COXE’s TRAVELS IN RUSSIA.

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did not add to their ordinary clothing, which is at all times well calculated for thefeverities of the climate. They are careful in preferving the extremities againft thecold, by covering the legs, hands, and head, with fur.. The upper garment of {beep-fkin, with the wool turned inwards, is tied round the waift with a fafh; but the neckis bare, and the bread only covered with a coarfe fiiirt: thefe parts, however, are wellguarded by the beard. I obferved, with much furprife, feveral women engaged inwalking upon the Neva or on the canals. They cut holes in the ice with a hatchet,dipped their linen into the water with bare hands, and then beat it with flat dicks.During this operation the ice continually formed again, and they were condantly em-ployed in clearing it away. Many of them paffed two hours without intermiffion atthis work, when the thermometer was at 60 below freezing point; a circumdancewhich proves that the human body may be brought to endure all extremes.

It fometimes happens that coachmen or fcrvants, waiting for their maders, arcfrozen to death. To prevent as much as poffible thefe dreadful accidents, great firesof whole trees, piled one upon another, are kindled in the court-yard of the palace,and the mod frequented parts of the town. As the flames blazed above the tops ofthe houfes, and cad a glare to a confiderable didance, I was much amufed with con-templating the pi&urefque groups of Ruffians, with their Afiatic drefs and long beards,nflfembled round the fire. The centinels upon duty, having no beards, which are ofgreat ufe to protedf the glands of the throat, generally tie handkerchiefs under theirchins*, and cover their ears with fmall cafes of flannel.

Nothing .can be more lively and diverfified than the winter fcenes upon the Neva;and fcarcely a day pafled that I did not take my morning walk, or drive in a fledgeupon the river. Many carriages and fledges, and numberlefs foot paflengers perpetu-ally eroding, afford a condant fucceffion of moving obje6ls ; the ice is alfo coveredwith different groups of people, difperfed or gathered together, and varioufly em-ployed as their fancy leads them. In one part are feveral long areas railed for thepurpofe of Rating; a little further is an enclofure, where a nobleman is training hishorfes, and teaching them the evolutions of the manege. In another part the croudand fpeflators of a fledge race. The courfe is an oblong fpace about the length of amile, and diffidently broad to turn the carriage. It can hardly be denominated arace, for there is only a Angle fledge drawn by two horfes, and the whole art of thedriver confids in making the {haft horfe trot fad, while the other is pufhed into agallop.

The ice-hills afford a perpetual fund of amufement to the populace. A fcaffoldingis railed upon the river thirty feet in height, with a landing place on the top, to whichthe afeent is by a ladder. From this fummit a doping plain of boards, four yards broadand thirty long, fupported by drong poles gradually decreafing in height, defeends tothe fuperficies of the river, and the fides are defended by a parapet of p'anks. On thefeboards are laid fquare blocks of ice chipped with the axe, and fprinkled with water, bywhich means they coalefce, become fmooth, and form an inclined plain of pure ice. Atthe bottom the fnow is cleared away for the length of two hundred yards and the breadthof four, and the fides of this courfe, as well as the fides and top of the fcaffolding, areornamented with firs and pines. Each perfon being provided with a final! fledge f,mounts the ladder to the fummit, feats himfelf on his fledge and glides down the inclinedplane; when the velocity acquired by the defeent, carries the fledge above one hundred

* The women alfo ufe this precaution.

+ Something like a butcher’s tray, as Dr. King juflly obferves in his ingenious pamphlet on the ef-/ects of cold in Ruffia.