in the selection, organisation,
and equipment of parties, until at last, in June, 1865, the Company's
vessels were reported ready for sea.

The plan of operations, so far as it had then been decided upon, was
to land one party in British Columbia, near the mouth of the Frazer
River; one in Russian-America, at Norton Sound; and one on the Asiatic
side of Bering Strait, at the mouth of the Anadyr (ah-nah'-dyr) River.
These parties, under the direction respectively of Messrs. Pope,
Kennicott, and Macrae, were directed to push back into the interior,
following as far as practicable the courses of the rivers near which
they were landed; to obtain all possible information with regard to
the climate, soil, timber, and inhabitants of the regions traversed;
and to locate, in a general way, a route for the proposed line.

The two American parties would have comparatively advantageous bases
of operations at Victoria and Fort St. Michael; but the Siberian
party, if left on the Asiatic coast at all, must be landed near Bering
Strait, on the edge of a barren, desolate region, nearly a thousand
miles from any known settlement. Thrown thus upon its own resources,
in an unknown country, and among nomadic tribes of hostile natives,
without any means of interior transportation except canoes, the safety
and success of this party were by no means assured. It was even
asserted by many friends of the enterprise, that to leave men in such
a situation, and under such circumstances, was to abandon them to
almost certain death; and the Russian consul at San Francisco wrote a
letter to Colonel Bulkley, advising him strongly not to land a party
on the Asiatic coast of the North Pacific, but to send it instead to
one of the Russian ports of the Okhotsk Sea, where it could establish
a base of supplies, obtain information with regard to the interior,
and procure horses or dog-sledges for overland explorations in any
desired direction.

The wisdom and good sense of this advice were apparent to all; but
unfortunately the engineer-in-chief had no vessel that he could send
with a party into the Okhotsk Sea, and if men were landed at all that
summer on the Asiatic coast, they must be landed near Bering Strait.

Late in June, however, Colonel Bulkley learned that a small Russian
trading-vessel named the _Olga_ was about to sail from San Francisco
for Kamchatka (kam-chat'-kah) and the south-western coast of the
Okhotsk Sea, and he succeeded in prevailin