oned by partaking of the disgusting remains, probably
in a raw condition, for there were no signs of a fire. But the
medicine-chest alleviated her sufferings, and we left the poor wretch
full of gratitude and in comparative comfort. The same afternoon we
reached our destination, having accomplished the journey from
Verkhoyansk in eighteen days, although four months had been freely
predicted as its probable duration!

CHAPTER VIII

AN ARCTIC INFERNO

NOTE.--The information contained in the following chapter
was chiefly obtained from Government officials stationed at
Sredni-Kolymsk, the facts being afterwards verified, or
otherwise, by political exiles at the same place by my
request.

We reached Sredni-Kolymsk early in March on a glorious day, one of those
peculiar to the Arctic regions, when the pure, crisp air exhilarates
like champagne, and nature sparkles like a diamond in the sunshine. But
as we neared it, the sight of that dismal drab settlement seemed to
darken the smiling landscape like a coffin which has been carried by
mistake into a brilliant ball-room. I once thought the acme of
desolation had been reached at Verkhoyansk, but to drive into this place
was like entering a cemetery. Imagine a double row of squalid log-huts,
with windows of ice, some of which, detached by the warm spring
sunshine, have fallen to the ground. This is the main "street," at one
extremity of which stands a wooden church in the last stage of decay, at
the other the house of the Chief of Police, the only decent building in
the place. So low indeed are these in stature that the settlement is
concealed, two or three hundred yards away, by the stunted trees around
it. Only the rickety spire of a chapel is visible, and this overtops
the neighbouring dwellings by only a few feet. Picture perhaps a score
of other huts as squalid as the rest scattered around an area of half a
mile, and you have before you the last "civilised" outpost in Northern
Siberia. All around it a desolate plain, fringed by grey-green Arctic
vegetation and bisected by the frozen river Kolyma; over all the silence
of the grave. Such is Sredni-Kolymsk, as it appeared to me even in that
brilliant sunshine--the most gloomy, God-forsaken spot on the face of
this earth.

At first sight the place looked like an encampment deserted by trappers,
or some village decimated by deadly sickness; anything but the abode of
human beings. For a while our arrival attracted