nd provisions awaited the
Juno at Okhotsk, and in less than a week after his arrival Rezanov was
able to start on his long journey with a mind at rest. Although the
almost extravagant delight that his body had taken in the comforts of
his manager's home, after ten weeks on the Juno, warned him that he
might be in a better condition to begin a journey of ten thousand
versts, he hearkened neither to the hint nor to the insistence of his
host. His impatient energy and stern will, combined with the
passionate wish to accomplish the double object of his journey,
returning in the least possible time to California with his treaty and
the consent of the Pope and King to his marriage, would have carried
him out of Okhotsk in forty-eight hours had disease declared itself.
Nor were there any inducements aside from a comfortable bed and refined
fare, in the flat, unhealthy town with its everlasting rattle of
chains, and the hideous physiognomies of criminals always at work to
the rumbling accompaniment of Cossack oaths.

For the first week the exercise he loved best and the long days in the
crisp open air renewed his vigor, and he even looked forward to the
four months of what was then the severest traveling in the world, in a
boyish spirit of adventure. He reflected that he might as well give
his brain a relief from the constant revolving of schemes and plans for
the advancement of his country, his company, and himself, and let his
thoughts have their carnival of anticipation with the unparalleled
happiness and success that awaited him in the future. There was no
possible doubt of the acquiescence and assistance of the Tsar, and no
man ever looked down a fairer perspective than he, as he galloped over
the ugly country, often far ahead of his caravan, splashing through
bogs and streams, fording rivers without ferries, camping at night in
forests so dense the cold never escaped their embrace, muffled to the
eyes in furs as he made his way past valleys whose eternal ice fields
chilled the country for miles about; sometimes able to procure a little
fresh milk and butter, oftener not; occasionally passing a caravan
returning for furs, generally seeing nothing but a stray reindeer for
hours together, once meeting the post and finding much for himself that
in nowise dampened his spirit.

But on the eighth day the rains began: a fine steady mist, then in
torrents as endless. Wrapped in bearskins at night within the shelter
of a ten