he vales, the
rivers, the lakes, are all smooth, and hard as a stone; and they run
upon the surface, without any regard to what is underneath.

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