At first Borrow seems to have found the severity of the winter very
trying. "The cold when you go out into it," he writes to his mother
(1st/13th Feb. 1834), "cuts your face like a razor, and were you not
to cover it with furs the flesh would be bitten off. The rooms in
the morning are heated with a stove as hot as ovens, and you would
not be able to exist in one for a minute; but I have become used to
them and like them much, though at first they made me dreadfully sick
and brought on bilious headaches."

There was still at the Sarepta House, the premises of the Bible
Society's bankers in St Petersburg, the box of Manchu type, which had
not been examined since the river floods. In addition to this, the
only other Manchu characters in St Petersburg belonged to Baron
Schilling, who possessed a small fount of the type, which he used
"for the convenience of printing trifles in that tongue," as Borrow
phrased it. This was to be put at Borrow's disposal if necessary;
but first the type at the Sarepta House had to be examined. Borrow's
plan was, provided the type were not entirely ruined, to engage the
services of a printer who was accustomed to setting Mongolian
characters, which are very similar to those of Manchu, who would, he
thought, be competent to undertake the work. He suggested following
the style of the St Matthew's Gospel already printed, giving to each
Gospel and the Acts a volume and printing the Epistles and the
Apocalypse in three more, making eight volumes in all.

These he proposed putting "in a small thin wooden case, covered with
blue stuff, precisely after the manner of Chinese books, in order
that they may not give offence to the eyes of the people for whom
they are intended by a foreign and unusual appearance, for the mere
idea that they are barbarian books would certainly prevent them being