Footnote 16: The Port of Ola is now also called at.]

[Footnote 17: This line is now commenced. See chap. xix.]

As for the climate here it is no better and no worse than other places
in this latitude, although Yakutsk is said to be the coldest place in
winter and the hottest in summer in the world. But this is probably a
mistake, for I carefully searched records of the temperature kept daily
for the past fifteen years, and found that the greatest summer heat
experienced during that period was 78 deg. Fahrenheit in the shade,
which is cooler than an average English summer; 69 deg. below zero
appeared to be the greatest cold here between the months of October and
March, while at Verkhoyansk we experienced 78 deg. below zero, which is,
I imagine, about as low as the thermometer can fall on this earth.
Winter here begins in September, and by the first week in October the
country is ice-bound, and semi-darkness and 55 deg. to 65 deg. below
zero continue until the spring. In May the Lena breaks up, flooding the
country for hundreds of miles and isolating Yakutsk for about a month,
during which you can neither get to the city nor leave it.[18] During
the three months of summer dust and clouds or mosquitoes render life
almost unbearable. And yet Yakutsk is a paradise compared to a certain
settlement, which I shall presently describe, within the Arctic circle.

[Footnote 18: The Lena is not perfectly free from ice until the end of
May or early in June. By October 20 it is generally frozen over. "It is
a peculiarity of these northern rivers that their waters are mainly
derived from the melting snows in June and July, when the Lena, for
example, overflowing its banks, spreads here and there to a width of 60
miles or more."--("In the Lena Delta," by G. W. Melville.)]

The day following our arrival a lunch was given in our honour by the
Governor at the Palace, a ramshackle old building, comfortably
furnished, but with no attempt at ostentation. The household was more
like that of an English country house, and there was none of the
stateliness and ceremony here which characterised the Governor's Palace
at Irkutsk. Nor was I sorry for it, for in this land of hunger and long
distances man can well dispense with formality and etiquette. We sat
down over a score to lunch, including half a dozen ladies, one, at
least, of whom was young and attractive, and as daintily gowned as
though she had just returned from a drive in the Bois de Bo