teps along this "Via
Dolorosa." I addressed the poor old fellow, who told us that he had once
spoken French fluently, but could now only recall a few words, and these
he unconsciously interlarded with Yakute. Captain ----, once in the
Polish Army, had been deported to Sredni-Kolymsk after the insurrection
of 1863, and had passed the rest of his life in that gloomy settlement.
He was now returning to Warsaw to end his days, but death was plainly
written on the pinched, pallid face and weary eyes, and I doubt whether
the poor soul ever lived to reach the home he had yearned for through so
many hopeless years.

Nearing Ebelach the forest became so dense that we travelled almost in
darkness, even at midday. Snow had fallen heavily here, and the drifts
lay deep, while the trees on every side were weighted down to the earth
with a soft, white mantle, that here and there assumed the weirdest
resemblance to the shapes of birds and animals. I have never seen this
freak of nature elsewhere, although it is mentioned by ancient explorers
as occurring in the forests of Kamtchatka. And as we advanced northward
optical delusions became constantly visible. At times a snow hillock of
perhaps fifty feet high would appear a short distance away to be a
mountain of considerable altitude; at others the process would be
reversed and the actual mountain would be dwarfed into a molehill. These
phenomena were probably due to rarefied atmosphere, and they were most
frequent on the Arctic sea-board.

A number of small lakes were crossed between the last _povarnia_ and
Ebelach. There must have been quite a dozen of these covering a distance
of twenty miles, and fortunately the ice was well covered with snow or
it must have considerably impeded the deer. These lakes vary in size,
ranging from about one to four miles in diameter, and are apparently
very shallow, for reeds were visible everywhere sprouting through the
ice. Swamps would, perhaps, better describe these shoaly sheets of
water, which in summer so swarm with mosquitoes that deer and even the
natives sometimes die from their attacks.

Ebelach was reached on March 9, and as the _stancia_ here was a fairly
clean one, I decided, although reindeer were in readiness, to halt for
twenty-four hours. For even one short week of this kind of work had left
its mark on us, and the catarrh, from which we now all suffered, did not
improve the situation. When I look back upon the daily, almost hourly,