There is neither spring nor river of any sort in the neighbourhood, but merely a lake that supplies the inhabitants with water. In winter they break the ice that covers it, and carry home large pieces of it, which they place in a trough suspended in the yourt about five or six feet high. The heat is sufficient to dissolve the ice, and to this trough they have recourse when they are thirsty.
Near this village is a mountain or kind of Kamtschadale entrenchment, which formerly served them as a place of refuge when they revolted.
We staid at Gavenki only twelve or thirteen hours. We set off in the night for Poustaretsk, which is at the distance of more than two hundred wersts from it. We were five days in travelling it, and no journey had ever been so painful. We had no reason to complain of the weather during the first day; but the next we were extremely harassed by the snow and gales of wind, which succeeded without interruption, and with such impetuosity that our conductors were blinded. They could distinguish no object four paces from them, and could not even see the sledge that immediately followed them.
To increase our misfortune, our Gavenki guide was old and short sighted, and frequently therefore went out of the road. We were then obliged to stop while he went on before to find the vestiges of the road; but how was it possible to find them in so extensive a plain, covered with snow, and where we could perceive neither tree, nor mountain, nor river? The experience of our guide was continually at fault from the badness of the weather, notwithstanding the incredible knowledge he had of these roads. The smallest rising, the least shrub, was sufficient to set him right; meanwhile we calculated that the deviations he occasioned us amounted each day to twenty wersts.
At the end of the second day's journey, my dogs were reduced to a single fish, which I divided between them. The want of food soon exhausted their strength, so as to make them unable to proceed. Some fell under the blows of our conductors, others refused to draw, and many from inanition died on the spot. Of the thirty-seven dogs that were harnessed to my vezock upon leaving Bolcheretsk, only twenty-three remained, and these were reduced to the utmost poverty. M. Kasloff had in like manner lost a considerable number of his.
The famine became at last so great, that we were apprehensive of being starved to death in this desert. Not having a morsel of fish left for our dogs, we were obliged to feed them with part of our own provisions; but their share was very moderate, prudence requiring us to observe the most rigid œconomy.
In this woeful conjuncture, we left our equipage in the midst of the way, under guard of some of our conductors, and having chosen the most tolerable of the dogs to supply the place of those which we had lost, we went on.
Our pain and anxiety continued. We were in want of water. The only little brook that we found was entirely frozen up, and we were obliged to quench our thirst with the snow. The want of wood was another difficulty. Not a tree had we seen during the whole journey, and we frequently went a werst out of our way, perhaps for a paltry shrub not a foot long. We gathered all that we saw, for fear of finding none as we proceeded farther; but they were so small and so few as not to enable us to cook our victuals. To warm ourselves was out of the question. In the mean time the cold was extremely rigorous, and from the slow pace that we travelled, we were nearly frozen. Almost at every instant we were also under the necessity of stopping to unharness the dogs, that expired one after another.
I cannot describe what my feelings were in this situation. My mind suffered still more than my body. The inconveniences that were common to us, I patiently shared with my companions; their example and my youth gave me courage to support them. But when I thought of my dispatches, my constancy forsook me. They were continually in my hands, and I never touched them without shuddering. My anxiety to execute my trust, the view of the many obstacles I had to surmount, the uncertainty of succeeding, all these ideas united to torment me. I endeavoured to dispel them; a moment after some new obstacle brought them to my mind with additional force.