untry around Bering Strait, or the
lateness of the season when the Company's vessels reached that point,
had probably compelled the abandonment of this part of the original
plan. Major Abaza had always disapproved the idea of leaving a
party near Bering Strait; but he could not help feeling a little
disappointment when he found that no such party had been landed, and
that he was left with only four men to explore the eighteen hundred
miles of country between the strait and the Amur River. The Cossack
said that no difficulty would be experienced in getting dog-sledges
and men at Gizhiga to explore any part of the country west or north of
that place, and that the Russian governor would give us every possible
assistance.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A KORAK YURT. GETTING FIRE WITH THE FIRE
DRILL Photograph in The American Museum of Natural History]

Under these circumstances there was nothing to be done but to push on
to Gizhiga, which could be reached, the Cossack said, in two or three
days. The Kamenoi Koraks were ordered to provide a dozen dog-sledges
at once, to carry us on to the next settlement of Shestakova; and the
whole village was soon engaged, under the Cossack's superintendence,
in transferring our baggage and provisions from the deer-sledges of
the Wandering Koraks to the long, narrow dog-sledges of their settled
relations. Our old drivers were then paid off in tobacco, beads,
and showy calico prints, and after a good deal of quarrelling
and disputing about loads between the Koraks and our new Cossack
Kerrillof, everything was reported ready. Although it was now almost
noon, the air was still keen as a knife; and, muffling up our faces
and heads in great tippets, we took seats on our respective sledges,
and the fierce Kamenoi dogs went careering out of the village and down
the bluff in a perfect cloud of snow, raised by the spiked _oerstels_
of their drivers.

The Major, Dodd, and I were travelling in covered sledges, known to
the Siberians as "pavoskas" (pah-voss'-kahs), and the reckless driving
of the Kamenoi Koraks made us wish, in less than an hour, that we had
taken some other means of conveyance, from which we could escape more
readily in case of accident or overturn. As it was, we were so boxed
up that we could hardly move without assistance. Our _pavoskas_
resembled very much long narrow coffins, covered with sealskin,
mounted on runners, and roofed over at the head by a stiff hood just
large enough