ion; and
as the former never appeared and the latter never disappeared, both
occupations were equally unprofitable and unsatisfactory. Twenty times
a day we put on our gauze veils, tied our clothing down at the wrists
and ankles, and climbed laboriously to the summit of a high bluff to
look for vessels; but twenty times a day we returned disappointed to
our bare, cheerless rooms, and vented our indignation indiscriminately
upon the country, the Company, the ships, and the mosquitoes. We could
not help feeling as if we had dropped out of the great current of
human affairs, as if our places in the distant busy world had been
filled and our very existence forgotten.

The chief engineer of our enterprise had promised faithfully that
ships with men, material, and supplies for the immediate prosecution
of the work, should be at Gizhiga and at the mouth of the Anadyr River
as early in the season as ice would permit them to enter; but it was
now August, and they had not yet made their appearance. Whether they
had been lost, or whether the whole enterprise had been abandoned,
we could only conjecture; but as week after week passed away without
bringing any news, we gradually lost all hope and began to discuss the
advisability of sending some one to the Siberian capital to inform the
Company by telegraph of our situation.

It is but justice to Major Abaza to say that during all these long
weary months of waiting he never entirely gave up to discouragement,
or allowed himself to doubt the perseverance of the Company in the
work which it had undertaken. The ships might have been belated or
have met with some misfortune, but he did not think it possible that
the work had been abandoned, and he continued throughout the summer to
make such preparations as he could for another winter's campaign.

Early in August, Dodd and I, tired of looking for vessels which never
came, and which we firmly believed never would come, returned on foot
to the settlement, leaving Arnold and Robinson to maintain the watch
at the mouth of the river.

Late in the afternoon of the 14th, while I was busily engaged in
drawing maps to illustrate the explorations of the previous winter,
our Cossack servant came rushing furiously into the house, breathless
with haste and excitement, crying out: "Pooshka! soodna!"--"A cannon!
a ship!" Knowing that three cannon-shots were the signals which Arnold
and Robinson had been directed to make in case a vessel was seen