At the first station our friends joined us in taking tea.  Cups, glasses, cakes, champagne bottles, cakes and cold meats, crept somehow from mysterious corners in our vehicles.  The station master was evidently accustomed to visits like this, as his rooms were ready for our reception.  We were two hours in making our adieus, and consuming the various articles provided for the occasion.  There was a general kissing all around at the last moment.

We packed the ladies in their sleigh, and then entered our own.  As we left the station our friends joined their voices in a farewell song that rang in our ears till lost in the distance, and drowned by nearer sounds.  Our bells jingled merrily in the frosty air as our horses sped rapidly along the road.  We closed the front of our sleigh, and settled among our furs and pillows.  The night was cold, but in my thick wrappings I enjoyed a tropical warmth and did not heed the low state of the thermometer.

Our road for seventy versts lay along the bank of the Angara.  A thick fog filled the valley and seemed to hug close to the river.  In the morning every part of our sleigh except at the points of friction, was white with frost.  Each little fibre projecting from our cover of canvas and matting became a miniature stalactite, and the head of every nail, bolt, and screw, buried itself beneath a mass like oxydised silver.  Everything had seized upon and congealed some of the moisture floating in the atmosphere.  Our horses were of the color, or no color, of rabbits in January; it was only by brushing away the frost that the natural tint of their hair could be discovered, and sometimes there was a great deal of frost adhering to them.

During my stay at Irkutsk I noticed the prevalence of this fog or frost cloud.  It usually formed during the night and was thickest near the river.  In the morning it enveloped the whole city, but when the sun was an hour or two in the heavens, the mist began to melt away.  It remained longest over the river, and I was occasionally in a thick cloud on the bank of the Angara when the atmosphere a hundred yards away was perfectly clear.  The moisture congealed on every stationary object.  Houses and fences were cased in ice, its thickness varying with the condition of the weather.  Trees and bushes became masses of crystals, and glistened in the sunlight as if formed of diamonds.  I could never wholly rid myself of the impression that some of the trees were fountains caught and frozen when in full action.  The frost played curious tricks of artistic skill, and its delineations were sometimes marvels of beauty.

Any one who has visited St. Petersburg in winter remembers the effect of a fog from the Gulf of Finland after a period of severe cold.  The red granite columns of St. Isaac’s church are apparently transformed into spotless marble by the congelation of moisture on their surface.  In the same manner I have seen a gray wall at Irkutsk changed in a night and morning to a dazzling whiteness.  The crystalline formation of the frost had all the varieties of the kaleidoscope without its colors.