ssed
from Shestakova to Anadyrsk, on account of its barrenness, and the
impossibility of transporting heavy telegraph poles over its great
snowy steppes from the few wooded rivers by which it was traversed. I
accordingly started from Anadyrsk with five dog-sledges on March 4th,
to try to find a better route between the Anadyr and the head-waters
of the Penzhina River. Three days after our departure we met, on the
road to Penzhina, a special messenger from Gizhiga, bringing a letter
from the Major dated Okhotsk, January 19th. Enclosed were letters from
Colonel Bulkley, announcing the landing of the Anadyr River party
under Lieutenant Macrae, and a map showing the location of their camp.
The Major wrote as follows: "In case--what God forbid--Macrae and
party have not arrived at Anadyrsk, you will immediately, upon the
receipt of this letter, do your utmost to deliver them from their
too long winter quarters at the mouth of the Anadyr, where they were
landed in September. I was told that Macrae would be landed _only in
case of perfect certainty_ to reach Anadyrsk in boats, and I confess I
don't like such surprises as Colonel Bulkley has made me now. For the
present our duty consists in doing our utmost to extricate them from
where they are, and you must get every dog-sledge you can, stuff them
with dog-food and provisions, and go at once in search of Macrae's
camp." These directions I had already anticipated and carried out, and
Macrae's party, or at least all I could find of it, was now living
in Anadyrsk. When the Major wrote this letter, however, he did not
suppose that Dodd and I would hear of the landing of the party through
the Wandering Chukchis, or that we would think of going in search of
them without orders. He knew that he had told us particularly not to
attempt to explore the Anadyr River until another season, and did not
expect that we would go beyond the last settlement. I wrote a hasty
note to Dodd upon the icy runner of my overturned sledge--freezing two
fingers in the operation--and sent the courier on to Anadyrsk with the
letters. The mail also included letters to me from Captain Scammon,
commander of the Company's fleet, and one from my friend W.H. Dall,
who had returned with the vessels to San Francisco, and had written me
while stopping a few days at Petropavlovsk. He begged me, by all the
sacred interests of Science, not to let a single bug or living thing
of any kind escape my vigilant eye; but, as I