al in a Korak _yurt_,
therefore, at Kamenoi, was not at all satisfactory.

[Illustration: HOUR-GLASS HOUSES OF THE SETTLED KORAKS From a model in
The American Museum of Natural History]

We had not been twenty minutes in the settlement before the _yurt_
that we occupied was completely crowded with stolid, brutal-looking
men, dressed in spotted deerskin clothes, wearing strings of coloured
beads in their ears, and carrying heavy knives two feet in length in
sheaths tied around their legs. They were evidently a different class
of natives from any we had yet seen, and their savage animal faces did
not inspire us with much confidence. A good-looking Russian, however,
soon made his appearance, and coming up to us with uncovered head,
bowed and introduced himself as a Cossack from Gizhiga, sent to meet
us by the Russian governor at that place. The courier who had preceded
us from Lesnoi had reached Gizhiga ten days before us, and the
governor had despatched a Cossack at once to meet us at Kamenoi, and
conduct us through the settled Korak villages around the head of
Penzhinsk Gulf. The Cossack soon cleared the _yurt_ of natives, and
the Major proceeded to question him about the character of the country
north and west of Gizhiga, the distance from Kamenoi to the Russian
outpost of Anadyrsk, the facilities for winter travel, and the time
necessary for the journey. Fearful for the safety of the party of men
which he presumed to have been landed by the engineer-in-chief at the
mouth of the Anadyr River, Major Abaza had intended to go directly
from Kamenoi to Anadyrsk himself in search of them, and to send Dodd
and me westward along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea to meet Mahood
and Bush. The Cossack, however, told us that a party of men from the
Anadyr River had arrived at Gizhiga on dog-sledges just previous to
his departure, and that they had brought no news of any Americans
in the vicinity of Anadyrsk or on the river. Col. Bulkley, the
chief-engineer of the enterprise, had promised us, when we sailed from
San Francisco, that he would land a party of men with a whale boat at
or near the mouth of the Anadyr River, early enough in the season so
that they could ascend the river to the settlement of Anadyrsk and
open communication with us by the first winter road. This he had
evidently failed to do; for, if a party had been so landed, the
Anadyrsk people would certainly have heard something about it. The
unfavourable nature of the co