any more work, or have any further communication with
our outlying parties at Anadyrsk and Okhotsk until the arrival of
our vessels. We therefore rented for ourselves a little log house
overlooking the valley, of the Gizhiga River, furnished it as
comfortably as possible with a few plain wooden chairs and tables,
hung up our maps and charts on the rough log-walls, displayed our
small library of two books--Shakespeare and the New Testament--as
advantageously as possible in one corner, and prepared for at least a
month of luxurious idleness.

It was now June. The snow was rapidly disappearing under the influence
of the warm long-continued sunshine; the ice in the river showed
unmistakable signs of breaking up; patches of bare ground appeared
here and there along the sunny hillsides, and everything foretold the
speedy approach of the short but hot arctic summer. Winter in most
parts of north-eastern Siberia begins to break up in May, and summer
advances with rapid strides upon its retreating footsteps, covering
instantly with grass and flowers the ground that it reclaims from
the melting snow-drifts of winter. Hardly is the snow off the ground
before the delicate wax-like petals of the blueberry and star-flower,
and the great snowy clusters of labrador tea begin to whiten the mossy
plains; the birches, willows, and alders burst suddenly into leaf, the
river banks grow green with a soft carpet of grass, and the warm still
air is filled all day with the trumpet-like cries of wild swans and
geese, as they come in great triangular flocks from the sea and
pass high overhead toward the far North. In three weeks after the
disappearance of the last snow all Nature has put on the garments of
midsummer and rejoices in almost perpetual sunshine. There is no long
wet, lingering spring, no gradual unfolding of buds and leaves one by
one as with us. The vegetation, which has been held in icy fetters
for eight long months, bursts suddenly its bonds, and with one great
irresistible sweep takes the world by storm. There is no longer any
night; one day blends almost imperceptibly into another, with only a
short interval of twilight, which has all the coolness and repose of
night without its darkness. You may sit by your open window and read
until twelve o'clock, inhaling the fragrance of flowers which is
brought to you on the cool night wind, listening to the murmur and
plash of the river in the valley below, and tracing the progress of
th