PENZHINA—­POSTS FOR ELEVATED ROAD—­FIFTY-THREE BELOW ZERO—­TALKED OUT—­ASTRONOMICAL LECTURES—­EATING PLANETS—­THE HOUSE OF A PRIEST

The village of Penzhina is a little collection of log houses, flat-topped yurts, and four-legged balagans, situated on the north bank of the river which bears its name, about half-way between the Okhotsk Sea and Anadyrsk.  It is inhabited principally by meshchans (mesh-chans’), or free Russian peasants, but contains also in its scanty population a few “Chuances” or aboriginal Siberian natives, who were subjugated by the Russian Cossacks in the eighteenth century, and who now speak the language of their conquerors and gain a scanty subsistence by fishing and trading in furs.  The town is sheltered on the north by a very steep bluff about a hundred feet in height, which, like all hills in the vicinity of Russian settlements, bears upon its summit a Greek cross with three arms.  The river opposite the settlement is about a hundred yards in width, and its banks are heavily timbered with birch, larch, poplar, willow, and aspen.  Owing to warm springs in its bed, it never entirely freezes over at this point, and in a temperature of 40 deg. below zero gives off dense clouds of steam which hide the village from sight as effectually as a London fog.

We remained at Penzhina three days, gathering information about the surrounding country and engaging men to cut poles for our line.  We found the people to be cheerful, good-natured, and hospitable, and disposed to do all in their power to further our plans; but of course they had never heard of a telegraph, and could not imagine what we were going to do with the poles which we were so anxious to have cut.  Some said that we intended to build a wooden road from Gizhiga to Anadyrsk, so that it would be possible to travel back and forth in the summer; others contended with some show of probability that two men, even if they were Americans, could not construct a wooden road, six hundred versts long, and that our real object was to build some sort of a huge house.  When questioned as to the use of this immense edifice, however, the advocates of the house theory were covered with confusion, and could only insist upon the physical impossibility of a road, and call upon their opponents to accept the house or suggest something better.  We succeeded in engaging sixteen able-bodied men, however, to cut poles for a reasonable compensation, gave them the required dimensions—­twenty-one feet long and five inches in diameter at the top—­and instructed them to cut as many as possible, and pile them up along the banks of the river.