Now began a long and weary tramp.  The winter of 1846 was one of unparalleled rigor in Siberia.  The snow fell in enormous masses, which buried the roads deep out of sight and crushed solidly-built houses under its weight.  Every difficulty of an ordinary journey on foot was increased tenfold.  Piotrowski’s clothes encumbered him excessively, yet he dared not take any of them off.  His habit was to avoid passing through villages as much as possible, but, if forced to do so to inquire his way, only to stop at the last house.  When he was hungry he drew a bit of frozen bread from his wallet and ate it as he went along:  to quench his thirst he often had no resource but melting the snow in his mouth, which rather tends to increase the desire for water.  At night he went into the depths of the forest, dug a hole under the snow, and creeping in slept there as best he might.  At the first experiment his feet were frozen:  he succeeded in curing them, though not without great pain.  Sometimes he plunged up to the waist or neck in the drifts, and expected at the next step to be buried alive.  One night, having tasted to the full those two tortures, cold and hunger—­of which, as he says, we complain so frequently without knowing what they mean—­he ventured to ask for shelter at a little hut near a hamlet where there were only two women.  They gave him warm food:  he dried his drenched clothes, and stretched himself out to sleep on the bench near the kitchen stove.  He was roused by voices, then shaken roughly and asked for his passport:  there were three men in the room.  With amazing presence of mind he demanded by what right they asked for his passport:  were any of them officials?  No, but they insisted on knowing who he was and where he was going, and seeing his pass.  He told them the same story that he had told the women, and finally exhibited the local pass, which was now quite worthless, and would not have deceived a government functionary for a moment:  they were satisfied with the sight of the stamp.  They excused themselves, saying that the women had taken fright and given the alarm, thinking that, as sometimes happened, they were housing an escaped convict.  This adventure taught him a severe lesson of prudence.  He often passed fifteen or twenty nights under the snow in the forest, without seeking food or shelter, hearing the wolves howl at a distance.  In this savage mode of life he lost the count of time:  he was already far in the Ural Mountains before he again ventured to sleep beneath a roof.  As he was starting the next morning his hosts said, in answer to his inquiries as to the road, “A little farther on you will find a guard-house, where they will look at your papers and give you precise directions.”  Again how narrow an escape!  He turned from the road and crossed hills and gorges, often up to the chin in snow, and made an immense curve before taking up his march again.

[Illustration:  A Samaritan of the steppes.]