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4

200 versts. We employed four days to pass over the mountains, four days of continual heavy rain with a cutting northwest wind, and no shelter whatever. The road was horrible , steep, muddy and swampy, some of our horses were so exhausted that we were obliged to abandon them. We finally reached Sigil in a pretty poor condition. Our stock had suffered considerable. In spite of careful packing our provisions were wet through. Many of our pack horses having been thrown down whilst crossing streams hard bead, tea were literally swimming in the boxes and sugar had melted. Our personal loss was great, the few toilette articles we had taken with us had turned into jelly. The weather continuing to be very bad, we were compelled to remain in Sigil three days for a general drying and the renewal of our stock of provisions. We thus traversed a distance of twelve hundred versts on bad roads, by terrible weather, in 18 days including 24 hours spent at Klutchi. Our travel was considered extraordinarily rapid by the inhabitants.

The night of our arrival to Sigil a heavy fall of snow made our further travel still more precarious. Under these circumstance and foreseeing an unusually early winter, I deemed it prudent to adopt some measures of precaution in case we should be detained on the road.

I wrote to the Ispavink of Shigiga