constantly in strength and frequency as we drew nearer and
nearer to the mouth of the ravine. Our guide once more remonstrated
with us upon the folly of going deliberately into such a storm as this
evidently would be; but Leet laughed him to scorn, declaring in broken
Russian that he had seen storms in the Sierra Nevadas to which this
was not a circumstance--"Bolshoi storms, you bet!" But in five minutes
more Mr. Leet himself was ready to admit that this storm on the Viliga
would not compare unfavourably with anything of the kind that he had
ever seen in California. As we rounded the end of a protecting bluff
on the edge of the ravine, the gale burst upon us in all its fury,
blinding and suffocating us with dense clouds of driving snow, which
blotted out instantly the sun and the clear blue sky, and fairly
darkened the whole earth. The wind roared as it sometimes does through
the cordage of a ship at sea. There was something almost supernatural
in the suddenness of the change from bright sunshine and calm still
air to this howling, blinding tempest, and I began to feel doubtful
myself as to the practicability of crossing the valley. Our guide
turned with a despairing look to me, as if reproaching me with my
obstinacy in coming into the storm against his advice, and then urged
on with shouts and blows his cowering dogs. The sockets of the poor
brutes' eyes were completely plastered up with snow, and out of many
of them were oozing drops of blood; but blind as they were they still
struggled on, uttering at intervals short mournful cries, which
alarmed me more than the roaring of the storm. In a moment we were at
the bottom of the ravine; and before we could check the impetus of our
descent we were out on the smooth glare ice of the "Propashchina," or
"River of the Lost," and sweeping rapidly down toward the open water
of the Okhotsk Sea, only a hundred yards below. All our efforts to
stop our sledges were at first unavailing against the force of the
wind, and I began to understand the nature of the danger to which our
guide had alluded. Unless we could stop our sledges before we should
reach the mouth of the river we must inevitably be blown off the ice
into three or four fathoms of water. Precisely such a disaster had
given the river its ominous name, Leet and the Cossack Paderin, who
were alone upon their respective sledges, and who did not get so far
from the shore in the first place, finally succeeded with the aid of