A deep snow had been trodden into an uneven road in this part of the journey.  At times it seemed to me as if the sleigh and all it contained would go to pieces in the terrific thumps we received.  We descended hills as if pursued by wolves or a guilty conscience, and it was generally our fate to find a huge oukhaba just when the horses were doing their best.  I think the sleigh sometimes made a clear leap of six or eight feet from the crest of a ridge to the bottom of a hollow.  The leaping was not very objectionable, but the impact made everything rattle.  I could say, like the Irishman who fell from a house top, “’twas not the fall, darling, that hurt me, but stopping so quick at the end.”

When the roads are rough the continual jolting of the sleigh is very fatiguing to a traveler, and frequently, during the first two or three days of his journey, throws him into what is very properly designated the road fever.  His pulse is quick, his blood warm, his head aches, his whole frame becomes sore and stiff, and his mind is far from being serene and amiable.  In the first part of my land journey I had the satisfaction of ascertaining by practical experience the exact character of the road-fever.  My brain seemed ready to burst, and appeared to my excited imagination about as large as a barrel; every fresh jolt and thump of the vehicle gave me a sensation as if somebody were driving a tenpenny nail into my skull; as for good-nature under such circumstances that was out of the question, and I am free to confess that my temper was not unlike that of a bear with a sore head.

Where the roads are good, or if the speed is not great, one can sleep very well in a Russian sleigh; I succeeded in extracting a great deal of slumber from my vehicle, and sometimes did not wake for three or four hours.  Sometimes the roads are in such wretched condition that one is tossed to the height of discomfort, and can be very well likened to a lump of butter in a revolving churn.  In such cases sleep is almost if not wholly, impossible, and the traveler, proceeding at courier speed, must take advantage of the few moments’ halt at the stations while the horses are being changed.  As he has but ten or fifteen minutes for the change he makes good use of his time and sleeps very soundly until his team is ready.  During the Crimean war, while the Emperor Nicholas was temporarily sojourning at Moscow, a courier arrived one day with important dispatches from Sebastopol.  He was commissioned to deliver them to no one but His Majesty, and waited in the ante-room of the palace while his name and business were announced.  Overcome by fatigue he fell asleep; when the chamberlains came to take him to the Imperial presence they were quite unable to rouse him.  The attendants shook him and shouted, but to no purpose beyond making so much disturbance as to bring the Emperor to the ante-room.  Nicholas ordered them to desist, and then, standing near the officer, said, in an ordinary voice, “Vashe prevoschoditelstvo, loshadi gotovey” (Your horses are ready, your Excellency).  The officer sprang to his feet in an instant, greatly to the delight of the Emperor and to his own confusion when he discovered where he was.