on in dark
green tunic and gold shoulder straps. A couple of clerks, also in
uniform, were busily engaged at the other desk, sorting the mail which
our Cossack had brought, and in expectation of which a group of poorly
clad, shivering exiles were already waiting in the piercing cold
outside. But when we left this place ten days later not a single letter
had reached its destination, although the post-bag contained over a
hundred addressed to the various politicals.

Even the Governor-General's all-powerful document produced little effect
here, for the _ispravnik_ appeared to regard himself as beyond the reach
of even the Tsar's Viceroy, which, indeed, from an inaccessible point of
view, he undoubtedly was. "You cannot possibly go," was the curt
rejoinder to my request for dogs and drivers to convey us to the Bering
Straits. "In the first place, a famine is raging here and you will be
unable to procure provisions. Stepan tells me that you have barely
enough food with you to last for two weeks, and it would take you at
least twice that time to reach the nearest Tchuktchi settlement, which
we know to be beyond Tchaun Bay, six hundred miles away. A year ago two
of our people tried to reach it, and perished, although they left here
well supplied with dogs and provisions. For all I know the _Kor_ (which
has decimated this district) may have killed off the coast natives or
driven them into the interior of the country, and then where would you
be, even supposing you reached Tchaun Bay, with no shelter, no food, and
another month at least through an icy waste to Bering Straits. As for
dogs, most of ours have perished from the scarcity of fish caught last
summer; I don't think there are thirty sound dogs in the place, and you
would need at least three times that number. Reindeer, even if we could
get them, are out of the question, for there is not an ounce of moss on
the coast. But even with dogs forthcoming I doubt whether you would find
drivers to accompany you, for all our people are in deadly terror of the
Tchuktchis. No, no! Take my advice and give up this mad project even if
you have to remain here throughout the summer. It will at any rate be
better than leaving your bones on the shores of the Arctic Ocean."

My experience of Russian _ispravniks_ is varied and extensive, and I
therefore realised that argument was useless with this adamantine
official, whose petty tyranny was evidently not confined to his dealing
with his e