of frozen snow. On the right
bank of this river we found a deserted village once occupied by
trappers; half a dozen ruined huts surrounding a roofless chapel. The
place is known as Bassarika, a corruption of Bolshaya-Reka, and
Mikouline had known it ten years ago as the abode of prosperous fur
traders. But one hard season every living being perished from smallpox
and privation, and the priest alone escaped to carry news of the
disaster to Nijni-Kolymsk.[51]

[Footnote 51: Twenty or thirty years ago there were three or four
Russian settlements, and at least as many Tchuktchi villages between the
Kolyma River and Tchaun Bay, but there is now not a solitary being on
the coast throughout the whole distance of nearly six hundred miles.]

Our drivers camped here with reluctance, for the place is said to be
haunted, and its silent, spectral appearance certainly suggested an
abiding-place of evil spirits. But one of the ruined huts, although
pitch dark and partly filled with snow, offered a pleasanter shelter
than our draughty tent, and I insisted upon a halt. Drift-wood was
plentiful (it always was near the mouth of a river), and a fire was soon
kindled, or rather a bad imitation of one, for this fuel only yields a
dull, flickering flame. This latter, however, melted the snow
sufficiently to convert the floor of our shanty into a miniature lake,
and we therefore left it in disgust and adjourned to the deerskin tent
shared by Stepan and the drivers, hard snow being a preferable couch to
several inches of icy-cold water. This happened to be my birthday, and
Harding triumphantly produced a tiny plum pudding, frozen to the
consistency of a cannon-ball, which he had brought all the way from
England in honour of the occasion. But we decided to defer the feast
until we could enjoy it in comparative comfort, perhaps on the shores of
Bering Straits--if we ever reached them! My notes between Bassarika and
Tchaun Bay are very incomplete, for they were generally made at night,
when the temperature inside the tent seemed to paralyse the brain as
completely as it numbed the fingers. Oddly enough there is nothing
colder than paper, and when the bare hand had rested upon it for a few
moments it had to be thrust back into a fur mit to restore circulation.

Imagine a barren, snow-clad Sahara absolutely uninhabited for the first
six hundred miles, and then sparsely peopled by the filthiest race in
creation, and you may faintly realise the regi