As soon as possible after supper, I stretched myself out upon the floor under a convenient table, which answered practically and aesthetically all the purposes of a four-post bedstead, inflated my little rubber pillow, rolled myself up, a la mummy, in a blanket, and slept.

The Major, always an early riser, was awake on the following morning at daylight.  Dodd and I, with a coincidence of opinion as rare as it was gratifying, regarded early rising as a relic of barbarism which no American, with a proper regard for the civilisation of the nineteenth century, would demean himself by encouraging.  We had therefore entered into a mutual agreement upon this occasion to sleep peacefully until the “caravan,” as Dodd irreverently styled it, should be ready to start, or at least until we should receive a summons for breakfast.  Soon after daybreak, however, a terrific row began about something, and with a vague impression that I was attending a particularly animated primary meeting in the Ninth Ward, I sprang up, knocked my head violently against a table-leg, opened my eyes in amazement, and stared wildly at the situation.  The Major, in a scanty deshabille, was storming furiously about the room, cursing our frightened drivers in classical Russian, because the horses had all stampeded during the night and gone, as he said with expressive simplicity, “Chort tolko znal kooda”—­“the devil only knew where.”  This was rather an unfortunate beginning of our campaign; but in the course of two hours most of the wandering beasts were found, packs were adjusted, and after an unnecessary amount of profanity from the drivers, we turned our backs on Jerusalem and rode slowly away over the rolling grassy foot-hills of the Avachinski volcano.

It was a warm, beautiful Indian summer day, and a peculiar stillness and Sabbath-like quiet seemed to pervade all nature.  The leaves of the scattering birches and alders along the trail hung motionless in the warm sunshine, the drowsy cawing of a crow upon a distant larch came to our ears with strange distinctness, and we even imagined that we could hear the regular throbbing of the surf upon the far-away coast.  A faint murmurous hum of bees was in the air, and a rich fruity fragrance came up from the purple clusters of blueberries which our horses crushed under foot at every step.  All things seemed to unite in tempting the tired traveller to stretch himself out on the warm fragrant grass, and spend the day in luxurious idleness, listening to the buzzing of the sleepy bees, inhaling the sweet smell of crushed blueberries, and watching the wreaths of curling smoke which rose lazily from the lofty crater of the great white volcano.  I laughingly said to Dodd that instead of being in Siberia—­the frozen land of Russian exiles—­we had apparently been transported by some magical Arabian Night’s contrivance to the clime of the “Lotus Eaters,” which would account for the dreamy, drowsy influence