this wharf, at the “Siberian Landing,” a point on the Volga shore of the Fair sand-spit, miles nearer our hotel than the one to which we had driven through torrents of rain.  We were to make our real start at ten o’clock that night!  The cold was piercing.  We wrapped ourselves up in our wadded cloaks and in a big down quilt which we had with us, and tried to sleep, amid the deliberate bang-bang-bang of loading.  When the cargo was in we slept.  When we woke in the morning we began to exchange remarks, being still in that half comatose condition which follows heavy slumber.

“What a delightfully easy boat!” “Who would have expected such smoothness of motion from such an inferior-looking old craft?” “It must be very swift to have no motion at all perceptible.  Whereabouts are we, and how much have we missed?”

I rose and raised the blind.  The low shore opposite and far away, the sandy islet near at hand, the river,—­all looked suspiciously like what our eyes had rested upon when we went to bed the night before.  We would not believe it at first, but it was true, that we had not moved a foot, but were still tied up at the Siberian Landing.  Thence we returned to the town wharf, no apologies or explanations being forthcoming or to be extracted, whence we made a final start at about nine o’clock, only fifteen hours late!  And the company professed to be “American”!

Progress up the river was slow.  The cold rain and wind prevented our availing ourselves of the tiny deck.  The little saloon had no outlook, being placed in the middle of the boat.  The shores and villages were not of striking interest, after our acquaintance with the lower Volga.  For hours all the other passengers (chiefly second-class) were abed, apparently.  I returned to my cabin to kill time with reading, and presently found the divan and even the floor and partition walls becoming intolerably hot, and exhaling a disagreeable smell of charred wood.  I set out on a tour of investigation.  In the next compartment to us, which had the outward appearance of a stateroom, but was inclosed on the outside only by a lattice-work, was the smoke-pipe.  The whistle was just over our heads, and the pipe almost touched the partition wall of our cabin.  That partly explained the deadly chill of the night before, and the present suffocating heat.  I descended to the lower deck.  There stood the engine, almost as rudimentary as a parlor stove, in full sight and directly under our cabin; also close to the woodwork.  It burned wood, and at every station the men brought a supply on board; the sticks, laid across two poles in primitive but adequate fashion, being deposited by the simple process of widening the space between the poles, and letting the wood fall on the deck with a noise like thunder.  The halts and “wooding up” seemed especially frequent at night, and there was not much opportunity for sleep between them.  Our fear of being burned alive also deprived us of the desire to sleep.  We were nearly roasted, as it was, and had to go out on the deck in the wind and rain at short intervals, to cool off.