he short summer
his days are passed on the river in canoes, fishing and trapping, but in
winter furs are donned and dog-sled and rifle become a means of
livelihood. Fish is the staple article of food, and when the summer
catch has been a poor one a winter famine is the invariable result, and
this is what had marred our progress. Nevertheless, a famine here is
generally due to laziness, for the river teems with fish of all kinds,
sturgeon and salmon-trout predominating, and there is also the _tchir_,
a local delicacy. The busiest fishing season is in the early autumn,
when herrings ascend the river in such shoals that forty or fifty
thousand are frequently taken in a couple of days with a single net. Our
dogs were fed on this fish, which appeared to be much larger than the
European species. In the spring-time the Kolyma settler can revel in
game, for swans, geese, duck and snipe abound, although weapons here are
very primitive and the muzzle-loader prevails. Elk and Polar bear are
occasionally shot in the winter, but the former have become scarce, and
the latter only frequent the sea-coast.

Every hut, or even shed, we passed on the Kolyma had a name, which duly
appears on the table of distances in the Appendix, but there are only
two so-called villages between Middle and Lower Kolymsk, Silgisit and
Krest, making the stages of the journey 90, 180, and 240 miles
respectively. A little drive like the final stage of, say, London to
Durham with such short rests would probably knock up an English horse,
but even our weakly teams were fit to continue after twenty-four hours
at Lower Kolymsk. Krest, so named from a large wooden cross which stands
amidst a few log huts, was reached on March 24, and here we were
hospitably entertained by the inhabitants, who all appeared to live in
one house, the interior of which was cosy enough; and I here noticed for
the first time that the windows were made, not of ice, but of fish skin.
The other huts were deserted, for Krest is a fishing village only fully
populated in summer-time. There seemed to be a fair lot of cattle and
horses about the inhabited dwelling, where we shared the usual evening
meal of frozen fish, to which a goodly portion of roast deer had been
added in our honour. The meat would have been excellent had it not
reeked of wild thyme, a favourite ingredient on the Kolyma, but the
frozen berries served with it as a _compote_ were delicious. These were
a species of bilberry, b