PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.


This narrative of Siberian life and adventure was first given to the
public in 1870--just forty years ago. Since that time it has never
been out of print, and has never ceased to find readers; and the
original plates have been sent to the press so many times that they
are nearly worn out. This persistent and long-continued demand for the
book seems to indicate that it has some sort of perennial interest,
and encourages me to hope that a revised, illustrated, and greatly
enlarged edition of it will meet with a favourable reception.

_Tent Life in Siberia_ was put to press for the first time while I
was absent in Russia. I wrote the concluding chapters of it in St.
Petersburg, and sent them to the publishers from there in the early
part of 1870. I was then so anxious to get started for the mountains
of the Caucasus that I cut the narrative as short as I possibly could,
and omitted much that I should have put in if I had had time enough
to work it into shape. The present edition contains more than fifteen
thousand words of new matter, including "Our Narrowest Escape" and
"The Aurora of the Sea," and it also describes, for the first time,
the incidents and adventures of a winter journey overland from the
Okhotsk Sea to the Volga River--a straightaway sleigh-ride of more
than five thousand miles.

The illustrations of the present edition, which will, I hope, add
greatly to its interest, are partly from paintings by George A. Frost,