was not probable that they would have spent four months in that dreary, desolate region without making an effort to escape.  Even if they were still in their old camp, however, how were we to find them?  We might have passed their little underground hut unobserved hours before, and might be now going farther and farther away from it, from wood, and from shelter.  It had seemed a very easy thing before we left Anadyrsk, to simply go down the river until we came to a house on the bank, or saw a stove-pipe sticking out of a snow-drift; but now, two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles from the settlement, in a temperature of 50 deg. below zero, when our lives perhaps depended upon finding that little buried hut, we realised how wild had been our anticipations, and how faint were our prospects of success.  The nearest wood was more than fifty miles behind us, and in our chilled and exhausted condition we dared not camp without a fire.  We must go either forward or back—­find the hut within four hours, or abandon the search and return as rapidly as possible to the nearest wood.  Our dogs were beginning already to show unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and their feet, lacerated by ice which had formed between the toes, were now spotting the snow with blood at every step.  Unwilling to give up the search while there remained any hope, we still went on to the eastward, along the edges of high bare bluffs skirting the river, separating our sledges as widely as possible, and extending our line so as to cover a greater extent of ground.  A full moon now high in the heavens, lighted up the vast lonely plain on the north side of the river as brilliantly as day; but its whiteness was unbroken by any dark object, save here and there little hillocks of moss or swampy grass from which the snow had been swept by furious winds.

We were all suffering severely from cold, and our fur hoods and the breasts of our fur coats were masses of white frost which had been formed by our breaths.  I had put on two heavy reindeerskin kukhlankas weighing in the aggregate about thirty pounds, belted them tightly about the waist with a sash, drawn their thick hoods up over my head and covered my face with a squirrelskin mask; but in spite of all I could only keep from freezing by running beside my sledge.  Dodd said nothing, but was evidently disheartened and half-frozen, while the natives sat silently upon their sledges as if they expected nothing and hoped for nothing.  Only Gregorie and an old Chukchi whom we had brought with us as a guide showed any energy or seemed to have any confidence in the ultimate discovery of the party.  They went on in advance, digging everywhere in the snow for wood, examining carefully the banks of the river, and making occasional detours into the snowy plain to the northward.  At last Dodd, without saying anything to me, gave his spiked stick to one of the natives, drew his head and arms into the body of his fur coat, and lay down upon his