y bushes, and show no
traces of the long, cold winter which has so recently ended. In less
than a month after the disappearance of snow in 1860, I collected
from one high plain about five acres in extent, near the mouth of the
Gizhiga River, more than sixty species of flowers. Animal life of all
kinds is equally prompt in making its appearance. Long before the ice
is out of the gulfs and bays along the coast, migratory birds begin to
come in from the sea in immense numbers. Innumerable species of
ducks, geese, and swans--many of them unknown to the American
ornithologist--swarm about every little pool of water in the valleys
and upon the lower plains; gulls, fish-hawks, and eagles, keep up a
continual screaming about the mouths of the numerous rivers; and the
rocky precipitous coast of the sea is literally alive with countless
millions of red-beaked puffin or sea-parrots, which build their nests
in the crevices and upon the ledges of the most inaccessible cliffs,
and at the report of a pistol fly in clouds which fairly darken the
air. Besides these predatory and aquatic birds, there are many others
which are not so gregarious in their habits, and which, consequently,
attract less notice. Among these are the common barn and chimney
swallows, crows, ravens, magpies, thrushes, plover, ptarmigan, and
a kind of grouse known to the Russians as "teteref." Only one
singing-bird, as far as I know, is to be found in the country, and
that is a species of small ground-sparrow which frequents the drier
and more grassy plains in the vicinity of the Russian settlements.

The village of Gizhiga, where we had temporarily established our
headquarters, was a small settlement of perhaps fifty or sixty plain
log houses, situated upon the left bank of the Gizhiga River, eight or
ten miles from the gulf. It was at that time one of the most important
and flourishing settlements upon the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and
controlled all the trade of north-eastern Siberia as far north at the
Anadyr and as far west as the village of Okhotsk. It was the residence
of a local governor, the headquarters of four or five Russian
merchants, and was visited annually by a government supply steamer,
and several trading vessels belonging to wealthy American houses.
Its population consisted principally of Siberian Cossacks and the
descendants of compulsory emigrants from Russia proper, who had
received their freedom as compensation for forcible expatriation.
Lik