I will not go into a detailed account of the explorations which Lieutenant Robinson and I made in search of a more practicable route for our line between the Penzhina River and Anadyrsk. We found that the river system of the Anadyrsk was divided from that of the Penzhina only by a low mountain ridge, which could be easily passed, and that, by following up certain tributaries of the latter, crossing the watershed, and descending one of the branches of the Anadyr, we should have almost unbroken water communication between the Okhotsk Sea and Bering Strait. Along these rivers timber was generally abundant, and where there was none, poles could be distributed easily in rafts. The route thus indicated was everything which could be desired; and, much gratified by the results of our labours, we returned on March 13th to Anadyrsk.
We were overjoyed to learn from the first man who met us after we entered the settlement that Macrae and Arnold had arrived, and in five minutes we were shaking them by the hand, congratulating them, upon their safe arrival, and overwhelming them with questions as to their travels and adventures, and the reasons of their long absence.
For sixty-four days they had been living with the Wandering Chukchis, and making their way slowly and by a circuitous route towards Anadyrsk. They had generally been well treated, but the band with which they travelled had been in no hurry to reach the settlement, and had been carrying them at the rate of ten or twelve miles a day all over the great desolate steppes which lie south of the Anadyr River. They had experienced great hardships; had lived upon reindeer's entrails and tallow for weeks at a time; had been alive almost constantly with vermin; had spent the greater part of two long months in smoky Chukchi pologs, and had despaired, sometimes, of ever reaching a Russian settlement or seeing again a civilised human being; but hope and courage had sustained them through it all, and they had finally arrived at Anadyrsk safe and well. The sum-total of their baggage when they drove into the settlement was a quart bottle of whisky wrapped up in an American flag! As soon as we were all together, we raised the flag on a pole over our little log house, made a whisky punch out of the liquor which had traversed half north-eastern Siberia, and drank it in honour of the men who had lived sixty-four days with the Wandering Chukchis, and carried the stars and stripes through the wildest, least known region on the face of the globe.
Having now accomplished all that could be done in the way of exploration, we began making preparations for a return to Gizhiga. The Major had directed me to meet him there with Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, and Dodd, as soon as the first of April, and the month of March was now rapidly drawing to a close.
[Illustration: A CHUKCHI RUG OF REINDEER SKIN]
On the 20th we packed up our stores, and bidding good-bye to the kind-hearted, hospitable people of Anadyrsk, we set out with a long train of sledges for the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.
Our journey was monotonous and uneventful, and on the second of April, late at night, we left behind us the white desolate steppe of the Paren, and drew near the little flat-topped yurt on the Malmofka, which was only twenty-five versts from Gizhiga. Here we met fresh men, dogs, and sledges, sent out to meet us by the Major, and, abandoning our loaded sledges and tired dogs, we took seats upon the light narts of the Gizhiga Cossacks, and dashed away by the light of a brilliant aurora toward the settlement.
About one o'clock we heard the distant barking of dogs, and in a few moments we rushed furiously into the silent village, and stopped before the house of the Russian merchant Vorrebeof (vor'-re-be-off') where we had lived the previous fall, and where we expected to find the Major. I sprang from my sledge, and groping my way through the entry into a warm dark room I shouted "Fstavaitia!" to arouse the sleeping inmates. Suddenly some one rose up from the floor at my feet, and, grasping me by the arm, exclaimed in a strangely familiar voice, "Kennan, is that you?" Startled and bewildered with half-incredulous recognition, I could only reply, "Bush, is that you?" and, when a sleepy boy came in with a light, he was astonished to find a man dressed in heavy frosty furs embracing another who was clad only in a linen shirt and drawers.
There was a joyful time in that log house when the Major, Bush, Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, Dodd, and I gathered around a steaming samovar or tea-urn which stood on a pine table in the centre of the room, and discussed the adventures, haps, and mishaps of our first arctic winter. Some of us had come from the extremity of Kamchatka, some from the frontier of China, and some from Bering Strait, and we all met that night in Gizhiga, and congratulated ourselves and one another upon the successful exploration of the whole route of the proposed Russian-American telegraph line from Anadyr Bay to the Amur River. The different members of the party there assembled had, in seven months, travelled in the aggregate almost ten thousand miles.
The results of our winter's work were briefly as follows: Bush and Mahood, after leaving the Major and me at Petropavlovsk, had gone on to the Russian settlement of Nikolaievsk, at the mouth of the Amur River, and had entered promptly upon the exploration of the west coast of the Okhotsk Sea. They had travelled with the Wandering Tunguses through the densely timbered region between Nikolaievsk and Aian, ridden on the backs of reindeer over the rugged mountains of the Stanavoi range south of Okhotsk, and had finally met the Major at the latter place on the 22d. of February. The Major, alone, had explored the whole north coast of the Okhotsk Sea and had made a visit to the Russian city of Yakutsk, six hundred versts west of Okhotsk, in quest of labourers and horses. He had ascertained the possibility of hiring a thousand Yakut labourers in the settlements along the Lena River, at the rate of sixty dollars a year for each man, and of purchasing there as many Siberian horses as we should require at very reasonable prices. He had located a route for the line from Gizhiga to Okhotsk, and had superintended generally the whole work of exploration. Macrae and Arnold had explored nearly all the region lying south of the Anadyr and along the lower Myan, and had gained much valuable information concerning the little-known tribe of Wandering Chukchis. Dodd, Robinson, and I had explored two routes from Gizhiga to Anadyrsk, and had found a chain of wooded rivers connecting the Okhotsk Sea with the Pacific Ocean near Bering Strait. The natives we had everywhere found to be peaceable and well disposed, and many of them along the route of the line were already engaged in cutting poles. The country, although by no means favourable to the construction of a telegraph line, presented no obstacles which energy and perseverance could not overcome; and, as we reviewed our winter's work, we felt satisfied that the enterprise in which we were engaged, if not altogether an easy one, held out at least a fair prospect of success.