I wrote a hasty note to Dodd upon the icy runner of my overturned sledge—­freezing two fingers in the operation—­and sent the courier on to Anadyrsk with the letters.  The mail also included letters to me from Captain Scammon, commander of the Company’s fleet, and one from my friend W.H.  Dall, who had returned with the vessels to San Francisco, and had written me while stopping a few days at Petropavlovsk.  He begged me, by all the sacred interests of Science, not to let a single bug or living thing of any kind escape my vigilant eye; but, as I read his letter that night by the camp-fire, I thought with a smile that snowy Siberian steppes and temperatures of 30 deg. and 40 deg. below zero were not very favourable to the growth and dispersion of bugs, nor to efforts for their capture and preservation.

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.