interior. Such was
the situation when Dodd and I arrived at Anadyrsk. Our orders were to
leave the Anadyr River unexplored until another season; but we knew
that as soon as the Major should receive the letters which had passed
through our hands at Shestakova he would learn that a party had been
landed south of Bering Strait, and would send us orders by special
courier to go in search of it and bring it to Anadyrsk, where it would
be of some use. We therefore determined to anticipate these orders and
hunt up that American stove-pipe upon our own responsibility.

Our situation, however, was a very peculiar one. We had no means of
finding out where we were ourselves, or where the American party was.
We had not been furnished with instruments for making astronomical
observations, could not determine with any kind of accuracy our
latitude and longitude, and did not know whether we were two hundred
miles from the Pacific coast or five hundred. According to the report
of Lieutenant Phillippeus, who had partially explored the Anadyr
River, it was about a thousand versts from the settlement to Anadyr
Bay, while according to the dead reckoning which we had kept from
Gizhiga it could not be over four hundred. The real distance was to us
a question of vital importance, because we should be obliged to carry
dog-food for the whole trip, and if it was anything like a thousand
versts we should in all probability lose our dogs by starvation before
we could possibly get back. Besides this, when we finally reached
Anadyr Bay, if we ever did, we should have no means of finding out
where the Americans were; and unless we happened to meet a band of
Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains
for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only
external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse
than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

When we made known to the people of Anadyrsk our intention of going to
the Pacific coast, and called for volunteers to make up a party,
we met with the most discouraging opposition. The natives declared
unanimously that such a journey was impossible, that it had never been
accomplished, that the lower Anadyr was swept by terrible storms and
perfectly destitute of wood, that the cold there was always intense,
and that we should inevitably starve to death, freeze to death,
or lose all our dogs. They quoted the experience of Lieutenant
P