and take care of, lest they should mortify and fall off.
It is true, within doors we were warm, the houses being close, the
walls thick, the windows small, and the glass all double. Our food
was chiefly the flesh of deer, dried and cured in the season; bread
good enough, but baked as biscuits; dried fish of several sorts,
and some flesh of mutton, and of buffaloes, which is pretty good
meat. All the stores of provisions for the winter are laid up in
the summer, and well cured: our drink was water, mixed with aqua
vitae instead of brandy; and for a treat, mead instead of wine,
which, however, they have very good. The hunters, who venture
abroad all weathers, frequently brought us in fine venison, and
sometimes bear’s flesh, but we did not much care for the last. We
had a good stock of tea, with which we treated our friends, and we
lived cheerfully and well, all things considered.
It was now March, the days grown considerably longer, and the
weather at least tolerable; so the other travellers began to
prepare sledges to carry them over the snow, and to get things
ready to be going; but my measures being fixed, as I have said, for
Archangel, and not for Muscovy or the Baltic, I made no motion;
knowing very well that the ships from the south do not set out for
that part of the world till May or June, and that if I was there by
the beginning of August, it would be as soon as any ships would be
ready to sail. Therefore I made no haste to be gone, as others
did: in a word, I saw a great many people, nay, all the
travellers, go away before me. It seems every year they go from
thence to Muscovy, for trade, to carry furs, and buy necessaries,
which they bring back with them to furnish their shops: also
others went on the same errand to Archangel.
In the month of May I began to make all ready to pack up; and, as I
was doing this, it occurred to me that, seeing all these people
were banished by the Czar to Siberia, and yet, when they came
there, were left at liberty to go whither they would, why they did
not then go away to any part of the world, wherever they thought
fit: and I began to examine what should hinder them from making
such an attempt. But my wonder was over when I entered upon that
subject with the person I have mentioned, who answered me thus:
“Consider, first, sir,” said he, “the place where we are; and,
secondly, the condition we are in; especially the generality of the
people who are banished thither. We are surrounded with stronger
things than bars or bolts; on the north side, an unnavigable ocean,
where ship never sailed, and boat never swam; every other way we
have above a thousand miles to pass through the Czar’s own
dominion, and by ways utterly impassable, except by the roads made
by the government, and through the towns garrisoned by his troops;
in short, we could neither pass undiscovered by the road, nor
subsist any other way, so that it is in vain to attempt it.”
I was silenced at once, and found that they were in a prison every
jot as secure as if they had been locked up in the castle at
Moscow: however, it came into my thoughts that I might certainly
be made an instrument to procure the escape of this excellent
person; and that, whatever hazard I ran, I would certainly try if I
could carry him off. Upon this, I took an occasion one evening to
tell him my thoughts. I represented to him that it was very easy
for me to carry him away, there being no guard over him in the
country; and as I was not going to Moscow, but to Archangel, and
that I went in the retinue of a caravan, by which I was not obliged
to lie in the stationary towns in the desert, but could encamp
every night where I would, we might easily pass uninterrupted to