effectually as a London
fog.

We remained at Penzhina three days, gathering information about the
surrounding country and engaging men to cut poles for our line. We
found the people to be cheerful, good-natured, and hospitable, and
disposed to do all in their power to further our plans; but of course
they had never heard of a telegraph, and could not imagine what we
were going to do with the poles which we were so anxious to have cut.
Some said that we intended to build a wooden road from Gizhiga to
Anadyrsk, so that it would be possible to travel back and forth in the
summer; others contended with some show of probability that two men,
even if they _were_ Americans, could not construct a wooden road, six
hundred versts long, and that our real object was to build some
sort of a huge house. When questioned as to the use of this immense
edifice, however, the advocates of the house theory were covered with
confusion, and could only insist upon the physical impossibility of
a road, and call upon their opponents to accept the house or suggest
something better. We succeeded in engaging sixteen able-bodied men,
however, to cut poles for a reasonable compensation, gave them the
required dimensions--twenty-one feet long and five inches in diameter
at the top--and instructed them to cut as many as possible, and pile
them up along the banks of the river.

I may as well mention here, that when I returned from Anadyrsk in
March I went to look at the poles, 500 in number, which the Penzhina
men had cut. I found, to my great astonishment, that there was hardly
one of them less than twelve inches in diameter at the top, and that
the majority were so heavy and unwieldy that a dozen men could not
move them. I told the natives that they would not do, and asked why
they had not cut smaller ones, as I had directed. They replied that
they supposed I wanted to build some kind of a road on the tops of
these poles, and they knew that poles only five inches in diameter
would not be strong enough to hold it up! They had accordingly cut
trees large enough to be used as pillars for a state-house. They still
lie there, buried in arctic snows; and I have no doubt that many years
hence, when Macaulay's New Zealander shall have finished sketching the
ruins of St. Paul's and shall have gone to Siberia to complete his
education, he will be entertained by his native drivers with stories
of how two crazy Americans once tried to build an elevated railroad