the way in which we spent that
dismal night.

With the first streak of dawn we were up. While we were gloomily
making preparations to return to the Viliga, one of the Koraks who
had gone to take a last look at the gap of open water came hurriedly
climbing back, shouting joyfully, "Mozhno perryekat, mozhno
perryekat!"--"It is possible to cross." The tide, which had risen
during the night, had brought in two or three large cakes of broken
ice, and had jammed them into the gap in such a manner as to make a
rude bridge. Fearing, however, that it would not support a very heavy
weight, we unloaded all our sledges, carried the loads, sledges, and
dogs across separately, loaded up again on the other side, and
went on. The worst of our difficulties was past. We still had some
road-cutting to do through occasional snow-drifts; but as we went
farther and farther to the westward the beach became wider and higher,
the ice disappeared, and by night we were thirty versts nearer to our
destination. The sea on one side, and the cliffs on the other, still
hemmed us in; but on the following day we succeeded in making our
escape through the valley of the Kananaga River.

The twelfth day of our journey found us on a great steppe called the
Malkachan, only thirty miles from Yamsk; and although our dog-food and
provisions were both exhausted, we hoped to reach the settlement
late in the night. Darkness came on, however, with another blinding
snow-storm, in which we again lost our way; and, fearing that we might
drive over the edges of the precipices into the sea by which the
steppe was bounded on the east, we were finally compelled to stop. We
could find no wood for a fire; but even had we succeeded in making a
fire, it would have been instantly smothered by the clouds of snow
which the furious wind drove across the plain. Spreading down our
canvas tent upon the ground, and capsizing a heavy dog-sledge upon one
edge of it to hold it fast, we crawled under it to get away from the
suffocating snow. Lying there upon our faces, with the canvas flapping
furiously against our backs, we scraped our bread-bag for the last few
frozen crumbs which remained, and ate a few scraps of raw meat which
Mr. Leet found on one of the sledges. In the course of fifteen or
twenty minutes we noticed that the flappings of the canvas were
getting shorter and shorter, and that it seemed to be tightening
across our bodies, and upon making an effort to get out we found