e Anadyr River is here divided, he may not find it at all.
The inhabitants of all four settlements divide their time in summer
between fishing, and hunting the wild reindeer which make annual
migrations across the river in immense herds. In winter they are
generally absent with their sledges, visiting and trading with bands
of Wandering Chukchis, going with merchandise to the great annual
fair at Kolyma, and hiring their services to the Russian traders from
Gizhiga. The Anadyr River, in the vicinity of the village and for a
distance of seventy-five miles above, is densely wooded with trees
from eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter, although the latitude
of the upper portion of it is 66 deg. N. The climate is very severe;
meteorological observations which we made at Markova in February,
1867, showed that on sixteen days in that month the thermometer went
to -40 deg., on eight days it went below -50 deg., five days below -60 deg., and
once to -68 deg.. This was the lowest temperature we ever experienced
in Siberia. The changes from intense cold to comparative warmth are
sometimes very rapid. On February 18th, at 9 A.M., the thermometer
stood at -52 deg., but in twenty-seven hours it had risen seventy-three
degrees and stood at +21 deg.. On the 21st it marked +3 deg. and on the 22d
-49 deg., an equally rapid change in the other direction. Notwithstanding
the climate, however, Anadyrsk is as pleasant a place to live as are
nine tenths of the Russian settlements in north-eastern Siberia, and
we enjoyed the novelty of our life there in the winter of 1866 as much
as we had enjoyed any part of our previous Siberian experience.

The day which succeeded our arrival we spent in resting and making
ourselves as presentable as possible with the limited resources
afforded by our sealskin trunks.

Thursday, January 6th, N.S. was the Russian Christmas, and we all rose
about four hours before daylight to attend an early service in the
church. Everybody in the house was up; a fire burned brightly in the
fireplace; gilded tapers were lighted before all the holy pictures and
shrines in our room, and the air was fragrant with incense. Out of
doors there was not yet a sign of daybreak. The Pleiades were low down
in the west, the great constellation of Orion had begun to sink, and a
faint aurora was streaming up over the tree-tops north of the village.
From every chimney rose a column of smoke and sparks, which showed
that the inhabitan