when exposed to the air.  We had never before experienced so low a temperature; but we suffered very little except from cold feet, and Dodd declared that with a good fire and plenty of fat food he would not be afraid to try fifteen degrees lower.  The greatest cause of suffering in Siberia is wind.  Twenty degrees below zero, with a fresh breeze, is very trying; and a gale of wind, with a temperature of -40 deg., is almost unendurable.  Intense cold of itself is not particularly dangerous to life.  A man who will eat a hearty supper of dried fish and tallow, dress himself in a Siberian costume, and crawl into a heavy fur bag, may spend a night out-doors in a temperature of -70 deg. without any serious danger; but if he is tired out, with long travel, if his clothes are wet with perspiration, or if he has not enough to eat, he may freeze to death with the thermometer at zero.  The most important rules for an arctic traveller are:  to eat plenty of fat food; to avoid over-exertion and night journeys; and never to get into a profuse perspiration by violent exercise for the sake of temporary warmth.  I have seen Wandering Chukchis in a region destitute of wood and in a dangerous temperature, travel all day with aching feet rather than exhaust their strength by trying to warm them in running.  They would never exercise except when it was absolutely necessary to keep from freezing.  As a natural consequence, they were almost as fresh at night as they had been in the morning, and if they failed to find wood for a fire, or were compelled by some unforeseen exigency to travel throughout the twenty-four hours, they had the strength to do it.  An inexperienced traveller under the same circumstances, would have exhausted all his energy during the day in trying to keep perfectly warm; and at night, wet with perspiration and tired out by too much violent exercise, he would almost inevitably have frozen to death.

For two hours after supper, Dodd and I sat by the fire, trying experiments to see what the intense cold would do.  About eight o’clock the heavens became suddenly overcast with clouds, and in less than an hour the thermometer had risen nearly thirty degrees.  Congratulating ourselves upon this fortunate change in the weather, we crawled into our fur bags and slept away as much as we could of the long arctic night.

Our life for the next few days was the same monotonous routine of riding, camping, and sleeping with which we were already so familiar.  The country over which we passed was generally bleak, desolate, and uninteresting; the weather was cold enough for discomfort, but not enough so to make outdoor life dangerous or exciting; the days were only two or three hours in length and the nights were interminable.  Going into camp early in the afternoon, when the sun disappeared, we had before us about twenty hours of darkness, in which we must either amuse ourselves in some way, or sleep.  Twenty hours’ sleep for any one but a Rip Van Winkle was rather an over-dose, and during