ence were gradually telling upon the brain and nerves, I
sometimes questioned, in moments of despondency, whether my Irkutsk
friends were not right when they exclaimed: "You are mad to go there."
There were compensations, notwithstanding, for a lover of Nature--the
sapphire skies and dazzling sunshine, the marvellous sunsets under which
the snowy desert would flash like a kaleidoscope of delicate colours,
and last, but not least, the glorious starlit nights, when the little
Pleiades would seem to glitter so near that you had but to reach out a
hand and pick them out of the inky sky.

On March 14 a large caravan hove in sight, composed of perhaps a score
of horse-sleds, which, as we neared it, halted, and a European emerged
from the leading sled to greet us. This bearded giant in tattered furs
proved to be the Russian naturalist, Yokelson, returning to Europe after
a two years' exploration in North-Eastern Siberia--principally in the
neighbourhood of Kamtchatka and the Okhotsk Sea. From Gijiga, Yokelson
had struck in a north-westerly direction to Sredni-Kolymsk, and was
bringing home a valuable collection for the society which had employed
him in the United States. The Russian could only give us the worst of
news from the Kolyma, where my expedition was expected by the
_ispravnik_, although the latter had assured Yokelson that our projected
journey to Bering Straits was out of the question. A famine was still
raging, there were very few dogs, and those half starved and useless,
and neither this official nor any one else in the place knew anything
about the country east of Sredni-Kolymsk. Three years previously a
Russian missionary had started with a driver on a dog-sled to travel
from the Kolyma along the coast to the nearest Tchuktchi settlement,
about 600 miles away, and the pair had never been heard of since. This
was the cheerful information which, happily, the Russian traveller
imparted to me in strict privacy.

Shortly after leaving Yokelson we crossed the Utchingoikel, or
"Beautiful Lake," so called from its picturesque surroundings in summer
time. At Andylach horses were harnessed to the sleds and we used no more
deer, there being no moss between here and Sredni-Kolymsk. The change
was not a desirable one, for the Yakute horse is a terrible animal.
"Generally he won't move until your sled is upset, and then he runs away
and it's impossible to stop him." So wrote Mr. Gilder, the American
explorer, and his experie