"When the winter roads were reported in a condition for travelling I began my preparations for leaving Irkutsk on a sleigh-ride of thirty-six hundred miles. The thermometer went to twenty degrees below zero soon after the first fall of snow, and my Russian friends told me to prepare for forty below. Under their advice I employed a tailor who knew his business, and when his work was completed my room resembled a clothing store of modest proportions. Here is what I bought: A sheepskin coat with the wool inside; the garment fell below my knees, was without a collar, and buttoned tight around the neck. It was intended for wearing outside my ordinary suit of clothing. Outside of this was what the Russians call a dehar; it was made of deer-skin, with the hair outward, and as I walked it swept the floor like a lady's ball-dress. The sleeves were six inches longer than my arms, and very inconvenient when I wished to pick up any small article; the collar was a foot wide, and when turned up and brought around in front completely concealed my head. Then I had a fur cap, circular in shape and with lappets for covering the ears. A lady made, from a piece of sable-skin, a mitten for my nose.
"For my foot-gear I discarded my leather boots. Outside of my ordinary socks I had a pair of squirrel-skin socks with the fur inside, sheepskin stockings with the wool inside and reaching to the knee, and outside of these were deer-skin boots, with the hair outside, and reaching up nearly to the junction of my lower limbs. Added to these garments for excluding cold was a robe of sheepskins with the wool on, and backed with heavy cloth. It was seven feet square, and something like a dozen skins were required for making it. At one end it was shaped into a sort of bag for receiving the feet."
Fred suggested that such a costume must be very inconvenient for walking, and it must be no easy matter to enter and leave a sleigh when thus wrapped for a cold night.
"You are quite right," said Mr. Hegeman; "it is the work of a minute or more to turn over at night and change one's position, excepting, of course, when the sleigh turns over first."
"Did that happen often?"
"Fortunately not," was the reply, "but the few experiences of this kind that I had were quite sufficient. One night we were upset while going at full speed down a hill. I was asleep at the time, and without the least warning found myself in a mass of baggage, hay, furs, and snow. My first thought was that an earthquake had hit us, and it was several seconds before I realized what had happened. One of the horses broke loose and ran away; the driver mounted the other and went after the fugitive, and for half an hour my companion and myself were left alone with the sleigh and its contents. We kept ourselves busy trying to get things to rights, and as we had only the light of the stars to work by, we did not get along rapidly.
"We found one of the shafts and also a fender broken; otherwise the vehicle had suffered no material damage. But I'm getting ahead of the story.
"I arranged to leave Irkutsk with some Russian friends who were going to Krasnoyarsk, the next provincial capital. After getting my furs, the next thing was to buy a sleigh, and again I took advice.