"I think so, sire," replied General Kissoff; "and your majesty
may be sure that Michael Strogoff will do all that a man can do."
"He is indeed a man," said the Czar.
CHAPTER IV FROM MOSCOW TO NIJNI-NOVGOROD
THE distance between Moscow and Irkutsk, about to be traversed
by Michael Strogoff, was three thousand four hundred miles.
Before the telegraph wire extended from the Ural Mountains to
the eastern frontier of Siberia, the dispatch service was performed
by couriers, those who traveled the most rapidly taking eighteen
days to get from Moscow to Irkutsk. But this was the exception,
and the journey through Asiatic Russia usually occupied from four
to five weeks, even though every available means of transport
was placed at the disposal of the Czar's messengers.
Michael Strogoff was a man who feared neither frost nor snow.
He would have preferred traveling during the severe winter season,
in order that he might perform the whole distance by sleighs.
At that period of the year the difficulties which all other means
of locomotion present are greatly diminished, the wide steppes
being leveled by snow, while there are no rivers to cross,
but simply sheets of glass, over which the sleigh glides
rapidly and easily.
Perhaps certain natural phenomena are most to be feared at that time,
such as long-continuing and dense fogs, excessive cold, fearfully heavy
snow-storms, which sometimes envelop whole caravans and cause
their destruction.
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