d by the tough and greasy chunks of
meat that had been boiled in it, and the meal tasted delicious after
nearly a week on black bread, an occasional salt fish and dubious eggs.
Our own provisions were so hopelessly frozen that we seldom wasted the
time necessary to thaw them out into an eatable condition.

[Footnote 9: An official who combines the duties of Mayor and Chief of
Police.]

There are salt-mines near Ust-kutsk from which about 50,000 _poods_[10]
are annually exported throughout the Lena province, and the forests
around here contain valuable timber, but agriculture did not seem so
prosperous here as in the districts to the north and south. Oddly enough
the cultivation of the land seemed to improve as we progressed
northward, as far as Yakutsk, where, as the reader will presently see,
the most modern methods of farming have been successfully adopted by a
very peculiar and interesting class of people.

[Footnote 10: A "pood" is thirty-six English pounds.]

I was told that during the navigation season, from June until the latter
end of September, Ust-kutsk is a busy place on account of the weekly
arrival and departure of the river steamers. But lying silent and still
in the icy grip of winter, this appeared to me to be the most desolate
spot I had ever set eyes upon. And we left it without regret,
notwithstanding that a darkening sky and threatening snow-flakes
accompanied our departure, and the cold and hunger of the past few days
had considerably lowered the high spirits in which we had left Irkutsk.
Up till now monotony had been the worst evil to bear. In summer time the
river as far as Yakutsk is highly cultivated, and smiling villages and
fertile fields can be discerned from the deck of a steamer, but in
winter, from a sleigh, nothing is visible day after day, week after
week, but an unvarying procession of lime-stone, pine-clad cliffs, which
completely shut out any scenery which may lie beyond them, and between
which the bleak and frozen flood lies as inert and motionless as a
corpse. Even at Ust-kutsk, nearly 3000 miles from the Arctic Ocean, the
stream is as broad as an arm of the sea, which enhances the general
impression of gloom and desolation. But in this world everything is
comparative, and we little dreamt, when reviling the Lena, that a time
was coming when we should look back even upon this apparently earthly
Erebus as a whirlpool of gaiety.

When we left Ust-kutsk at about 3 P.M. night was f