelers’ room at the station was clean and well furnished, but heated to a high temperature.  The captain made his bed on a sofa, but I preferred the tarantass where the air was cool and pure.  I arranged my furs, fastened the boot and hood of the carriage, and slept comfortably in a keen wind.  At daylight the yemshicks attached horses and called the captain from the house.  He complained that he slept little owing to the heat.  Boika was in bad humor and opened the day by tearing the coat of one man and being kicked by another.

The ground was rougher and better wooded as we came near the junction of the Ouda and Selenga, and I could see evidences of a denser population.  On reaching the town we drove to the house of Mr. Pantoukin, a brother of an officer I met at Chetah.  The gentleman was not at home and we were received by his friend Captain Sideroff.  After talking a moment in Russian with Captain Molostoff, our new acquaintance addressed me in excellent English and inquired after several persons at San Francisco.  He had been there four times with the Russian fleet, and appeared to know the city very well.

Verkne Udinsk is at the junction of the Ouda and Selenga rivers, three hundred versts from Irkutsk and four hundred and fifty from Chetah.  It presents a pretty appearance when approached from the east, when its largest and best buildings first catch the eye.  It has a church nearly two hundred years old, built with immensely thick walls to resist occasional earthquakes.  A large crack was visible in the wall of a newer church, and repairs were in progress.