een said we retired
to don our furs and were entering the sleds when our hostess recalled us
from the frosty night air into the drawing-room, where the heat was that
of a hothouse. "You must not take your furs off," said our host, as I
was divesting myself of a portion of my cumbersome costume, "remain just
as you are." And so we returned to the brightly lit apartment, where the
guests had assembled, and here, with a solemnity befitting the occasion,
they turned toward the sacred "ikon," and knelt and prayed for our
safety and success. This is an old and pretty Russian custom now
obsolete in Europe. And I was almost ungrateful enough to wish, as I
knelt in my heavy furs, streaming with perspiration, that it was no
longer practised in Siberia! But the affecting little ceremony was soon
over, and after a final adieu to our kind hosts, my caravan slid
silently down the snowy, starlit street. An hour later the lights of
Yakutsk had faded away on the horizon, and we had bidden farewell to a
civilisation which was only regained, six long months later, at the
gold-mining city of Nome in Alaska.

CHAPTER V

THE LAND OF DESOLATION

Lieutenant Schwatka, the famous Alaskan explorer, once remarked that a
man travelling in the Arctic must depend upon his own judgment, and not
upon the advice of others, if he would be successful. The wisdom of his
words was proved by our journey from Yakutsk to Verkhoyansk. Every one
at the former place, from the Governor downwards, assured me that
certain failure and probable disaster must inevitably attend an attempt
to reach Verkhoyansk in under six weeks. Fortunately I turned a deaf ear
to well-meant, but unwise, counsel, for in less than nine days we had
reached the place in question, and had left it again on our way
northward in under a fortnight from the time we left Yakutsk. I should
add that our rapid rate of speed was entirely due to Stepan, without
whose aid we should probably have taken at least three times as long to
complete the journey. But the wiliest of Yakute postmasters was no match
for our Cossack, whose energetic measures on previous trips had gained
him the nickname of _Tchort_ (or "the devil") on the Verkhoyansk track.
And a devil he was when drivers lagged, or reindeer were not quickly
forthcoming at the end of a stage!

There are two routes from Yakutsk to Sredni-Kolymsk, near the Arctic
Ocean, which was now our objective point. These cannot be called roads,
or e