re ranging
from 40 deg. to 60 deg. below zero is, in itself, no slight trial of men's
hardihood; but when to this are added the sufferings of hunger and the
peril of utter starvation in a perfect wilderness, it passes human
endurance, and the only wonder is that Norton and Macrae could
accomplish as much as they did.

Returning from Anadyrsk, I reached Gizhiga on the 15th of December,
after a hard and lonely journey of sixteen days. A special courier
had just arrived there from Yakutsk, bringing letters and orders from
Major Abaza.

He had succeeded, with the sanction and cooperation of the governor of
that province, in hiring for a period of three years a force of eight
hundred Yakut labourers, at a fixed rate of sixty rubles, or about
forty dollars a year for each man. He had also purchased three hundred
Yakut horses and pack-saddles, and an immense quantity of material
and provisions of various kinds for the equipment and subsistence of
horses and workmen. A portion of these men were already on their way
to Okhotsk, and the whole force would be sent thither in successive
detachments as rapidly as possible, and distributed from there along
the whole route of the line. It would be necessary, of course, to
put this large force of native labourers under skilled American
superintendence; and as we had not foremen enough in all our parties
to oversee more than five or six gangs of men, Major Abaza determined
to send a courier to Petropavlovsk for the officers who had sailed
from San Francisco in the bark _Onward_, and who he presumed had been
landed by that vessel in Kamchatka. He directed me, therefore, to make
arrangements for the transportation of these men from Petropavlovsk to
Gizhiga; to prepare immediately for the reception of fifty or sixty
Yakut labourers; to send six hundred army rations to Yamsk for the
subsistence of our American party there, and three thousand pounds of
rye flour for a party of Yakuts who would reach there in February.
To fill all these requisitions I had at my disposal about fifteen
dog-sledges, and even these had gone with provisions to Penzhina for
the relief of Lieutenant Bush. With the assistance of the Russian
governor I succeeded in getting two Cossacks to go to Petropavlovsk
after the Americans who were presumed to have been left there by the
_Onward_, and half a dozen Koraks to carry provisions to Yamsk, while
Lieutenant Arnold himself sent sledges for the six hundred rations. I
th