Early in July all the inhabitants of Gizhiga, with the exception of the governor and a few Russian merchants, closed their winter-houses, and removed to their “letovies” or summer fishing-stations along the banks of the river, to await the arrival of the salmon.  Finding the deserted village rather dull, Dodd, Robinson, Arnold, and I removed to the mouth of the river, and took up our quarters once more in the empty government storehouse which we had occupied during the stay of the Hallie Jackson.

I shall not dwell long upon the monotonous discomfort of the life which we led for the next month.  It may all be comprised in four words—­inactivity, disappointment, mosquitoes, and misery.  Looking for vessels was our only duty, fighting mosquitoes our only diversion; and as the former never appeared and the latter never disappeared, both occupations were equally unprofitable and unsatisfactory.  Twenty times a day we put on our gauze veils, tied our clothing down at the wrists and ankles, and climbed laboriously to the summit of a high bluff to look for vessels; but twenty times a day we returned disappointed to our bare, cheerless rooms, and vented our indignation indiscriminately upon the country, the Company, the ships, and the mosquitoes.  We could not help feeling as if we had dropped out of the great current of human affairs, as if our places in the distant busy world had been filled and our very existence forgotten.

The chief engineer of our enterprise had promised faithfully that ships with men, material, and supplies for the immediate prosecution of the work, should be at Gizhiga and at the mouth of the Anadyr River as early in the season as ice would permit them to enter; but it was now August, and they had not yet made their appearance.  Whether they had been lost, or whether the whole enterprise had been abandoned, we could only conjecture; but as week after week passed away without bringing any news, we gradually lost all hope and began to discuss the advisability of sending some one to the Siberian capital to inform the Company by telegraph of our situation.

It is but justice to Major Abaza to say that during all these long weary months of waiting he never entirely gave up to discouragement, or allowed himself to doubt the perseverance of the Company in the work which it had undertaken.  The ships might have been belated or have met with some misfortune, but he did not think it possible that the work had been abandoned, and he continued throughout the summer to make such preparations as he could for another winter’s campaign.

Early in August, Dodd and I, tired of looking for vessels which never came, and which we firmly believed never would come, returned on foot to the settlement, leaving Arnold and Robinson to maintain the watch at the mouth of the river.