xtremities to the seat of life. He probably would not live through
the night unless he could be roused, and might not live two hours.
Discouraged by his apparently hopeless condition, and exhausted by
the constant struggle to keep warm, I finally lost all hope and
reluctantly decided to abandon the search and camp. By stopping where
we were, breaking up one of our sledges for firewood, and boiling a
little tea, I thought that Dodd might be revived; but to go on to the
eastward seemed to be needlessly risking the lives of all without any
apparent prospect of discovering the party or of finding wood. I had
just given the order to the natives nearest me to camp, when I thought
I heard a faint halloo in the distance. All the blood in my veins
suddenly rushed with a great throb to the heart as I threw back my fur
hood and listened. Again, a faint, long-drawn cry came back through
the still atmosphere from the sledges in advance. My dogs pricked up
their ears at the startling sound and dashed eagerly forward, and in a
moment I came upon several of our leading drivers gathered in a little
group around what seemed to be an old overturned whale-boat, which lay
half buried in snow by the river's bank. The footprint in the sand was
not more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than was this weather-beaten,
abandoned whale-boat to us, for it showed that somewhere in the
vicinity were shelter and life. One of the men a few moments before
had driven over some dark, hard object in the snow, which he at first
supposed to be a log of driftwood; but upon stopping to examine it, he
found it to be an American whale-boat. If ever we thanked God from the
bottom of our hearts, it was then. Brushing away with my mitten the
long fringes of frost which hung to my eyelashes, I looked eagerly
around for a house, but Gregorie had been quicker than I, and a joyful
shout from a point a little farther down the river announced another
discovery. I left my dogs to go where they chose, threw away my spiked
stick, and started at a run in the direction of the sound. In a moment
I saw Gregorie and the old Chukchi standing beside a low mound of
snow, about a hundred yards back from the river-bank, examining some
dark object which projected from its smooth white surface. It was the
long talked-of, long-looked-for stove-pipe! The Anadyr River party was
found.

The unexpected discovery, at midnight, of this party of countrymen,
when we had just given up all hope of sh