. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across on the ice of the river while the driv-ers went to the station on the bank to change horses, and sometimes it wasdriven up the sloping road and then down again. Going up was all right,but descending was occasionally perilous. The sleigh manifested a tendency to go faster than the horses; therewas usually no protecting wall or rail at the outer edge of the slope, andmore than once we narrowly escaped being pitched down a steep cliff offrozen
. The boy travellers in the Russian empire: adventures of two youths in a journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with accounts of a tour across on the ice of the river while the driv-ers went to the station on the bank to change horses, and sometimes it wasdriven up the sloping road and then down again. Going up was all right,but descending was occasionally perilous. The sleigh manifested a tendency to go faster than the horses; therewas usually no protecting wall or rail at the outer edge of the slope, andmore than once we narrowly escaped being pitched down a steep cliff offrozen earth to the solid ice fifty or a hundred feet below. At such timesthe way of safety lay in forcing the horses ahead, in the hope that theywould overcome the sideling motion of the sleigh. As there was a chance 400 THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. tliat thev might stumble, and throw horses, sleigh, passengers, baggage, anddriver all in a lieap, the alternative was nearly as bad as the preliminarydanger. On the 6th of January we passed several places where baptizingsthrough the ice were in progress. This is one of the days that the Church I. DESCENDING A HILL-SIDE ROAD. consecrates to baptismal ceremonies, and throughout the Empire manythousands of devout worshippers are plunged into the icy water. We didnot stop to witness the ceremony, but caught a glimpse of a priest readingfrom a book, while another was holding by the liands a man whose headjust rose above the surface of the water. As fast as the baptized onesemerged from the hole through the ice they ran rapidly to tlie village, ashort distance away. A LONG SLEIGH-EIDE. 401 There at last are the domes of Nijni Novgorod, and there I say fare-well to my sleigh. I have passed two hundred and nine stations, with as many changes
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